Recruiting agents is the lifeblood of building your real estate brokerage. Agents will come and go and often it can feel like a roller coaster, but if you are constantly recruiting, you will keep your pipeline full and that will help minimize the ups and downs. It’s important to continually recruit a good mix of new and experienced agents. Above all, you want them to be productive and in alignment with the goals of your brokerage. To keep them, you need to continually provide value that they will have a tough time getting anywhere else. Having a good group of experienced agents helps maintain continuous production, while newer agents get up to speed. They can also serve as role models.
How Will You Attract Experienced Agents? As a savvy broker and business owner, you already understand the value of having a comprehensive business plan in place, but how often do you update and revisit it? It is helpful to create or update your business plan each year to help you stay on track, move the needle forward, and keep your goals front of mind. This plan should certainly outline how you intend to attract high-quality agents to your team and how many of them you need each year. At Weichert this is part of “knowing your numbers”. Here are a few ideas to consider:
The Power of a Brand In Recruiting Part of the reason for the see-saw of agent headcount is often recruiting gets a lot of attention one week, then none for the rest of the month! What do you need to have a successful recruiting program? Here are some things to consider:
At Weichert, we believe recruiting is one of the key pillars to brokerage success. This is why we provide our affiliates with guidance and support in each of the areas above. In addition, by providing agents with a full suite of selling systems, technology and marketing materials to support their business, we help our affiliates retain their agents by creating ongoing value. To learn more about the Weichert systems and the benefits they provide brokerages across the country, contact us at 877-567-3350 or view weichertfranchise.com. Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/recruiting-top-real-estate-agents/
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Independent Brokers have generally learned things the hard way: through trial and error and experience and there are a lot of land mines out there. You may have loved the idea of being a broker and have achieved certain milestones, but the road to success can often seem like a never ending trek uphill. Is this the right direction? Am I choosing the right tools and software? Is my marketing message right? Is there more I should be doing? The challenges of lead generation, recruiting, and brand perceptions are significant and always there, especially in tight markets.
It turns out that you are not alone. At Weichert Real Estate Affiliates, Inc. we talk to independent brokers across the country every day. They are universally a motivated and experienced bunch and have a great deal of local market knowledge. These brokers often wonder what it is that they have left to learn from a national franchise brand like Weichert that they haven’t already learned at the school of hard knocks. Often you don’t know what you don’t know. While every broker is unique and has unique challenges, there are a number of common problems that create hurdles to growth in brokerages. Has your own business or business practices been “stuck” on any of these areas? No System for Recruiting and Retention Recruiting and retaining agent talent is really the foundation of a successful brokerage. Independents face multiple challenges here, often because agents have similar perceptions to home buyers. They are often attracted to well-known brands due to their lead generation potential and resources. As if this perception wasn’t tough enough, many brokers don’t have a structured recruiting system and portfolio of materials to attract and create a pipeline of new agents to draw from. Then once you recruit them, you need a way to get them up to speed – fast – so they can start contributing to your brokerage production and earn an income. There is no single magic bullet to solving the recruiting problem, but a proven process that incorporates multiple things is required. Do you have a business plan with growth goals? Have you translated those goals to specific business and recruiting activities you must engage in to be successful? Do you as a broker “know your numbers”? At Weichert, part of our job in coaching new affiliates is to teach them a system. Our system is comprehensive and includes marketing materials and training to attract and get new agents up and running once you get them. Once you have them, it’s incredibly important to provide value to keep them from walking next door. Creating a supportive culture, offering them an expansive suite of tools and marketing materials to help them market themselves and their business and providing opportunities to constantly learn and improve their skills are all ways to do this. Owner/Broker That Are Still Listing and Selling Houses Chances are if you’ve become a broker, you are highly experienced in real estate and were a darn good sales associate. It can be hard to stop doing that, even though it is actually a distraction that takes you away from the other activities you need to focus on to build and manage your business. The idea of “letting go of the bench” is a concept every broker struggles with at some point in their career. Are you that broker who feels like he needs that extra income that comes from listing and selling his own properties? Weichert business coaches will tell you quite simply, that it’s time to stop. