Establishing a strong industry presence is crucial for effective recruitment efforts. One strategy is to participate in real estate-related trade shows and industry events, where you can showcase your brokerage’s brand and offerings. These events provide valuable opportunities to network with potential agents and demonstrate your commitment to the industry. Additionally, consider leveraging these events as dual-purpose marketing campaigns, promoting new developments or other projects while also recruiting agents. Another approach is to take on volunteer roles or training positions within the industry, positioning yourself as a respected and active member of the real estate community. By becoming known as someone who is actively engaged in business and industry affairs, you enhance your visibility and credibility, making your brokerage more attractive to potential recruits.

Recruit Developing Agents Through Training Centres and Universities

A great way to find qualified agents and staff is to form relationships with the organizations in charge of training those individuals. People tend to extend their training with the intention of finding work, meaning that universities can provide an ample, eager, and available work pool. Even better, this work pool is responsible, young, and well-trained. Agents with advanced degrees tend to perform well, so this recruitment tactic has a high probability of getting highly qualified and motivated individuals.

Ways to approach training centers:

• Join a university alumni association and get involved with the institution, allowing you to meet professors and students alike.
• Contact the professors associated with programs that attract realtors to indicate interest in hiring students and offer a fee for referring future agents to them. An idea may be to send a gift card for dinner for the referral and another incentive to be paid if the agent signs up. 
• Allow university students who are interested in the real estate field to write reports for classes on the company. This is common, and universities tend to be short of willing organizations. It also has the benefit of attracting future realtors or staff while generating great ideas.
• Get involved with the student association. This could involve donating food and or sponsoring student events.
• Set up booths at recruitment events. Most universities have annual recruitment events that organizations can attend with the intention of recruiting.
• Give out swag at the school. Students tend to be on a budget and like free stuff. You can’t go wrong with giving them free branded gear. Most universities have spirit days where the swag is given out. Bonus points if you brand the swag with both the company and the university associated, as it should have a similar effect as personalization, which is a driver of influence. Even more bonus points if you give a scholarship out for performance in digital arts and print a student’s artwork on the swag as part of the award.
• Host lunch and learn at smaller universities where you purchase lunch for the students while providing an informational session on why they should become realtors. 
• Host a lunch and learn for the staff where you make offers to them for referring agents to the organization. 

The Closing Meeting – Getting the Agent to Choose your Brokerage or Team

Until now, everything you have done has been with the aim of attracting agents effectively. Now you’ve gotten the new recruit into the office to discuss coming on board, it’s time to close the meeting. The agents you are meeting aren’t buying a service, they are buying a solution to a problem. They don’t want a brokerage service, they want a real estate business that runs efficiently. As you speak to the agents you will need to talk to them on their level, addressing the issues that they face. Agents typically operate across different tiers of production, each requiring distinct levels of support.

• Developing: Early-career stage with low production and high training needs.
• Extending: Mid-range career with sufficient productivity but requiring ongoing training.
• Advanced: High-production phase needing systems and support for business growth.

Developing

At the beginning level, an agent lacks focus. They know they don’t want to fail but would take over the world if they could. They are seeking access to successful people to mentor them while providing training and reassurance. 

For developing agents, the meeting should showcase training and development with a focus on offering the following:

• Professionals who are available to provide support in the areas where agents lack experience. 
• Training in property valuation, contract law, and compliance, objection management. 
• Community and support.

Once agent becomes moderately successful, their needs will shift from mentorship to recognition. It’s important to note this because attrition may occur at the transition point between mentorship and recognition needs. We trend to think of people based on our first impression of them but people grow, develop and change and this transformation can easily be missed if one isn’t paying attention. Failure to recognize this transition may cause the person to seek another environment where their skill level is appropriately acknowledged. An easy fix for this would be to set trigger points within the system that specifies ranking. A common practice within the industry is the allotment of sales production awards, if you have this system in place, then it is a good idea to review the awards and take note of whose performance has substantially changed as it may be time to modify how you are treating them.

Extending

There are two types here:

1. Hit their target earning level and enjoy a positive work/life balance. This type of person sells a property or two a month and focuses on higher commissions over lower volume. They will carefully select clients who will be database-focused and may not engage in much marketing.
2. They wish to become advanced and are working their way towards increasing production. This type of person is focused on volume as a means of advancement.

Recruitment of these two types will be remarkably similar. They would both be looking for solutions that allow them to produce more with little cost. They are managing their business themselves and will be focused on finding quality clients that close with little drama. They will likely have reached the esteem phase in the hierarchy of needs. They won’t need to be treated like a top producer but will require that you approach them with dignity and respect.

