Ask the Coach: Recruit for Net Gain for Real Growth

Recruiting can make the biggest impact on an office’s production and growth, yet many sales managers and brokers miss the opportunity.

Begin with the end in mind and start with a plan. Look at the make-up of your office revenue. Where does the majority of your office dollar revenue come from, and how could you create the perfect office if you were to lay it out right now? You would probably love to have a lot of new agents and growth from your existing agents. You can create the vision first of how much and from how many agents, then you can review what you currently have coming in from the agents in your office, and fill in the gaps where you would like to have x number of agents producing x dollar revenue. Then, you know you need to hire x more agents to produce the revenue you want to grow your office.

Recruit on purpose. It is not enough to just wing it if you are intentionally trying to grow your office. You need to create daily and weekly recruiting activities that are “on purpose.” These activities will create the opportunities for you to meet and connect with existing agents in your market, as well as find and recruit new agents to your office. Write down the daily and weekly recruiting tasks, calls and proactive projects you plan to engage in, so you can recruit on purpose, not just “see what happens.”

Focus on net gain in revenue and agent count. If you hire some agents and they don’t produce, that is not growth. If you hire agents and get them up and selling quickly, you can actually measure your effectiveness of coaching these new agents to become producing agents. The “gain” is the increase of your office or company dollar revenue from adding the agents, plus their contribution in sales revenue over last year’s revenue. When you subtract the losses of your office from agents who leave your office and take away the lost revenue, you will realize what the actual “gain” is. When you focus on increasing the gain in both agent count and net gain in sales revenue, you will realize your efforts and grow.

Manage your time for better results. You cannot expect recruiting to “just happen.” It obviously doesn’t work that way—and recruiting by accident, or “fly-stripping,” is not an effective way to grow your office. Have a real plan and set time aside in your day to make calls and work on recruiting efforts on social media and other activities. This is imperative if you want results. Just make the time and do the work. You will thank me. It is a discipline that you can create today.

Recruiting for sustainable growth. You are going to lose people by natural attrition and have to replace their sales revenue. You will also need to increase your recruiting efforts on purpose if you want to recruit “on purpose.” So, imagine the increases in listings, sales, marketshare, teamwork, revenue and profit that will result from putting your recruiting plan into high gear. A relentless focus on recruiting can impact your bottom line by an increase of $100,00-$250,000 or more in one year. We all need to recruit for the future sustainability of your office. What will your office look like in the next three to five years? You can control this by having a plan and staying the course of recruiting on purpose for intentional results.

For more tips and a FREE copy of my Recruiting Assessment and Manager Daily Activity Worksheet for Success, 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.