Building an effective top-producing real estate team is essential for your success, but it is also easier said than done. After all, many real estate teams are vying for attention from the same pool of candidates.
At the same time, real estate agents who have previously joined your team may be ready to find the exit door for various reasons. In fact, the average real estate agent only stays with the same broker for approximately five years. Team attrition may be just as high
Recruiting real estate agents involves getting in front of the right people at the right time. More than that, it involves laying the foundation for solid relationships.
Many teams flounder in these areas, and the team’s success is stymied as a result. This blog post will reveal everything you need to know about recruiting great real estate agents to join your growing and winning team.
Factors to Consider Before Recruiting Real Estate Agents
When a real estate agent agrees to join your team, he or she will be sacrificing a portion of their commission. What will the real estate agent get in return? The right answer is that your team should help that real estate agent to be more successful.
Before you start building a team, you should have the infrastructure and processes in place to deliver the results the real estate agent expects from the relationship. What does this entail?
Established Brand and Proof of Production
In order to successfully recruit a new real estate agent, you must show that real estate agent that the grass is actually greener on the other side. One of the ways that you can do this is to present an established brand. Brand recognition is an important aspect of prospecting leads, so a new recruit will see your established brand as a true benefit.
This is because buyers and sellers may be more likely to connect with a team that they are familiar with. The real estate agent may expect to have access to more leads and to secure clients more easily as a result.
More than that, you should present a new recruit with proof of production. How many active deals does your team have? How many new contracts does your team secure in a month? What is your team’s volume of sales in the last quarter?
Quality Leads
By joining a team, a real estate agent expects an easier pathway to increased profits. The real estate agent does not need to join your team and split commissions with the team in order to pound the pavement with door-knocking efforts or to make dozens of cold calls each week.
It is a true selling point if you can present new recruits with a great stream of quality leads from day one. By doing so, you enable the real estate agent to focus on turning leads into clients rather than hunting down new leads. This aspect of joining a team helps the real estate agent to be more successful overall.
What does this mean for your team? You must have an effective lead generating system in place that makes the phone ring regularly or that fills your inbox with leads. This may include a solid combination of brand recognition, referrals, postcard campaigns and other marketing efforts.
It can take time to establish a steady stream of quality leads, so it is important that you work on developing such a system now if it is not already in place.
Admin Support
Before you add real estate agents to your team, you must have the infrastructure in place to support those agents. At a minimum, you should have an Administrative Assistant and a Transaction Coordinator in place to perform essential behind-the-scenes activities.
These professionals enable real estate agents to take a forward position in securing clients and ultimately in closing more deals. They help real estate agents to be more productive and profitable.
A real estate agent that you are recruiting may be coming from a team with inadequate administrative support, or he or she may be a new real estate agent who has recently been licensed. New real estate agents may be happy simply learning that they will have an administrative team behind them.
Established real estate agents may already have some experience with administrative staff in other teams, so these agents may need to know more specifics about your team’s professional background.
For example, how long has an administrative professional been working in real estate? How long has he or she been a member of the team? These are the selling points that may make a difference to a recruit.
Mentoring Opportunities
For a new real estate agent, the idea of being on his or her own without any professional guidance can be intimidating.
After all, many new real estate agents will throw in the towel within their first year or two in the business. If you are recruiting a new real estate agent, mentoring opportunities may be one of the stronger team benefits that you can present.
What does a mentoring opportunity look like? Obviously, the established real estate agent must be agreeable to mentoring. There may need to be something in it for him or her, so you should look at establishing a mentoring fee or a light commission split.
The mentoring opportunity may include assisting with phone scripts, attending initial client meetings and being available throughout the remainder of the transaction.
Keep in mind that your transaction coordinator can also assist with mentoring. For example, he or she may walk the new real estate agent through a transaction after a contract is signed. It is important for real estate agents to have experience with all aspects of the transaction in order to be successful.
When to Start Recruiting Agents
There are two important factors that must be in place before you start recruiting new real estate agents to join your team. One of these is having a quality support team in place.
Generally, you will not hire support staff until your team is successful and active enough to necessitate their services. The other factor is having more leads than you can keep up with.
The real estate agent should be able to jump right in and be busy working leads from day one. When these two factors are in place, other essentials may fall in line.
For example, brand recognition and proof of production may be aligned with having more leads than you can keep up with. Likewise, these factors may be in place to necessitate the need for support staff.
What Type of Agents Are the Best to Recruit?
As you build your team, it is imperative that you select the right individuals for the job. It is not enough to simply add any real estate agents to the team who may be interested in joining. The new team member will impact brand recognition and reputation, production numbers and even the overall team dynamic.
If you are recruiting new real estate agents, mentoring may detract from your experienced real estate agents’ other activities. With this in mind that are two types of real estate agents that you should consider recruiting. These are new real estate agents and experienced real estate agents who have proven their production capabilities.
New real estate agents should demonstrate that they have ambition and drive. By training new real estate agents, you can ensure that they develop effective skills and learn proper techniques from day one. However, you should be aware that new real estate agents require ample time and energy to train and nurture. They will be an investment in the team’s future success.
Experienced real estate agents generally should have closed between five and ten transactions over the last year. These are real estate agents who already have developed skills and techniques, and they may only be looking for more quality leads and administrative support.
They may not want or need training and mentoring, so they may be ready to hit the ground running from day one. However, these real estate agents may be more difficult to recruit. You must prove to them that you provide a better professional experience than what they already have.
Can Experienced Real Estate Agents Make Good Recruits
Given the exceptional challenge of recruiting experienced real estate agents to join your team, you may be wondering if they are worth the effort. There are both pros and cons associated with recruiting experienced real estate agents. For example, these agents may already be successfully farming a specific area.
