Did you have an attorney draw up your forms and documentation? What part of this does the broker of record play in the process? If any? What pitfalls do you recomment that we watch out for? What are the absolute "must steps" that are to be taken?
LH - Texas
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These are great questions! First of all, none of us are attorneys, and certainly we would recommend that whatever you use, it should be run past your own broker and their legal counsel.
That being said, what the majority of our members who have shared their experience on this subject have said is that they use their regular listing agreements, buyer representation agreements, etc., as their foundation, and then add an addendum to it that spells out anything they will be doing that differs from what is included in their regular brokerage agreements.
For example, if the agent and the client decide that the client will be providing a good "up front" fee which reduces the risk to the agent, and in exchange would ultimately be responsible for a reduced commission, an addendum spelling out that agreement would be created in easy to understand language, and on the brokerage agreement, where the commission would normally appear, they could place a simple "see Addendum A attached".
One of the wonderful things about the ACRE program is that upon completion of the course and subsequent test, our members have free online access to our very robust (and growing) library which includes samples of such things. We have all sorts of tools available for marketing your consulting services, we have webinars designed to help with dialogue (it's one thing to understand the concept...for some people, putting the concept and how it all works into words for their prospects and clients is a different matter altogether...these dialogues help with that).
Regarding the "must dos"...the library helps with that as well. One of the first items on the list is to decide how you want to package your services and which services you want to provide, as well has how much you want to charge for them. We also have tools to help in that department.
As far as pitfalls are concerned, I'd say this likely varies from state to state depending on local custom. Remember that the services you provide the consumer with are the same services you are already licensed to provide.