The Ultimate Guide To Recruiting Agents for Your Team or Brokerage

Regardless of your skills and the amount of money you can invest in your small business, keep in mind that you’ll never get far by going it alone. Running a business means wearing many hats at the same time – and trying to do everything yourself only leads to two outcomes: burnout and failure.

When starting a small business, say a real estate brokerage, you need to invest the time and effort in recruiting real estate agents to help you. Hiring the right people for the right positions will ensure your business continues to operate smoothly in the present, and gives you a much better chance of achieving long-term, sustainable success.

Why a Recruiting Plan Is a Must for Any Team & Brokerage

As the name suggests, a recruitment plan expedites the process of recruiting employees for a business — or agents for a real estate brokerage.

A recruitment plan makes the hiring process smoother because it acts as a qualifying guideline for applicants. With a recruitment plan in place, hiring managers and HR professionals can ensure that they’re hiring individuals who have the qualifications and skills necessary for a specific job.

The most significant benefit you can get from a robust recruiting plan is keeping your business on course. A good recruitment plan can become your key to finding qualified employees promptly without losing resources or disrupting your daily operations.

Recruit With the Future in Mind

Having a solid recruitment plan is valuable when hiring real estate agents for your business.

Start by identifying who your ideal candidates are and what they’re looking for in a career. Once you gather that data, you can start attracting talent to your business by showing you support their unique needs and career goals.

US home prices will continue to increase exponentially over the next few years, which is why you need to hire the right real estate agents to ensure that your business continues to capitalize on this trend.

Real estate agents have different phases in their careers and will have different needs. Ambition is the key to success, and you’ll have a hard time recruiting real estate agents and convincing them to stay if your business lacks a long-term plan.

How To Recruit Agents at Different Career Stages

The section below will give you an idea of the different types of real estate agents and proven strategies on how to recruit them successfully.

How To Support New or Newer Agents

New or newer agents are individuals who have sold less than three houses within a 12 month period. If you’re planning to hire this type of agent, be aware you’ll need to invest a lot of time in training. While this is a great option if you have lots of space in your schedule, it can be highly disruptive if you have many other objectives to focus on.

Considering this, if you want to hire a group of new agents, outsource a mentor or trainer who can create a detailed educational program as part of the new hires’ onboarding. According to statistics, 4% of newly hired employees will leave their job if they experienced a disastrous first day or won’t feel “at home” in the first three weeks of having a new job. By having a mentor or trainer, you can prevent these situations from happening as they can solely focus on taking care of your new hires.

Since new or newer agents still don’t have extensive experience in the industry, hiring them for your business will help you save money. However, because they also have very specific needs, your inability to train them and keep them engaged can adversely affect your real estate production. If you don’t have the resources to train new or newer agents, don’t recruit them.

How To Support Mid-level Agents

When a broker makes around 20 sales annually, they achieve mid-level status. To attract these agents to your business, you’ll need to provide them with access to CRM (customer relationship management) platforms and lead generation tools to ensure they can perform to the best of their ability. Having real estate team management software will help you keep a track of all team members’ transactions and results.

As mid-level agents tend to enjoy a sense of community in the workplace, you’ll also need to create a welcoming, team-based environment. Depending on your business size, you can create a strong sense of community by conducting regular team meetings and group lead generation activities. You can also bring your team together with a common cause or vision, such as donating to a charity or increasing your business’s market share.

The Secret To Recruiting Top-producing Real Estate Agents

Individuals who sell more than 30 homes every year are considered top-producing real estate agents. Because of their experience and skills in the industry, top-producing real estate agents are sometimes unreasonable, demanding, or both. But because most real estate brokerage firms want to hire top producers, their demands are often met.

Top-producing agents’ demands vary greatly, but most of them are after three things: more opportunities for professional growth, recognition of their efforts, and a competitive monthly salary. If your business can provide these, and if you’re willing to compromise to meet their other demands, it won’t be long before you can have top-producing agents working with you.

