Suneet Agarwal learns from the highs and the lows in his real estate career. He’s put those learnings to use building multiple successful real estate teams, while remaining a high-performing agent himself.

Suneet now heads up Big Block Realty North and Best Sac Homes Group as CEO. He also offers real estate success coaching and (somehow!) finds the time to host the Hustling Agent podcast.

How does he do it all? Well, he starts by using the right tools for lead management. Read on to learn how Suneet and his team use Follow Up Boss to stay on top.

The Challenge

Finding a CRM agents will actually use

As is the case for many agents, real estate wasn’t Suneet’s first career path.

After college, he started out in the mortgage world. When the industry was hit hard in 2008, he transitioned into consulting.

Fast forward to 2014, a friend recommended he get a real estate license…and he listened. In his late 30s, Suneet started out as the youngest team member at one of the more established brokerages in his area.

After landing firmly in the world of real estate, he looked back on his experience in mortgage and noticed something significant. It was common practice for teams to spend upwards of $1 million dollars on direct mail each month to promote refinancing. But most leads were falling through the cracks.

Even at his new real estate brokerage, the team wasn’t making use of the brokerage-provided CRM. This led to practically non-existent follow-up and massive unearned commissions. 

“I look back at my leadership in mortgage salesmanship and I see lots of holes that I left by not following up properly.”

Suneet knew he could do better. So when he started leading his own team in 2016, just two years after getting his license, he explored a wide variety of CRMs to make sure his lead management was as airtight as possible. Many of the systems he tried had plenty of bells and whistles, but just didn’t seem to have the flexibility or user-friendliness he was after. 

When a colleague recommended Follow Up Boss, Suneet finally found what he was looking for. Now, he had an agile, fun-to-use system to help him track leads and ensure the kind of follow-up he didn’t see early in his career. 

The Solution

Keeping a close eye on lead management

Drawing on his experience, Suneet knew that the secret to growing his team and his business was all in the leads. In fact, this was his priority from as early as his second week as a realtor. “I had no money,” he says. “But I set aside $250 to buy some Zillow leads.” 

Suneet kept a keen focus on the tools and procedures behind following up with each prospective client.

“It was always leads, leads, leads, processes, systems and accountability on the lead management,” he recalls. Even though he has an entire team of agents and managers under him, he’s still dogged about auditing leads — and Follow Up Boss helps him do that. 

“For me, staying close to the sales process has been a great thing.”

Lead routing

Unsurprisingly, one of Suneet’s top priorities is making sure leads get to the right place from the start. “The way that you route the leads is one of the most important things that you can do,” he says.

The team averages around 2,000 leads per month, from billboard and sign calls to Zillow, Ylopo, and various PPC sources. Depending on where they come in from, leads are sent to ISAs, directly to agents, or down a nurture path where they’ll receive texts and emails that help build a relationship over time.

Suneet uses a seamless 2-way sync between FUB and Zillow so his team can work leads effortlessly in both systems and win the speed to lead battle.

In fact, Zillow Premier agent teams who use Follow Up Boss and the enabled Z-connect integration close 29% more Zillow-sourced deals than those who don't.

“The FUB/Zillow Flex integration has been awesome. We’ve been able to save huge amounts of time. Agents can focus on a system where they feel comfortable to work. As a result, our team and ISAs convert more.”

Another important component of the team’s lead routing is tagging. Using auto-tags, Suneet and his team can quickly distinguish between buyer and seller or segment by zip code and geographic groupings for relevant follow-ups. 

Though his approach clearly works, Suneet believes every team has to find the routing strategy that works best for their unique size, scale and geography. 

When he’s looking for inspiration, Suneet heads to the Follow Up Boss community on Facebook. There he connects with other team leaders to get new ideas for how to route leads and use system integrations to get the most out of every prospect.

Integrations

Keeping his tools connected helps Suneet and his team stay organized. When he has a spare moment, he loves to geek out by auditing their marketing and lead management activities in Follow Up Boss. 

For this, the integration between Ylopo and Follow Up Boss has been crucial. The team also uses Facebook Ads for marketing to new leads. The Witly integration brings leads from automated ads straight into Follow Up Boss where they’re automatically tagged based on specific audiences, like sellers or buyers.

From there, Suneet uses CallAction and Callingly to streamline tracking for both inbound calls and outbound lead follow-up. With all call activity flowing in and out of one central system, Suneet can easily track agent activity and use that data to coach his team.

Agent activity

When bringing new agents onboard, Suneet shares his team resources via Trainual. Here he helps agents focus on learning specific features inside Follow Up Boss using short 1-2 minute videos. The team even has two separate Follow Up Boss accounts, including one for recruiting.

Even though they conduct weekly team check-ins, Suneet feels strongly about not mandating training or coaching opportunities. Instead, he advocates for maximizing your energy. 

“If you're mandating stuff for your agents, your energy's going to be spent chasing people around. Don’t mandate it and instead have clear expectations. That way, those expectations are either executed or they’re not.” 

Suneet spends most of his week coaching other brokers and agent teams. So his time spent reviewing leads and agent activity is precious. 

By looking at agent activity, he can quickly zero in on where the team should be following up. He can even leave comments and pointers for ongoing coaching. 

“Being in that sales management position inside of the CRM is one of my superpowers. I have coaching clients asking me how to audit better and how to track better. It’s really important to look at your leads every day.” 

The Results

Becoming #1 in sales and support

Suneet’s coaching and auditing skills have served him and his team extremely well over the past eight years, helping them consistently rank among the top teams in the nation.

The Best Sac Homes Group has been ranked the #1 Mega Team in California by the Washington Journal and has also achieved the #1 Realtor Group in Greater Sacramento ranking year after year. 

And Suneet himself? He’s still the #1 ranked agent in the Greater Sacramento area.

But he doesn’t only measure his team’s success in financial benchmarks.

“I like making money — it's a for-profit business, so I want to make money,” he says. But he doesn’t have a set number in mind. “Look, I would love $100 million! But I’m not going to shoot for $100 million. That’s just not how I see it.”

Instead, he’s focused on creating a supportive place for his team to work. “I really just want to create this environment where people can continue to thrive,” Suneet says. “I know that if I have this terrific environment where agents, VAs and ISAs can flourish, I'll be able to stay successful.”

Though he manages large teams on both the brokerage and real estate side, Suneet hasn’t hung up his selling hat completely either. He disagrees with thinking of getting out of production as a badge of honor and still takes appointments and listings when he can. 

But Suneet’s life looks much different from his early days in real estate. He has a family now, so his personal schedule prioritizes their needs. He gets up early, makes time for the gym, attends 4-8 team meetings per week, and abides by a personal philosophy of not working on the weekends.

He even recently took a two-week trip to Europe and didn’t open his laptop once.

“But when I came back, the first thing I did was open up Follow Up Boss.” laughs Suneet.

Bonus 💡 Hear more from Suneet and what helped Best Sac Homes Group become the #1 team in Sacramento