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The best thing you can do for the acceleration of your real estate team is to attract, hire and drive immediate production for like-minded team members who will seamlessly align with your culture, standards and overarching organizational goals. Hiring the wrong fit or a person for the wrong seat on the bus can bring massive disruption to your team and throw a strong culture off kilter.
So how do you go about finding and recruiting agents who will be a champion for your culture? Here are some ideas.
Before you start attracting agents
Develop and live by your MVVBP
This is your rallying cry. Your MVVBP stands for Mission, Vision, Values, Beliefs and Perspective.
- Your mission statement — why you’re in business — should be pithy, memorable, and something that speaks to the why behind your organization.
- Your vision contains your goals for the future and the path to achieve them.
- Your values are your non-negotiable principles under which you achieve your vision and bring to life your mission statement.
- Your beliefs are what you believe to be true while your perspective is how the company — and its agents and associates — views itself.
In order to attract like-minded team members, you first need to establish who you are, along with where you’re going and why, and be able to articulate it in a compelling way.
Create your avatar or missing person’s report
Before you start attracting team members, reflect on who your best partners have been. Who do you serve best? At what production level? What behavioral traits do they possess? What moral principles?
Some teams prefer newer agents who they can shape to their standards for success. Other teams solely want proven agents who know the fundamentals and need higher-level leverage, lead gen levers and proven systems for scale.
Look at your track record to see who you’ve had the most success growing and retaining. Consider your strengths with lead generation. If your team is largely focused on sphere-based lead gen, you need to find agents who have a strong local network. If you’re a team that thrives on cold-calling, find someone who is fearless on the phone.
Then define who your ideal team member is, such as: We accelerate $1 million to $3 million producers who are humble, hungry and people-smart, who show up in person daily, have a large network locally, and a big why to drive their motivation and self-accountability.
Define your value proposition
Write down 25 reasons why an agent would want to partner with you. (Doubting your ability to attract? Make it 50!)
What is unique about your team? What is your superpower? How do you as a leader support your agents at the highest level? The purpose of this exercise is to define what you offer, help you articulate it and bring you confidence for the conversations you’re about to have.
Get clear on your standards and non-negotiables for agents on your team
Do you want every agent at a minimum selling two homes a month? Do you have a mandatory team lift-off huddle every morning? Do you require your agents to submit their numbers five out of seven days? Define your standards and make these known in the recruiting process.
Have incoming agent candidates sign a document with your standards written. Ensure they’re aware of what it takes to stay in your world, the type of culture you foster and the results you expect.
Once you’ve determined your MVVBP, your avatar, your value proposition, and your standards, its time to attract team members
Start with a ‘hit list’ of agents you know you’d like to work with in your market
Grab a broker metrics list and highlight 25 to 40 agents you respect and would like to be in business with. Collect their contact information and add them (tagged appropriately) to your recruiting database and CRM.
Come from contribution in delivering items of value
Once your hit list is in place, invite those agents to trainings or events with your team.
- Host a co-broker or agent happy hour or monthly mastermind.
- Lead local trainings on hot-button topics in your market.
- Invite agents to a call night or lead generation session.
- Partner with another team or agent on a client event.
- Send them a podcast or book they’d find interesting.
Always strive to deliver content of value, like an invitation to an impactful event, or conversations or object handlers you’ve found helpful or seen success with, in a value-driven agent-attraction newsletter. See who’s opening invitations or newsletters and follow up with a compelling call or text.
Showcase what your team is all about on social media
Are you home for dinner every night because of the leverage the team provides? Are your agents taking four weeks of vacation a year? Has your per-agent productivity and take-home pay increased year over year? Tell the stories of your team: Their wins, their growth, how they’re loving how they live. Showcase these successes genuinely on social media or in a newsletter.
Pay attention to the agents submitting offers on your listings
One of the best ways to find agents is by seeing who’s writing offers on your listings. Do they send a cover letter with the nuts and bolts of the offer and have rapid communication during the offer process? Sold!
Or, does their contract have mistakes, did they miss your offer deadline, or did they fail to communicate in the showing process? In the latter, that agent could be a fit for your team if you are training-based. Either agent type is an opportunity to see who is excelling and could really benefit from joining your team.
Always lead by example
If you want to turn heads and attract agents to your team, lead from the front with production. Don’t take your foot off the gas. If your team is consistently taking the most listings or writing the most offers in your market, agents are going to take note.
They’ll inquire about what you’re doing it and how you’re doing it — especially in a shifting or down market — and invite a conversation about how they can have similar results as part of your team.
Erin McCormick Torres serves as COO for Livian at KW. She is an author, business coach, Realtor and content creator who runs the popular blog Travel Like a Local: Vermont. Connect with her on Instagram and LinkedIn.