How To Select Agents & Find Their Contact Information

Your success in recruiting agents for a real estate brokerage depends on your ability to select leads and find their contact information.

When looking for new and newer real estate agents to join your team, you can place ads on various employment websites and provide recommendations to a real estate licensing school. Make sure to keep in touch with candidates so they’ll know how and where to reach you the moment they receive their license.

If you want to hire mid-level and top-producing real estate agents, you need to educate yourself about their production in your area and find their contact information. You can do this manually by using Multiple Listing Service (MLS) or by investing in recruiting software built for real estate agents.

The Best Scripts for Recruiting Real Estate Agents

According to statistics, about two million licensed real estate agents and about 106,548 real estate brokerage firms operate in the US. These numbers speak volumes on how competitive the real estate industry is, so prioritize hiring the best when recruiting real estate agents. You can achieve this goal with a well-crafted script.

Scripts are necessary because using one will allow you to sound professional and help you create the perfect responses to some of the most common questions thrown by real estate agents. Hiring a trainer or mentor will also become a breeze when you have a script, as you can easily delegate tasks to them.

Check out the script examples below.

The Best “New To the Area” Recruiting Script

This is the most suitable script to use if your business is new to the area or you’re looking to expand your business into new territory. The secret of this script is to start your conversation with curiosity in your voice.

Hello (Name), this is (Your Name) from (Name of brokerage).

I see that you have recently sold (number) properties in (location) and am really impressed with your performance.

Do you specialize in (Specific location)?

Are you looking to do more business in there?

(Once the real estate agent answered “yes” to your questions, shift your voice into excitement).

Great! The reason for my call today is because we recently opened a new office in (Location), and we are recruiting real estate agents who can help us grow our business in that area.

Would you like to have a conversation about that?

Are you available ______ at __:____?

The Most Effective Mid-level Agent Recruiting Script

This script is ideal when hiring mid-level real estate agents who market to a specific neighborhood, community, or town. You’ll have better chances of succeeding with this script if you spend resources advertising on Facebook, in newspapers, and on other listing platforms. Reach out to the real estate agent you’re considering when you see they’re marketing a new listing.

Hello (Name), this is (Your Name) with (Name of brokerage).

The reason I am calling is I saw your (Advertisement) in (platform used), and I was impressed by (the message, quality, or professionalism).

I see you have a listing in (Specific location). Do you sell most of your homes in (Specific location)?

Are you interested in getting more listings in (Specific location)?

We are also looking to grow in (Specific location), and we are looking to invest in a few agents to help them grow their business in (Specific location).

Would you like to have a conversation about that?

Are you available ______ at __:____?

The Best Events & Seminar Agent Recruiting Script

The real estate industry is fast-paced, which is why most real estate agents crave new learning by participating in events and seminars. This is especially true for mid-level and seasoned agents who are looking for innovative ideas to generate more leads.

If you want to recruit real estate agents for your business, hosting events and seminars is a great way of doing it. You can cover trendy real estate topics, like virtual real estate showings and transactions or using cryptocurrency to close transactions. Ideally, the event should be small (about 25 agents) and held in a location outside of your office.

You can use the script below to get real estate agents to join your events:

Hello (Name), this is (Your Name) with (Name of brokerage).

I’m calling because we are holding an event for real estate agents called: (Title of the Event or Subject), where we will go into detail about:

How to (get a specific result)

How to (get a specific result)

How to (get a specific result)

Are you interested in attending?

If they are interested, provide information about the event.

The event is on (date and time) and is at (Location). It is limited to (Number of maximum participants) agents. Can I mark you down to hold your seat?

Conclusion

Recruiting agents for a real estate brokerage isn’t a walk in the park, but there are many tactics to make this process easier. If you’re looking forward to starting your own real estate brokerage or plan to add more real estate agents to your existing business, consider this article as your guide.

It’ll be easier to find and recruit real estate agents, regardless of their experience, when you know how to jumpstart the hiring process.