Become a Top Recruiter of Experienced Agents

So often, management teams set annual recruiting goals with their brokers and sales managers, and hope to achieve them. Maybe you’re a broker or manager yourself, and find that you set the same goals every year, starting out with better intentions, and then agent needs and administrative work become your focus, and you don’t get to the recruiting you intended to achieve. You look at the results monthly or quarterly and, frustrated, think, “How did this happen again? I didn’t recruit anyone, or I recruited some new agents, but no experienced agents to my team.” This scenario generally repeats itself yearly, and you settle for mediocre results and performance.

Most managers don’t have a written action plan for recruiting on purpose, and each month and quarter, review the results, when frankly it’s too late to be able to lead or initiate recruiting activities. You end up reviewing how many new people came on board, instead of driving the effort from the beginning of the process with “This is how many experienced agents I am going to recruit and this is how.” When you adopt this strategy of “leading your recruiting,” I guarantee you will love the results: a thriving, growing, healthy office, with increases in listings, sales, marketshare, revenue, profit and core service referrals.

Effectively driving the recruiting efforts of your sales operation requires that you yourself literally drive the efforts; the energy, the focus, the action steps and the daily behavior is yours. You take ownership and responsibility for making it happen.

Here are five behavioral changes that will ensure you meet and exceed your goal to add experienced agents to your team:

Change your mindset. Recruiting experienced agents to your team is a fantastic surge to your top line revenue, now and for the future consistent growth. If you are driving the profitability and success of your sales team, recruiting is the highest dollar-producing activity you do. When experienced agents join your team, it is a huge message to your existing team that they are at the right brokerage and office. Mentally start to look at recruiting as the highest revenue-generating action you do to drive success and growth to your office. Change in mindset will change your daily habits.

Have a written recruiting plan. If it’s not spelled out in writing, we have a target with no strategy to hit the target with. Write out your business plan, which is an outline of the daily and weekly activities you will commit to do each week to accomplish your recruiting appointments and transferred agents. If it’s in writing, you now have a plan to follow and hold yourself accountable to. Remember, you own the task of recruiting, and you know the benefits when you focus just on recruiting. Write down the goals and the actual action items that have to be done to achieve them.

Make recruiting a daily priority. You have to be laser-focused on the activity and make it a new daily behavior. Block out the time on your calendar or leave the office to make your recruiting calls. Make this a habit after three days of doing it. You will be so happy you do this.

Communicate your value proposition. You have to radically differentiate yourself and your brand, or you look just like every other broker or manager. How can you change the agent’s income and business? Would they have more opportunities with you from your online leads, marketing tools, coaching and/or business planning? You have the ability to grow an experienced agent of any production level by becoming their partner and making an impact on their business. Communicate the value you bring to their business. Show them how you can help increase their business and income, or dramatically lower their expenses. These statements from you, said with conviction and passion, will help them see your value both as a manager and a brokerage.

Build relationships. Recruiting experienced agents sometimes requires that you have a relationship with them, but don’t let that stop you from offering your value proposition to them immediately. You can dance around it, or you can say, “I guarantee you will make more money partnering with us. Let’s meet and I can show you how.” Telling people they are great, and you would love to have the join your team, is great, but at the end of the day, it isn’t in their best financial interest to meet with you. They can increase their business with your tools and personal coaching, and decrease their expenses and increase their lead generation with your online marketing tools. Tell them nicely and politely that it is in their best financial interest to meet with you to see how they can profit more, sell more, pay for less and have more time working on your team.

Adopt these behavioral changes and let’s take your recruiting results to a whole new level. For more tips and a copy of my Manager Recruiting Assessment Guide, email yourock@sherrijohnson.com.

Sherri Johnson is CEO and founder of Sherri Johnson Coaching & Consulting. With 20 years of experience in real estate, Johnson offers coaching, consulting and keynotes, and is a national speaker for the Homes.com Secrets of Top Selling Agents tour. For more information, please contact coaching@sherrijohnson.com or 844-989-2600 (toll free) or visit www.sherrijohnson.com.