For many people, the end of the year is all about the holiday season, but as a real estate broker, it is all about recruiting season. This is the time of year when many agents might be thinking about a move or when people start thinking about a career change for the coming year. Do you have a plan to capitalize on that? Since there is often steep competition to find the best agents in your local market, you will need to have a clear and consistent strategy in place. Here are a few tips on how to set yourself up for success:
Did You Set Clear Recruitment Goals for the Year?
At Weichert, one of our broker mantra’s is to “know your numbers.” One of those important numbers is your recruitment headcount goal for the year. Your choice of a goal here should be realistic yet push the limit of what you think you may be capable of. Some brokers make these goals even more specific, specifying how many new agents they will recruit as well as how many experienced agents they will target. Once you set these goals for yourself, keep them visible and track your progress against them. You should also define smaller goals that support this objective like how many recruiting events will you run each month? How many calls, emails or direct outreaches will you conduct? How much of your online content will be dedicated to recruiting each month? Setting and achieving these smaller goals will not only make you feel good, but if defined right, they should lead to the headcount growth you are looking for. If you didn’t set a recruiting goal for this year, not to worry! You can still set monthly goals from here on out. It’s also a great time to start determining what your goal needs to be for next year.
Decide To Make Recruiting A Priority
One of the major hurdles that brokers encounter is allowing their recruiting activities to be derailed by “higher priority” tasks. Fixing this is really a matter of adjusting one’s mindset around recruiting and understanding that there really aren’t many more important tasks for your long-term success than recruiting. It is crucial that you decide what methods you plan to use at the beginning of the recruiting season and stick to them, such as holding regular career events or engaging with your local real estate school. Only by being consistent in your approach will you achieve results. Weichert brokers for example, are coached to execute a simple, but effective, recruiting plan on a weekly basis. Initially it may seem like a large time commitment, but the effectiveness of regular focus on recruiting soon makes new affiliates into converts and produces the brokerage growth that may have been missing.
Leverage The Power Of Your Brand
When it comes to recruiting, one of the best tools any broker has in their arsenal is their brokerage’s brand. For agents, a recognized, an established brand can mean more leads, training opportunities, mentoring opportunities and better tools to market with. Weichert brokers, for instance, often tell us that many of their recruiting and retention headaches were solved the day they hung the Weichert sign on the door. As an independent broker, your ability to create that buzz around your brand, is key to your success recruiting. That buzz comes from a combination of many things including your visibility in your market, the satisfaction of the agents already there, and your ability to help deliver leads, training and support to your team.
Make Sure You Have the “Stuff”
Training. Sales Materials. Marketing Templates. Listing Presentation. CRM. In order to attract agents, you need to have the tools and resources available to help them succeed and keep them. Agents want to sell and they want to be efficient in their follow up. They don’t want to have to spend time creating brochures and postcards or manually tracking leads. Weichert offers everything from new agent and existing agent training, to a powerful Listing Presentation, customizable marketing templates and personal branding support. In addition, agents are provided CRM technology to help them be as efficient as possible with their follow up.
Recruiting Tools You Don’t Have to Grow Yourself
If you’ve ever considered affiliating with a national brand, you’d expect that they would provide you with the support you need for recruiting and retention. The reality is many well-known real estate brands offer you little more than their logo to recruit.
In addition to a well-recognized and well-respected national brand, Weichert offers a full suite of recruiting tools to attract and sell your value story, such as presentations, videos, brochures and flyers. In addition, you can work with your business consultant to help you map out your recruiting goals and strategy.
You don’t have to go it alone. Like everything Weichert, it starts with “We”.
For more information about how the power of WE can help you with your recruiting strategy to attract agents to your real estate team, go to www.weichertfranchise.com.
