For Zillow Preferred team owners

How to scale a Zillow Preferred (formerly Flex) team.

Volume in this program is awarded on performance. So growth is roster work, not lead work. Six moves, in the order I run them.

Written by Michael Schuerman, one of 15 people on the original Zillow Go-To-Market team that brought Flex, now Preferred, to market, and two and a half years inside partner teams as a Growth Advisor. Updated September 2026.

Coach vs. consultant vs. the seat

A coach asks questions. A consultant hands over a report. I take the seat.

A coach helps you find your own answer. That's the job, and it works for a lot of people.

A consultant tells you what the answer is, hands you a plan, and steps back. That works too, if you have the bandwidth to run the plan yourself.

I don't do either. I take the operating seat and own the weekly work with the owner.

Taking the seat looks like this: the right person ends up in the right role, not just a good person in whatever seat was open. There's a meeting structure that runs without you chasing it down every week. And when a Zillow policy shifts, a market turns, or your best agent leaves, the team has a documented process for it, because the business was never built to depend on any one person.

The six moves

Fix speed to contact before you hire anyone

Connection volume follows response time. If your team is not making live contact inside the first few minutes, adding agents multiplies the leak instead of closing it. Measure it this week, name the number out loud in a team meeting, and put one person accountable for it by name.

Hire on a schedule, not on a feeling

Teams that scale in this program recruit continuously, not when someone quits. A steady hiring loop with a set number of conversations per week is what took ChuckTown Homes from 10 to 90 producers in fifteen months. Reactive hiring produces the roster you can find, not the roster you need.

Build a ramp, and hold people to it

A new agent should have a defined first thirty, sixty, and ninety days with a conversion standard attached. Without it you will carry passengers, and in a performance-scored program passengers cost you volume for everyone else.

Run one weekly cadence the whole team keeps

One meeting, same day, same metrics, no exceptions: contact speed, appointments set, appointments held, closings, and the pipeline that is stalled. The point is not the meeting. The point is that nothing important waits for a hallway conversation with the owner.

Get the owner out of production

The ceiling in almost every Preferred team is the owner still carrying a personal book. You cannot fix conversion for thirty people between your own showings. Either you stop producing or you put someone accountable in the seat.

Address the bottom of the roster on a clock

In a program that scores conversion, an underperformer is not neutral. They consume connections that would convert in someone else's hands. Set a review point, tell people what it is, and act on it when it arrives.

Where this came from

Two teams, same six moves.

Dwelli, Atlanta. I was the first Growth Advisor in the Flex program. Jake and Kelly Mullins grew the team from two agents to its present headcount of 180.

ChuckTown Homes. 10 to 90 producers across five markets and three states in fifteen months.

Read the Dwelli case study

Questions team owners ask

Scaling a partner team

How do you scale a Zillow Preferred team?+

Six moves, in order: fix speed to contact, hire on a continuous schedule, build a ninety-day ramp with a conversion standard, run one weekly operating cadence, get the owner out of personal production, and address the bottom of the roster on a clock. Volume in the program follows performance, so the growth work is roster work, not lead work.

How many agents should a Preferred team have?+

Enough agents to answer every connection fast without any one person carrying more pipeline than they can work. That number is set by your connection volume and your held-appointment rate, not by a target headcount. Teams that hire to a headcount goal usually end up with producers who cannot get enough at-bats to ramp.

How long does it take to scale a partner team?+

With a real hiring loop and a ramp in place, meaningful roster growth shows up inside two quarters. ChuckTown Homes went from 10 to 90 producers across five markets and three states in fifteen months. Dwelli, where he was the first Growth Advisor in the Flex program; Jake and Kelly Mullins grew the team from two agents to its present headcount of 180.

Should I hire a Zillow Preferred coach to scale?+

Coach is the search term, and coaching helps when the gap is agent skill. It does not help when the gap is that no one owns the number. An Operating Partner is the other option: I take an accountable seat inside the business, run the hiring and the cadence myself, and hire the full-time person who takes the seat from me.

What does it cost to bring in an Operating Partner?+

The operating seat starts at $7,500 a month. Three-month minimum, then month to month. The first 30 days include a full diagnostic and plan. The Expansion Readiness Plan is $5,000, one-time, for 30 days and is credited toward the first month if you continue into the operating seat.

What is the first thing you would look at in my team?+

Speed to first contact, held appointment rate, and how many producers closed nothing in the last ninety days. Those three numbers tell me whether you have a lead problem, a skill problem, or a roster problem, and they take about twenty minutes to pull.

How do I get more connections in Zillow Preferred?+

Volume in the program is awarded on performance, so more connections is an output, not an input. Teams that get more are hitting their buyer transaction target, holding appointments at a high rate, and keeping customer experience scores clean. Fix the scored metrics first and the volume conversation with your Growth Advisor gets much easier.

Who should own the Zillow numbers on my team?+

One named person who is not the top producer. Owners who carry personal production review conversion when there is time, and there is never time. The number moves when one accountable leader reviews contact speed, held appointments, and roster performance weekly with the team in the room.

Do I need a full-time director of sales or an Operating Partner first?+

Operating Partner first when the standards, ramp, and cadence do not exist yet, because you do not want a new hire inventing them. I run the seat, build the system, then hire and train the full-time leader who takes it over. That order avoids paying six figures for someone to learn on your connections.

You already know which move you skipped.

Bring me that one. If it's a fit, you'll get a firm price before you commit to anything.

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