Elite Connect, which launched late last year as a cold-calling service that generates listing appointments for real estate agents using expired and for-sale-by-owner listings as leads, is now offering to help brokerages poach agents from their competitors.
For two installments of $12,500, the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based company guarantees it will help brokerages convince 10 agents to join their firm within a year.
Elite Connect will cold call hundreds of agents with competing firms a day, said Elite Connect co-founder Vladi Gold.
When Elite Connect callers reach responsive agents, they sell the brokerage that’s hired them to recruit, talking up the firm’s commission structure and marketing tools. The goal is to set up a meeting between the agent and the broker, Gold said.
“It’s fishing,” he said.
The service is a way for brokerages to scale their businesses upward while focusing on their day jobs, Gold said.
“You have to be good at convincing these agents to come on board, and brokers just don’t have the time to recruit,” he said.
Gold says he expects his firm can deliver at least 10 new agents to a firm within a couple of months. But if it takes longer than a year, the firm will continue recruiting agents for the brokerage until it brings in the contracted number.
Elite Connect accesses publicly available agent office and cell phone numbers in markets where it engages clients.
Upon receiving an initial payment of $12,500, the company will begin calling agents and generating appointments.
After the first five agents Elite Connect brings to the firm have joined, the brokerage pays $12,500 to bring in the remaining five agents.
Brokerages can request certain qualities in the agents it wants Elite Connect to bring in like age and general productivity, Gold said.
The agent-recruiting deal also includes a one-year commitment by the firm to generate listing appointments for brokers, as it does for agents, who can then distribute those to their agents.
Elite Connect claims its 70 full-time employees generate an average of two to four listing appointments per week for most of the company’s 200 agent clients. Gold says his pitchmen are professionals, tenacious, and trained to sell and close.
Realty Connection, a startup company aimed at helping brokerages recruit agents that launched late last year, plays more of a matchmaking role in the recruiting process by allowing agents to review member brokerages and select the ones they may be interested in.
Brokerages can pay a monthly fee to Realty Connection to contact agents, see messages from agents that have contacted them through the platform and receive more details about who viewed their profile on the site.
Recruiting new agents is the biggest challenge to brokerages generating more profits, according to a survey of close to 200 brokerage and franchisor executives earlier this year by the real estate marketing firm Imprev Inc. More than 2 in 5 (42 percent) respondents indicated that it was their biggest challenge to upping their profits.