They may produce at least some of their own leads, although they may be looking for more. They also may have a growing base of referral leads that could ultimately benefit your team’s production numbers. As mentioned, they may require no training, and they can start being a productive team member as soon as they join your team.
However, because experienced real estate agents may already be busy through their established activities, they may not have the bandwidth to help the team respond to its stream of leads as fully as a new real estate agent might. Plus, these real estate agents have their own professional system in place, and the system that works for them may not jive well with your team’s system.
In addition, these are real estate agents who expect to draw immediate benefits from your administrative team. Because of this, they may focus heavily on the experience and capabilities of these team members before deciding to join your team. Their immediate need for support staff may not necessarily be a negative, but it can be a detriment if you are still in the process of getting those team members up to speed.
What to Look for in Prospective Agents
The most successful real estate agents generally share similar personality traits. These are traits that enable them to be great team players, to secure more clients and to facilitate closed deals. The best DISC personality type is Moderately Dominant, Highly Influential, High Stability and Low Compliance.
The individual is strongly decisive and may be persistent without being overbearingly pushy. He or she is able to gain trust easily, enjoys taking risks, works well in an independent environment and is a true people-person.
While many people try their hand as a real estate agent, those who thrive on this career path exhibit these traits. They each serve a different and essential purpose in the real estate agent’s various professional activities.
Commission Splits for Recruited Agents
A real estate agent working under a broker will have an established commission split in place as common practice. When a real estate agent works under a team, his or her portion of a commission may be split again with the team.
The team split is in place to cover the services provided by the team. This includes administrative professionals’ compensation, marketing activities and other shared team benefits and services.
A common real estate commission split is 80/20. Eighty percent of the real estate agent’s earned commission is his or her’s, and 20 percent of the commission goes to the team. However, there is a considerable variation in this. Generally, a team that provides more benefits and services to a real estate agent will take a larger portion of the commission.
The best split is one that is profitable and advantageous to the real estate agent and that supports the team’s overhead. As you decide what your commission split will be, keep in mind this can be a true selling point for a new recruit.
A real estate agent who sees tremendous value from joining our team will be more likely to do so. On the other hand, if you have a large commission split with seemingly fewer or less substantial benefits for the real estate agent, you may have a much harder time enticing real estate agents to join your team.
As your team becomes more successful and well-known, generates more leads or has other selling points, you may be able to adjust your commission split with new recruits.
Top 5 Ways to Recruit Real Estate Agents
Creating a team environment that real estate agents find advantageous is only one aspect of building a team. You also need to focus on actually finding real estate agents who would be productive members of the team. There are a few common methods that may be used to identify top talents.
Networking with Other Agents
When it comes to recruiting, the bottom line is that you need to directly be in touch with both new and established real estate agents in order to build your team.
This means that networking with other real estate agents is crucial. Consider joining various professional organizations and being active on your Board of Realtors. Get to know the real estate agents on the other side of the transactions you work on.
You can also rely on your team’s established members to network with other real estate agents. Generally, you should incentivize their recruiting efforts so that your team members are properly motivated to help you build the team.
One idea is to offer a cash incentive to established team members who successfully recruit new real estate agents to join the team.
Host a Continuing Education Course
All real estate agents must complete continuing education courses, so hosting a course is a great way to actively get in front of other agents in your community. This option specifically puts you in contact with established or experienced real estate agents rather than new real estate agents.
Through interactions in the classroom, you can gain a considerable amount of insight into a specific real estate agent’s personality type and general professional success. Because of this, hosting a continuing education course provides you with the ability to essentially pre-screen potential recruits before you attempt to sell them on joining your team.
Host a Webinar for Agents in the Area
As an experienced, successful real estate agent, you can and should draw on your expertise to get in front of other real estate agents. You can offer a webinar that covers topics like market conditions, changes in the mortgage industry, marketing practices, sales techniques and more.
By doing so, you are offering a valuable service to individuals who want to improve themselves professionally. Everyone who attends your webinar may have the personal drive and motivation to take their career to the next level. At the same time, a webinar is a great way to position your team as being supportive and offering true value to its team members.
By hosting a webinar, you are getting in front of prospective recruits while also priming them to be more receptive to the recruitment process.
Obtain a List of Newly-Licensed Agents
There are clear benefits associated with recruiting real estate agents who have recently been licensed, but how can you get in front of them? Your local real estate board or commission may provide you with a list of these real estate agents upon request.
Keep in mind that not all new licensees may be right for your team. A considerable amount of vetting may be required in order to narrow down the options to a select group of individuals who you wish to add to your team.
There are several effective ways to connect with these real estate agents. For example, you can send a postcard initially inviting them to connect with you and to learn more about your team. You may invite them to attend a meet-and-greet event. At this event, you can individually meet interested candidates and deliver a group presentation about your team’s benefits.
Use Social Media Platforms
Another way to get in front of potential recruits is to be active on social media. This can be a passive way to reach new prospects. For example, you can create posts for each new listing and for each closing. These posts are an effective way to build recognition and to establish your reputation. At the same time, they demonstrate proof of production.
Social media can and should also be used to praise your established team members for their professional accomplishments. By using social media in these essential ways, you are presenting your team as being one that other real estate agents would benefit from joining.
From time to time, you may use social media platforms to actively announce that your team is growing. If you are hosting a meet-and-greet, social media is a great way to spread the word to established real estate agents who may be interested in attending.
Conclusion
Because of attrition, building your real estate team is something that requires regular effort. While you may be eager to build your team quickly, it is important to be selective. With these important factors in mind, you should consider developing an effective recruitment system that helps you connect with interested and qualified prospects more easily.
