By Maddie Jostol-Heye, Senior Marketing Manager 

We could talk in circles for days about the recruiting process in the real estate world. What real estate agents want, what differentiates your brokerage from your competition, and what will prompt agents to make a move. All of these things are vitally important, but only effective when approached intentionally and handled with care. How do you win in a world where everyone is desperately trying to out-recruit each other in order to grab market share before the brokerage next door does?

What’s not working in your recruiting process.

It’s hectic out there. Everyone is attempting to talk to the most agents, get as many as possible to sign on with their brokerage, and push them to sell a maximum number of homes. At its root, this strategy isn’t bad; it’s the implementation that’s the problem. Well-intentioned businesses are blanketing the marketplace with their value prop in hopes of catching the attention of the masses. With market share pressure, there’s a tendency to go for quantity over quality.

Turning your strategy on its head.

There is no magic bullet, but instead, there needs to be a shift in mindset. Rather than taking such a wide-spread approach, try more targeted recruiting process. What if you targeted agents t

hat are productive, a great culture fit, and looking for exactly what your brokerage has to offer? You’ll find those agents to bring a lot more value than attracting twice as many that aren’t a good fit culturally, leave after a year, or don’t agree with your recommended practices.

According to WAV Group, it costs between $5,000-10,000 to recruit an agent. That’s right, just because real estate agents are independent contractors, doesn’t mean turnover isn’t expensive. Not to mention the added value that strong office culture, agent referrals, investment in coaching and training, and positive brand perception that retention brings. It’s in the best interest of your bottom line to recruit agents who will be happy and successful at your brokerage so that they’ll be valuable contributors and stick with you for the foreseeable future.

Leverage data to identify top recruits.

The first step is identifying who to recruit. Sure, there are certain professions that are great to recruit new agents from, and there might be competing brokerages in your market that you tend to get agents from, but those are still fairly general parameters. We’re talking about identifying exactly which individuals you should be actively recruiting.

Here’s what’s missing: the data.

Let the data take the guesswork out of it, enable you to more closely target your efforts, and to be more intentional in how you attract those top recruits. Data such as historical sales trends will help your managers and recruiters assess who is a good fit and base action and effort on that data. Identify the best recruits for your unique business, assess them based on sales data, cultural fit, and goals, and bring onboard those who are going to find success at your brokerage.

Establishing a recruiting process that directly impacts your bottom line.

Once you identify the best recruits for your brokerage, how will you win them over? The reality is, everyone is trying to recruit the same agents. So, what’s your competitive advantage? How will you cut through the noise? Build a consistent and repeatable hiring process that guides your managers to success.

Build a process that automates, or prompts actions based on stage in the recruiting cycle in order to deliver relevant content at the right time to the right individuals. Think about the combination of recruiting drip campaigns, in-person meetings, recruiting presentations, handwritten notes, and other touchpoints that it takes to get the right people to join your brokerage. Leverage technology to manage this process for you. Utilizing the right tools and establishing a process will help your managers know what steps to take when, prompt them when it’s time to follow up, serve up suggested content, and much more. Establish the process at the brokerage level, enabling each manager to make it their own, while still ensuring a consistent experience and, more importantly, results.

Finally, your recruiting strategy should not only be data-driven in identifying recruits, but also in tracking success. Recruiting efforts should map directly to revenue goals. At the end of the day, you want to grow your brokerage business, so your recruiting efforts need to directly contribute to your progress toward those growth goals. Start with your specific growth and revenue goals and track progress toward those goals, using sales projections for each new recruit to report on your recruiting success. (A good real estate recruiting system, such as MoxiTalent, should do this for you).

Time to rethink your plan for grabbing up market share by turning your recruiting process and strategy upside down and winning over the right agents, at the right time, in order to boost your brokerage’s growth.