Databasing as a recruitment and retention tool can be introduced at this phase of one’s career. Databasing was irrelevant in previous phases as the agents didn’t have databases to contact. Furthermmore they would no mental model that would underscore the importance of having such a tool. But now that a person is a few years into the industry, this would be a good time to introduce such a tool and sell it.

For mid-level / intermediate agents, the meeting should showcase innovation in real estate technology with a focus on offering the following:

• Support in niche areas of real estate.
• Communication and expansion of the agent’s existing database.
• Ongoing support and training in emerging real estate market trends.

Advanced 

Advanced agents are the hardest to recruit as they are often intrenched in their current brokerage or they are considering opening one of their own. These are top producers with strong industry ties who are well connected. They will be concerned with your ability to efficiently handle a high volume of deals while onboarding potential agents for their team.

Getting to the advanced level of any career comes at a high cost. In this industry, it comes at the cost of relationships, often marriages, and sometimes failure to start a family. Often, these people work 80 – 100 hours per week and don’t have the same focus on family life that their lesser-producing counterparts may have. Recruitment of these types of people means not talking about family life unless promoted.  

For advanced agents, the meeting should showcase innovation in real estate technology with a focus on offering the following:

• Support in handling excess demand for services.
• Training in the areas of human resources and team management.
• Support in compliance and contract review.

Communication During the Recruitment Meeting

Listen more than you talk

Brokerage recruitment conversations tend to focus on the broker’s message. But for the most part, people want to be heard and understood. The person you are meeting with is more eager to tell you about their situation than they are to hear about your sales pitch. It’s entirely possible that an agent will choose you not based on your ability to speak, but on your ability to listen. Because of this, you should plan to spend the first half of the meeting listening and asking questions. You should be very curious about who they are and what they are thinking.

If an agent is considering leaving their current office, it’s probable they’re unhappy there. Switching offices is a costly, time-consuming endeavor that disrupts business practices. This suggests they may have encountered unresolved conflicts in their current situation. Acknowledging this presents a strategic opportunity to demonstrate how you can solve the problem they are having. It also enables you to assure them that they won’t encounter similar conflicts at your brokerage.

Once you are done listening, it will be your job to connect with the person effectively and with empathy. This needs to be done while sharing the brokerage’s service offerings and doing so in a way that forges a connection with the person you are meeting with. 

Connecting with people isn’t a one size fits all approach. We all forge connections differently and often this is based on the love languages we speak, specifically words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, and gifts. When possible, try to connect with the person before the meeting to get a sense of what language they speak so you can connect with the person you are meeting with. If not, you’ll be deciding on the fly.

Communication prior to and after the recruitment meeting

There’s quite a lot to say during a recruitment meeting and you’ll always run short of time. The good news is that some of the points can be made in writing and sent to the person before they ever meet with you. This has the benefit of getting the person excited about your brokerage while also overcoming a few objections before the meeting ever starts. You can automate some of this process by pre-writing content designed that thank the agent for their interest, confirm the meeting, provide relevant instructions for things like parking and location while also providing fun facts about the brokerage. If the meeting is a week away, then you can send an email a day showcasing various facets of the organization. Imagine how impressed your new recruit would be if they received a video walkthrough of the brokerage, a breakdown of the training available and and introduction to the managing broker. It would serve to impress the agent and mitigate the anxiety and unease they may be feeling about the meeting. 

An introductory email series can be drafted to introduce the agent to the brokerage and showcase the brokerage’s available resources. The emails should include:

• List of managing brokers with a detailed background of their qualifications
• Marketing team and a menu of services available.
• Listing of training courses and social clubs offered within the brokerage. This would include courses that are immediately relevant to agents, such as property valuation and how to use municipal GIS systems.
• List of agents who are available for partnerships or mentorship programs with details available on their background. This would be particularly relevant if the brokerage has a realtor who is a CPA, Engineer, or CCIM on hand.

An email campaign can be designed and sent to the agent before and after the meeting. There are email services that send campaigns on event based triggers, so you enter a contract’s information and it immediately sends the welcome email, followed by a series of daily emails. Before the meeting, focus the first seven days on providing a combination of informative material on how to choose a brokerage and how fun life is at the brokerage. Over time, the email campaign can evolve into mentioning events, agent success stories, and services the brokerage offers. 

For agents who say no, you can design a campaign to recruit the agent in the future. In this case your focus would be on benefits of the brokerage that the agent might have overlooked in the first round of decision making. 

The Meeting Room

If you’ve ever sat in the meeting room of a brokerage you might’ve noticed that the chair was uncomfortable, table was massive or the room too hot. All of this has to with comfort, a complex concept, consisting of both objective ergonomics requirements and subjective impressions Mantei, M. (1988). You’d be surprised at how many brokerages have meeting rooms so uncomfortable that one would rather sit in a middle coach seat in budget airline, all the while having spend tends of thousands of dollars furnishing the room.

