RISMEDIA, July 15, 2009-One of the questions I receive on a consistent basis is “Where can I find good agents to join my team?” This is a very important question because your team will ultimately dictate the success of your business.
Bad Team – Bad Business
Average Team – Average Business
Great Team – Great Business
Isn’t it a little bit odd that this little secret is really the key to success in real estate, but nobody ever bothers to tell you? I didn’t learn this in my licensing or continuing education classes. I learned this the hard way. At first I recruited “bad” agents and my business suffered. Then I started to recruit “average” agents and things got a little bit better. Finally, I began to recruit “great” agents and my business exploded.
Bad Agents
Bad agents are people who suck a lot of your time without selling any homes. They actually make your business worse because you have to deal with all of their problems, complaints and/or issues. When you ask them why they didn’t sign a prospect to an exclusive agreement, they’ll almost always give you some sort of excuse.
You can easily attract bad agents to you by running, “Help Wanted” advertisements in your local newspaper or on Craigslist. You might not believe me, but it’s the truth. If you stop and think about it for a minute, you’ll quickly realize that a great salesperson wouldn’t be looking at the help wanted advertisements. Why? Because they would be too busy selling.
Average Agents
Average agents are agents who do all right. You can count on them for a sale or two every so often. An average sales person simply takes the cream off the top, meaning that they sell homes to the easiest prospects. They really don’t do a very good job following up with prospects. Sales simply fall in their lap and they go through business at this pace without much effort.
You can easily find average agents by recruiting agents from other companies. I can still remember a meeting I had with an agent from a different brokerage several years ago. This agent wanted to join my team, but couldn’t leave her brokerage because she owed them $7,000 in commissions that had been advanced to her. Would a great agent be negative $7,000 in commissions? Certainly not.
The problem with average agents is that we always hesitate in letting them go. We think about the sales they do bring in and calculate the commissions generated. We worry that if we let the average agent person go, we’ll lose out on the commissions they do generate. This thinking is incorrect because it comes from a scarcity mindset.
For some reason, we look at what we stand to lose instead of what we stand to gain. It is always better to replace average agents with great agents.
Great Team Members
Great agents are agents who turn dirt into gold. They rarely make excuses and consistently perform at high levels. They have the ability to really “hear” a prospect or client. They can “feel” what the prospect wants and they simply deliver. They adapt and adjust depending on who they are working with and they ALWAYS self correct. They are not afraid to close and typically have the highest conversion and sales numbers.
The challenge with great agents is that they aren’t easy to find. You can’t find them running “Help Wanted” advertisements. You also can’t find them working in other real estate companies. If they were already great agents, they wouldn’t be interested in working on your team. They would have their own team…
To find “great” agents you have to look outside of the existing pool of real estate agents. The trick is to look for great people, not great agents. Here is where I found the majority of my best team members:
Past Clients
As I would help someone with their real estate transaction, I would have the opportunity to get to know them really well. I always asked myself if this client would be a great real estate agent??? After the transaction completed, I would set an appointment with them and explain that I thought they would be excellent in real estate sales. I highlighted how my business operated and explained the opportunities available to them. I then suggested that they get their license and offered to help them through the licensing process.
This little strategy led to five great agents and one great office manager.
To make this strategy work for your business, you must always be looking for great people. Most agents wait until they need a new agent and then try and find someone for their team. This is a BIG mistake. You must do the exact opposite. If come across someone good in your day-to-day journey, figure out how to make a spot for them on your team.
Remember “great” team members build “great” businesses.
Rob Minton, who reinvented his real estate sales business to sell 269 homes to a limited number of clients in one year, has written a very practical book on how real estate agents can sell more homes.
