The industry is back on its roller-coaster ways. History has shown us that the down times are when many real estate professionals, both new and veteran, either look for greener pastures in other brokerages or throw in the towel completely.
Given how many real estate professionals entered the industry in the past five years, newer agents need real support and guidance from their brokerage now more than ever, focused on how to manage a market where listings sit for more than 30 days and interest rates are higher than 4%.
What can you do to make sure you keep your agents happy, productive, and with YOU? You need the tools that will help your agents weather all the ups and downs so they can build a long-term profitable business. You need the tools to know who to recruit, and who might be at risk.
Inside Real Estate works with seven of the top brands in the industry and nearly 400,000 agents every day. We know a little about what matters most to agents, why they jump ship, and why they stick around. Here’s what we’ve learned:
1) Every single agent needs a virtual assistant
It’s impossible for an agent to manage a profitable real estate business on their own. Generating leads alone can be a full time job. Nurturing those leads and databases is yet another full time job. Then they have to actually perform the demanding duties of a real estate professional on every transaction — without missing a beat.
They need tech that makes their lives easier, not harder. Automation is key, but it has to be effective automation or it will kill their pipeline. Your tech needs to do the heavy lifting for your agents or they will be limited on growth and production. Not only does this include helping them generate a consistent flow of leads, but just as importantly, it’s managing smart, effective communication with their leads and databases 24/7. This frees up an enormous amount of time for agents, allowing them to focus their attention on clients.
Agents that have kvCORE leverage its Smart CRM that serves as their personal powerhouse virtual assistant, surfacing the hottest opportunities, and automating day-to-day tasks so they can focus on what they do best — building relationships. Intelligent automation is key to lead conversion, and your agents will have a hard time competing without it.
Your agents’ databases are their lifeblood. They are all running their own businesses and need a platform that gives them full ownership of their contacts. They can’t be worried about uploading their contacts into your tech platform for fear of those contacts being shared and not kept private. Without database security and privacy, your brokerage is less attractive to prospects, and your technology adoption will suffer. kvCORE allows you to upload your database directly, and at the same time, ensures all leads and contacts you upload and generate through the platform remain private and in your agents’ control.
“Up until kvCORE / RLP Sphere, we’ve never been able to come up with a solution to say “your database is protected,” and we can supplement your database in order for you to build your business the way that you’d like. Once we realized that kvCORE has the ability to partition every single user’s database and protect them all individually, that built more trust with our team than we could have ever done with previous software. Database privacy, but built within the brokerage ecosystem so that you get the best of both worlds, was a game-changer for us.”
– Bobby Puim, Director of Operations, REC Canada Team (Canada’s #1 Team)
3) Knowing who to recruit, who is in jeopardy, and who needs support is a MUST
Brokers and team leads can’t spend their day digging around for agent metrics. You need data-backed guidance and technology to give you visibility into key performance metrics, for both the agents you have now and the agents you want to recruit. It’s critical to be one step ahead (i.e. know more than your agents know) to keep your brokerage competitive.
Technology like AmpStats, recently acquired by Inside Real Estate and soon to be integrated into kvCORE, gives brokers real-time access to the key data and competitive intelligence that shows them who to call when, and why. Agent metrics show potential concerns so you can offer productive coaching before someone is at risk of leaving. This is your opportunity to provide real value and support before they start looking for it elsewhere.
Recruiting the right candidates can be challenging without data showing you who to target. AmpStats give you instant visibility on a dashboard with search features that show production data, a transaction heat map, and agent movement to pinpoint the best-recruiting targets. Once those agents are identified, brokers can demonstrate their impact and value to prospective recruits through a compelling, visual net income comparison that breaks down agent earnings. Being armed with both the data and the tech to make use of all the data will give you what you need to increase productivity, strategically expand market share, and streamline your recruiting and retention efforts.
4) “Clients for life” is no longer a luxury
Gone are the days of losing past clients because they simply forgot about you or couldn’t easily find you. The tables have turned, and now brokerages and agents get to capture and stay connected to the consumer through emerging “homeownership” technology. Now consumers get what they want (a seamless, local and personalized experience) from their trusted real estate resource, and agents finally get a simple solution to maximize repeat and referral business.
This is the most revolutionary technology the industry has seen for a long time — giving control back to agents (and away from the large portals) to help them maintain clients for life. The new homeownership technology for kvCORE users called CORE Home has already shown a 30x lift in consumer engagement.
The race to the consumer is real. You need to be the brokerage out in front with this game-changing technology for your agents, earning their loyalty and creating sustainable partnerships. We can help.
kvCORE Platform is the most agent-demanded platform in the industry. The reason? It’s saving agents time and money and making their lives easier. Get the platform your agents are flocking to at insiderealestate.com.