By Paige Tepping
RISMEDIA, April 26, 2008-Kim Hudson, vice president of recruiting operations for Texas-based Coldwell Banker United, Realtors, knows firsthand that recruiting for a fast-growing real estate company is no easy task. With the help of AlignMark’s iNTELAGENT, however, Hudson is able to implement companywide recruiting processes and oversee the operation for the six states in which the company is located.
“The biggest benefit the program offers our company is that it brings a system to recruiting,” says Hudson, whose company has 80 offices in six states and five regions. “By using iNTELAGENT, the head office can help an office anywhere-in Texas, Mississippi, South Carolina, or any other state. We are able to share and train on a system that every office in the company is using.
“We had been looking for an Internet-based recruiting and contact management system, and we wanted to use the best program that the industry had to offer,” says Hudson. “iNTELAGENT is the total package.”
According to Hudson, it’s important for her company to provide its offices with a system that allows them to work independently on the local level, but also utilizes their strength in numbers and enables them to work as a cohesive team.
Managers have the freedom to use the system to their advantage within their specific marketplace as well. “Some of our regions are made up of offices with 10 agents, and some offices have 100, so managers are all over the board when it comes to using iNTELAGENT,” says Hudson. “The program has been used to create drip campaigns, communicate one-on-one, track progress, and create to-do lists. iNTELAGENT gives our managers the flexibility to hone in on the way they recruited in the past and modify their recruitment process to make it work for them today.”
Hudson oversaw the company-wide iNTELAGENT rollout as well. “I made the decision to make the trip to one of AlignMark’s offices in Toronto to look at how the system really works and how it would benefit us as a company,” she says. “I then started the rollout process by providing training sessions, which I conducted through webinars. In the beginning stages, I focused on one region at a time, and made sure that each region was up and running before I moved onto the next one.
“Now that the system is in place in every region, I continue to offer a wide range of training sessions,” continues Hudson. “iNTELAGENT is only one of the systems that we share. There are several other programs that Coldwell Banker uses that are becoming part of the recruiting process, so I incorporate all of the programs into the menu, which allows managers to get the information they specifically need.
“We have armed our managers with real things that they can offer their agents instead of saying that ‘we are the best because we are here,'” adds Hudson. “It is positive reinforcement for everyone to know that at the end of the day they have a call to action and a purpose, their efforts are being noticed, and they are going to benefit their own office as well as the entire company.”
For more information, visit www.alignmark.com.
