Is it time to hire a real estate acquisition manager?

⚠️ Warning: If you haven’t done at least five real estate deals yet, back away slowly. This ain’t for rookies.

Once you’ve got some momentum and your phone is buzzing with seller leads, it might be time to consider bringing in an acquisition manager - real estate. But don’t even think about hiring one if your pipeline’s dry or your systems are sloppy. Hiring before you’re ready is like putting premium gas in a car with no engine — pointless and expensive.

🧠 What Is a Real Estate Acquisition Manager and What Can They Do for You?

A real estate acquisition manager is the frontline warrior of your wholesale business. They're the ones turning chaos into contracts. They don’t just talk to sellers — they know how to convert them. From the first call to the signed agreement, they handle the entire front end of your operation. They’re deal hunters, relationship builders, and number crunchers, all rolled into one.

They manage the lead intake process, making sure no potential deal slips through the cracks. Acquisition specialist simplify complex projects. They're also the ones following up consistently with motivated sellers and closing the gaps between “maybe” and “let’s sign.” On top of that, they negotiate purchase prices, confirm terms, and get the paperwork in place to close real estate transactions quickly and profitably.

When a property comes in, a solid acquisition manager jumps into evaluation mode. They analyze comps, calculate MAO (Maximum Allowable Offer), and determine whether it’s even worth your time. A great one doesn’t waste time — yours or theirs. The real estate acquisition manager must have a deep understanding the flow of deals, local pricing, and your internal systems to function at the top of their game.

Why Hire an Acquisition Manager?

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You’ve got deals slipping through your fingers because you’re drowning in follow-ups? That’s why you hire. An acquisition manager allows you to find more real estate acquisitions. Nothing else matters.

A skilled acquisition manager owns the early game: scheduling calls, setting appointments, handling negotiations, and guiding sellers through the due diligence efforts. They allow you to shift from working in the business to scaling it.

Free up your brain to focus on strategic planning, market trends, and leveling up your company.

Benefits of Hiring an Acquisition Manager

When you bring in an acquisition manager, everything starts to shift because of this pivotal role.

You stop grinding inside the business and start running it. You’ll notice more consistent lead flow, cleaner data, and smoother organization. The chaos calms down — and you get time back to focus on strategic growth.

It’s how you build leverage — and freedom ain’t just a dream anymore. It's strategy.

🎯 The True Responsibilities of an Acquisition Manager

The title may sound fancy, but let’s get real — this job is about grit, consistency, and knowing how to work a lead until it turns into cash. The daily responsibilities of an real estate acquisition manager include converting cold leads into warm deals, evaluating properties under pressure, and managing the contract process from start to finish. They’re also responsible for documenting everything inside your CRM — every call, every note, every offer. Whether working with a single house buyer or multiple properties, they separate milk from mildew to determine what is a valuable asset.

Financial analysis is part of the gig too. Your acquisition manager should be running numbers daily — checking valuations, forecasting assignment fees, and making sure your company isn’t bleeding money on bad offers. You want someone who thinks like an investor, acts like a closer, and operates like a boss. They have a keen understanding of financial modeling. They are your senior manager and first line of defense against risk management.

🔥 What Makes a Strong Acquisition Manager?

This role isn’t for the soft-spoken or easily rattled. A strong acquisition manager needs a serious skill set. First off, they better be able to negotiate with confidence and handle objections without breaking a sweat. They also need sharp communication skills — not just with sellers, but with your internal team of managers, assistants, and transaction coordinators. They have to to be detail oriented and a sharp eye willing to work closely with everyone to get residential acquisitions. Your AM has to have a hustle and preferably a gut instinct when opportunities arise.

They need to know the market like the back of their hand. What are properties selling for? What’s trending in the area? Success means being in tune with local market trends means they can spot deals before others even know what hit them. On top of that, they need to manage their time like a pro. This role is fast-paced and detail-heavy. A keen eye and clear communication for all services required. One missed call or forgotten follow-up can cost thousands.

