Why We Tell New Agents to Forget the Commission

By Dana and Jeff

Dana and Jeff are consistent top producers, ranking as the top 1% of agents and teams in the country, Frontgate Real Estate team at the #1 Brokerage, Compass. Dana and Jeff are the dynamic founders of the Frontgate Real Estate Team at Compass.

Some of the best conversations we have as a team never leave the office. They’re the honest ones, the ones where a newer agent asks what this business really takes and gets a straight answer instead of a polished one. We had one of those recently, and it’s worth sharing, because everything that matters about building a lasting career in real estate was in it.

Serve the client, and the commission takes care of itself. It sounds backward, especially when you’re starting out, and every deal feels like survival. But we tell our agents to stop thinking about the commission and start thinking about whether the client actually gets what they need. If they don’t, nothing else works. When you pour yourself into doing right by someone, they end up with the home they love, and something more valuable than a single paycheck comes out of it: a relationship. That’s the whole engine.

Referrals are how you stop hunting. When you do exceptional work for someone, they trust you, and people work with who they trust. So they refer you, again and again. You start getting deals from “this is my agent, go see them,” passed along the same way people recommend a great mechanic or a doctor they’d swear by. That’s the goal, and it’s a specific one: to build a business on referrals instead of cold calls and door knocking.

At first, everyone has to hunt. That part’s fair, it’s what the early days are. But the point is to make your life easier over time, so you’re not hunting forever. You do that by earning the kind of trust that sends people back to you on their own.

Thick skin isn’t optional. Not every lead responds. Not every call gets returned. If you take that personally, this isn’t the business for you, plain and simple. When someone doesn’t reply, it usually has nothing to do with you; people are busy, life gets in the way, and the professional move is to not take offense and not think twice about it. You keep showing up. You never give up on a lead until they actually tell you to stop.

The proof is the lead who comes back. We had one reach out a full year after we’d last heard from them, completely out of the blue. “Thanks for sending us this,” they said. “We went to the open house, and we loved it.” A year of silence, and then that. That’s exactly why you never give up. The people who appreciate what you’re doing don’t always give you feedback in the moment, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t landing.

Stay grateful, even for the hard lessons. A line from Tony Robbins stuck with us: “Trade your expectations for appreciation and the world changes instantly.” It’s a good frame for this business and for life. The hardest stretches, the ones that feel like nothing good could come from them, tend to be the ones carrying the lesson that springs you forward into something better. The lesson isn’t fun to live through. You can still be grateful for what it taught you.

If you’re an agent who wants to build a career on trust and referrals instead of grinding through cold calls, that’s exactly the kind of team we are, and the kind of conversation we’re always happy to have. Call or text us at 747-888-0508, email us at jeff@frontgaterealestate.com, or visit frontgaterealestate.com.