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it has to happen in order for you to focus your attention on business-building, rather than selling. Once that happens, you’ll start to see your business grow, rather than continuing to run in place. Figuring all that out yourself is hard, which is why partners like Weichert exist to bring you proven systems that take the guesswork out of managing your brokerage. Difficulty Competing Against Recognized Brands A recognized brand can be a powerful magnet for drawing buyers and sellers into your agency, as well as recruits. If you are an independent broker, you understand this having spent years building a local reputation to compete with more recognizable brands in your local market. But for sellers who don’t know you or don’t get explicitly referred to you, not having the backing of a national brand can make you work harder for listings and recruits. We hear it all the time, a variation of “…my recruiting problems basically ended the day I put the Weichert Sign on the building…” Consider Whether A Partner Is Right For You. While independent brokers may face stiff challenges, they are not insurmountable. Sometimes a leg up from the right partner can be just what you need to get over the top of that seemingly endless hill. A recognized brand can help you stand out for sure, but the real power of plugging into a known brand are the assets, marketing and support and proven systems they bring to you in your local market. Couple that with other benefits such as investments in lead generation and technology, investments that few independent brokerages could develop or sustain on their own, you have a powerful formula for success. Your identity doesn’t go away, it gets amplified ten-fold. That’s why the Weichert system is so much more powerful than just our name and could be the right partner for you. Please consider contacting the team at Weichert to discuss your unique situation, we can help: 877-746-2067 or weichertfranchise.com Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/the-top-3-challenges-to-brokerage-growth-and-success/ In any brokerage, there are team members who embrace, new ideas, new tools, new strategies with enthusiasm and energy. You know who they are: the people you go to when you want to bounce a new idea off someone or discuss a change you want to make. They will take the time to listen and give you good, constructive feedback. They are the people who support what you are trying to accomplish and get in the boat with you so you can all reach the end goal together. These are “the willing” and the people you can build a successful business around.
Then there are the “unwilling”. Those who react adversely to anything requiring a change to the status quo or the way they like to do things. These are the people who always want to follow a different path than the one you are forging and create distractions within your office and among “the willing”. As a broker you need to ask yourself: How much time and energy am I spending trying to convince, cajole, motivate, and oversee the implementation of my business strategies with those who are less than flexible and unwilling to change the way they do things? The Willing Will Enhance Your Agency Culture As a broker, you’re running at light speed, trying to give all aspects of your business the attention it needs. We understand this, we’ve been there. Managing change is one of the central activities you have and is essential to your continued growth as a brokerage. The problem is that it’s easy to get caught up spending too much time trying to convince the naysayers in your organization to follow the systems and plans you set forth. Negative people are like an anchor, draining your enthusiasm as well as your time. Instead, filter these people out from your agent team over time and seek to surround yourself with positive, energetic people who share your goals and vision. Here’s a few things to consider:
Attracting the Willing To Your Agency Remember, positivity attracts positivity. Your ability to focus on The Willing and celebrate their success will create a positive, supportive culture inside your agency. This in turn will become the word on the street for you, which will help you attract other like-minded agents. Who doesn’t want to be on the cool team? It is also incumbent on you to sustain that positivity by feeding it. Walk the walk. Talk the talk. Provide the enthusiasm and energy for your team to feed on. One of things we focus on in the Weichert® System is training and coaching offices on the importance of building and maintaining this positive culture to attract and retain new agents. Your ability to understand these behaviors and implement them in your brokerage will go a long way toward building the kind of willing team and workplace that gets results. For more information on how you can partner with Weichert Franchise, visit https://www.weichertfranchise.com. Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/focus-willing-let-go-rest/ |
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