A top-tier real estate acquisition manager has strong financial acumen. They have to know when to make strategic acquisitions and more importantly, when not to. They know how to assess risk, protect your margins, and estimate renovation costs on the fly. They're not afraid to push for a better deal, but they also know when to pull back and walk away from a bad one.

🆚 How an Acquisition Manager Differs from a Dispositions Manager

Let’s not get it twisted — acquisition is the front end, and disposition is the back end. The acquisition manager brings acquisitions in, while the dispositions manager gets it out the door and into a buyer’s hands. Without a steady acquisition flow, your disposition side has nothing to sell.

Some businesses bring in senior acquisition managers to handle the more complex side of things — managing multiple managers, handling larger portfolios, or overseeing new territory rollouts. If you're scaling hard and fast, you’ll need someone in that role who can lead, train, and optimize.

🔍 How to Know When You're Ready to Hire

Now let’s get honest. You might be ready to hire an acquisition manager if your business is growing faster than you can handle. If leads are sitting cold in your CRM or you're fielding seller calls during dinner, you're already bottlenecking growth. If you’re consistently doing 3 to 5 acquisitions a month, it’s time to consider offloading the front-end grind to someone who can do it better — and do it full-time.

But here's the flip side. If you're still figuring out your processes, if your CRM looks like a graveyard, or if you’ve only closed a few acquisitions total, hiring now is premature. A good real estate acquisition manager needs systems to plug into — not chaos to fix.

🧰 What Needs to Be in Place First

Before you start interviewing an acquisition manager, you need a working lead management system. You need a plan for the real estate acquisitions before you acquire the acquisition managers. Whether it's Podium, DealsDone, GoHighLevel, or something custom, it should be running daily and tracked like your business depends on it — because it does. You’ll also need a follow-up strategy that’s written down, repeatable, and already producing results.

Make sure you’ve got the cash flow to pay commissions — usually 10 to 15% of the assignment fee. And define the job clearly: your acquisition manager isn’t a magician. They're responsible for managing leads, locking up deals, and staying accountable to a system. That’s how development inside your team starts — with clear expectations and structure.

🧲 Where to Find the Right Person

Hiring doesn’t have to be complicated. Look in Facebook investor groups or real estate-specific LinkedIn job boards. Ask around in your buyer’s list — someone might be looking for a career shift. Look at entry-level roles in sales, customer service, or even door-to-door gigs. The right person might not have real estate experience, but they’ll have hustle and hunger.

Look for candidates who’ve worked in commercial real estate, car sales, or insurance — people who know how to handle rejection and close under pressure. Your real estate acquisition manager doesn’t need to be a superstar on day one, but they do need the potential for development.

🔍 How to Screen and Train Them

Start by role-playing a seller call. See how they handle pressure, objections, and curveballs. If they freeze, they’re not ready. Ask for past experience — especially if they’ve been an acquisition specialist or worked in real estate acquisitions before. Look for people who are competitive, coachable, and detail-obsessed.

Train them by having them shadow you for two weeks. Let them listen in on calls, watch you negotiate, and study your contracts. Then hand them leads and let them work. Review their calls every day. Give feedback. Set targets. This is where you measure not just their results, but their growth as part of your team of managers.

Training & Daily Operations

How Long It Takes to Train an AM

Expect 90 days before they start clicking. Six months to real independence. You’ll be heavily involved in the beginning — reviewing calls, correcting tone, and walking them through the sales process.

Step-by-Step Training Framework

Start with self-study — SOPs, recorded calls, training videos. Then shadow your acquisitions. Break down tone, pace, objection handling. Create a name for your real estate acquisition manager course. Build a brand and sear into their brain like a cattle prod.

From there, give them leads. Let ‘em mess up. Then debrief and tighten the game.

Shadowing & Field Training Approach

Let them observe 3–5 seller appointments. Give them small roles at first — intros, building rapport. Then level them up gradually. Always recap after each session.