A brokerage should design the closing room to generate a yes by considering the following:

• Closing room –  adjust the ambient temperature, lighting, and seating to the optimum levels that would make one feel energized and welcome. 
• Concentration levels – creating a more private, soundproofed, and calmer environment would better capture the subject’s attention.
• Technology – include new and innovate elements that make an impression. A new innovation is the immersive meeting room where images can be projected on all of the walls and in full light conditions. Then, design a presentation that is optimized to work with the technology that runs the equipment. Include sections of the presentation that can be personalized. 
• Showcase tools the agent can actually use by incorporating a demonstration of an innovative client presentation that leverages immersive technology. This involves introducing novel elements to the home sale process, setting your brokerage apart as a pioneer in the industry. The key is to devise original ideas that rely on technology not readily available to other brokerages or agents.

On a side note

An immersive experience in a meeting room could have a host of applications. Spaces designed in this manner could double as a show center, where the builder subleases the space while paying the space occupant to market the property. The rooms could also display art and scenery when not in use, which would be valuable in real estate offices that are typically placed in retail spaces with few windows. 

An immersive room could be rented out for other use during off-hours, thus earning a profit from an otherwise vacant space. Ideas for this include art displays, courses, and as a meeting space for other forms of business.

An example of an immersive meeting room is in the link below: 

https://www.igloovision.com/products/technology/immersive-workspaces-and-rooms

Recruitment Meeting

Ever attending a meeting where you arrived and were told to take a seat and wait? Did you sit in the chair feeling out of place while the front desk staff chit chatted amongst themselves and you tried to look busy by staring our your phone? Did it make you feel uncomfortable? 

In the book Unreasonable Hospitality, the Will Guidara talks about exceeding customer expectations in a powerful way. He addresses every part of the dining experience in minute detail, carefully crafting for excellence Guidara, W. (2022).. Many of these concepts can be well applied to real estate but the most salient comparison application of his concepts in relation to real estate is the warm greeting of a customer. 

Imagine this, you’ve sent letters, you’ve made phone calls and you’ve joined committees all the while spending possibly thousands of dollars just to bring in this one recruit into the door to meet with you. Now the person is sitting in your lobby while your staff gossips amongst themselves, one of them breaks out laughing and the agent sitting there quietly wonders if they are laughing at him. The agent’s first impression is feeling uncomfortable, unwelcome and alone. Seems crazy right, although it’s far too common and it makes the job of recruiting the agent so much harder. Now you are working to overcome the negative impression your staff just made in addition to trying to impress the agent.

Will solved this problem by having his staff become acutely aware of who was arriving and at what time. He trained his front desk staff to behave as welcoming hosts to the patrons by knowing their name and greeting them upon arrival. When having a new recruit visit the office, ensure your front desk staff are prepared for their arrival by knowing the agent’s name and face before they arrive. Ensure the staff are trained to warmly greet the agent arriving and request that the staff spend the time the agent is waiting for the meeting warmly chit chatting and making them feel welcome. Have a room prepared for the agent with print material and customized swag already at the intended seat. Customized material is shown to increase a person’s spending and predisposition to say yes. Studies have also shown that giving a gift at the beginning of a meeting increases influence. Have a cold bottle of water ready with some snacks available as it saves the agent from needing to ask. 

Meeting Preparation

You want to enter the meeting prepared. This means knowing a fair bit about the agent’s beliefs and background. Thanks to social media, this information is pretty easy to come by, all you need to do is read their social media profiles. Check Facebook to learn their hobbies and Linked in to find their education and background. 

Showcase Originality

An effective strategy is to showcase originality during recruitment meetings, demonstrating your brokerage’s commitment to innovation and staying ahead of the curve. This can be achieved through a strategic integration of immersive technology into the listing presentation process, offering a unique and captivating experience for both agents and potential clients.

Driving Recruitment Success 

To thrive as a real estate brokerage, attracting agents quickly is essential. This can be achieved through a multifaceted approach encompassing personal networks, social media marketing, professional relationships, industry presence, and innovative listing presentation techniques.

Utilizing personal networks and expressing gratitude to past collaborators can establish rapport and attract agents effectively. Engaging with agents on social media platforms and showcasing the brokerage’s culture and offerings fosters a dynamic online presence conducive to recruitment. Active participation in industry events and cultivation of relationships with training institutions strengthen the brokerage’s position in the real estate community and streamline recruitment efforts.

It’s crucial to understand and cater to agents’ diverse needs and career stages during recruitment meetings. Attentive listening, empathetic connection, and tailored solutions can lead to successful recruitment outcomes. Integrating immersive technology into recruitment presentations and creating welcoming meeting environments further elevate the recruitment process, leaving a memorable impression on potential recruits.