As a team leader or broker, you are always building—whether it’s a sales pipeline of leads, new agents for your organization, or the next partnership. Within recruiting, there have been hundreds of articles and best practices provided, but each resource leaves you saying, “Been there, done that.” At CINC, through hours of listening and improving, the agent community requested something more, and that’s how the Recruiting Master Series began.
Earlier this fall, 63 CINC clients dove into the new curriculum and began an 8-week series of calls and training to improve how they recruit. With the series set to end next week, 61 new agents have been recruited to teams across the country.
Here’s the truth: Recruiting does not come with an easy button. The biggest takeaway from this series is you must have a strong foundation, followed by a consistent recruiting process in order to succeed. Here are the 4 things you need to do before you even start adding talent to your team.
Ask yourself, are you the player or the coach?
As a successful producer, you do it all. Before you start recruiting, you need to make an intentional decision on what you want to do and where your focus lies. Do you want to lead a team and hire, or did you enter real estate to hit financial goals and not concern yourself with personnel logistics? Either answer is right, but if it’s the latter option, you should probably reconsider the decision to recruit.
Get your financial house in order
One of the most common mistakes agents make within their business is not budgeting correctly to make a profit. An accurate budget gives you a clearer picture of what your recruiting goal should be. With every closing, you should fill these 4 essential financial buckets — overhead, marketing, management, and profit. The CINC Recruiting Budget Calculator ensures your recruiting target is sufficient to cover your entire budget, including paying a manager, even if that is you.
Check out this example Recruiting Budget Calculator.
Outline your organization’s core values and mission statement
Mission statements set your business’s tone and focus on why you exist. Core values represent what you stand for and describe your company at its best. Agents are attracted to like-minded operators. Do you have the right foundation that will attract successful agents? As researcher and author Jim Collins notes, “What we have found is that what really matters is that you actually have core values—not what they are.” If you haven’t developed your mission statement and core values, here is a resource to get you started.
Learn how to create core values with this resource.
Understand the pillars of your business
What will the pillars of your business be? What operational and cultural aspects set you apart? The main pillars of a successful real estate business are these:
- You. No other team, group or company will have your unique set of skills and experience.
- Advertising, marketing, and lead generation. How do you grow your business and provide prospects for your team?
- Provide a listing coordinator. Empower your listing agents to do what they do best, without the busy work that can slow production.
- Provide a transaction coordinator. Make sure your buyer agents feel the same support and benefits as those on the listing side.
- Provide a marketing and/or administrative coordinator. Allow your agents to stay in production. They will love you for it.
For many agents, the problem is not recruiting, but retention. We all know it costs more to recruit agents than to keep them as members of your team. So, as you grow and scale your business, keep an eye on turnover and make sure to stay true to the values, culture, and expectations you have created. Once you have this foundation in place, you are ready to build your perfect team.