What to Cover in the First Week

Set the foundation:

Creating a Self-Study Resource Library

Curate your best content — then pull from top podcasts and YouTube channels. Organize it by skill: rapport, rebuttals, contracts, financial analysis.

They should always have something to sharpen there real estate skills with.

Building Your Sales Process Map

Map every step: From lead to close. Plug in scripts, pain point questions, objection responses. Create a flowchart so new hires can see the full picture.

Roleplay and Repetition: The Training Secret

Mock calls every day. One cold open, one objection drill, one closing scenario. Record them. Review together. Refine constantly. You don't need a bachelor's degree but you need repetition. Real estate reptition. It is worth repeating. Confidence comes from real estate role playing repetition — not just talent.

Daily Tracking and Performance Metrics

When it comes to tracking your real estate acquisition manager, if you can't count it. It doesn't count.

Track everything:

Celebrate wins. Tackle weaknesses. Keep the energy high.

How to Handle Their First Live Appointments

Be the backup. Let them lead the appointment, but stay close. Debrief after every deal — no sugarcoating. Coach them up, then let them take the wheel.

🧠 Tools Your Acquisition Manager Needs

Don't set them up to fail. Give them what they need to win. This includes CRM access, call scripts, comp tools, and contract templates. If you're doing portfolio acquisitions or working with multiple managers, give them access to tools that help with financial planning and valuation as well.

The more organized your system is, the faster they’ll produce results. Sloppy tools create sloppy acquisition managers — and that costs you deals.

📊 How to Measure Their Performance

You need to track performance like a hawk. That means looking at contact rate (calls made vs. connections), appointment setting, conversion from lead to contract, and average assignment fee. It also means understanding whether your acquisition manager is helping you grow or just keeping you stuck.

They should be making 50 to 75 calls a day, having at least 2 to 5 quality seller conversations, and sending out 1 to 2 offers consistently. If you’re not seeing growth in your signed contracts, it’s time to recalibrate.

📈 Scaling Up with a Team of Acquisition Managers

One good acquisition manager can do a lot. But when your lead volume triples or you start expanding into new markets, you’ll need more muscle. That’s when it’s time to build a team.

Structure it with junior reps handling cold outreach and follow-ups, and senior reps closing deals and mentoring others. Add a sales or operations lead to oversee your managers, track KPIs, and keep development goals aligned with the company strategy.

You can also bring in support staff to keep data clean, appointments booked, and CRM records updated. That’s how you go from hustling solo to building a scalable real estate machine.

🚨 Mistakes That’ll Kill Your Momentum

Don’t wing this. Don’t hire without a system, don’t skip onboarding, and for the love of all things wholesale, don’t expect your acquisition manager to bring you leads. Their job is to convert — not generate.

Also, remember they’re managers, not magicians. They need feedback, training, and a system that works. If you’re expecting them to fix everything without direction, you’re setting them up — and yourself — for failure.

💬 Final Word from the M.O.B.

Hiring a real estate acquisition manager is a power move. But only if you’re ready. Only if your systems are tight. Only if you’ve got the leads flowing and your own follow-up game is maxed out.

Get those pieces in place, then bring on someone who’s sharp, driven, and ready to win. Train them, track them, and build your empire deal by deal. That’s how the real M.O.B. does it.

What To Look For in a Real Estate Sales Manager

Once your administrative tasks have been taken care of by a virtual assistant your next step will be to Hire a real estate sales manager.  This person will be responsible for selling all of your properties once they're under contract.

Selecting the right person to do this job should be well thought out and understood. The job is very demanding, and it's where the money is realized for everyone on the team.

 

What I mean by that is, the money is MADE when you negotiate the deal with the seller, but the money is realized when the buyer validates your skills with an offer to purchase the contract from you at a price higher than the one you've agreed to with the seller.

Your real estate sales manager needs to have a few personality characteristics in order to work well on a team and be able to get these deals to the closing table quickly. 

Here are the Top 5 things to look for when hiring a sales manager, and the reasons why:

Organizational Skills  

If you're doing any level of volume, you may have multiple properties (contracts) that are being offered at once. The real estate sales manager needs to know all of the facts about each property so that he/she can properly communicate these facts to potential buyers.  Occupancy, pricing, condition, bedrooms, baths, SF, etc are all things that need to be readily available by the sales manager.

An organized person will study the facts about the properties once they become available, memorize what they need to know and have them organized in a CRM or something on their mobile device so that the info is readily available.

 The buyer typically want to see photos and/or videos of the house. Your real estate sales manager needs to be organized so that links to photo albums, rehab estimates, videos, etc can be sent quickly via email or text. 

Communication Skills 

 When dealing with buyers, a real estate sales manager must be able to communicate clear details. There's a lot of back and forth chatter when it comes to negotiating deals, so being able to communicate effectively can help the transactions get to the closing table in a smooth fashion.

The real estate sales manager must also be able to communicate effectively in his team.  Everyone wants to know what's going on all the time with deals. The team may even be on edge" until the thing finally closes.  So just keeping the team updated is a big tension reliever.  Suspense is no fun and may get you yelled at.

 A "People" Person        

What is a "people" person anyway? Well, it's definitely NOT me.  I have zero patience, no tolerance for ignorance, and no time for games.  So when it comes to dealing with buyers, I'm not the best person for the job.  That's why I absolutely need a real estate sales manager on my team to handle this job for me.

 Buyers (and sellers) do business with people that they know, like and trust.  And being a people person puts things in your favor, especially in a sales position.

Ability to Work Well in a Team

When you first start out as a real estate wholesaler you're all by your lonely.  Working as an individual, figuring things out on your own, and depending only on yourself.  But when you start to grow as a company and a business, you'll need to build a team.  The phrase "team player" never meant anything to me until I built a real estate team.  Then I realized the importance of working with other people.

 Being on a team means that you're willing to do what it takes to get the whole team to the end result.  It means not letting the team down. Not forgetting to take care of a time-sensitive matter that may negatively affect the whole team. Listen to other people in your team and being willing to offer your help if they need it in order to accomplish the goals of the team.

Working on a team means that it's not just about you. If everyone else on the team is working their ass off to get deal closed, then you shouldn't be lying on the beach somewhere sipping on a cold beer. You should be right there with them, brainstorming and looking for solutions.

Teams celebrate the wins together and fall down together

It's hard to identify someone who works well (or doesn't work well ) in a team. but once you start working with a real estate sales manager, keep your eyes peeled for any indication that they're not willing to take one for the team.  And if you find someone who is volunteering themselves to go above and beyond their job to get things done, then you've got yourself a team player!

Detail Oriented

This quality is important when it comes to the paperwork part of working with buyers.  There's a ton of tiny little details that the real estate sales manager needs to pay attention to.  If something is missed or written incorrectly, it can cost you money. 

Some things that can be missed if the details aren't paid attention to:

a). Earnest Money Deposits - how much is the buyer offering on the deal, how long do they have to turn it in , and who will the check be payable to.

b). Closing Dates - how long does the buyer need to close? if they're paying cash (which they should be) then there's no reason why they can't close tomorrow. if a buyer fast-talks his way into a 30 days contract, then he's not really a buyer, he's a real estate wholesaler.  Probably not the best match and a detail that could be caught.

c.) Closing Costs - closing costs is a detail in the contract that can cost you money if it's not put on the buyer side.  Your real estate sales manager should always ask the buyers to pay the closing costs. This isn't required but suggested since you're offering the buyers an awesome deal in the first place.

real estate sales manager

Hire Slow, Fire Fast

Choosing the right people for your team is definitely a challenge. I've been through several dozen people in my 18 years as a real estate wholesaler. While people aren't perfect, and you have to allow for a period of training. Real Estate is no easy business. In fact, there's ALOT to learn.

 So be selective in your choice when it comes to hiring a real estate sales manager, and then enjoy the experience of having someone on your team who loves what he/she does, and has a burning desire to achieve more, sell for more, and learn more!