A commentary by EXIT Realty Premier Partner, Opcity.
The unemployment rate in the U.S. is currently 3.7%, a 49-year low. When there are more jobs to be had than people to fill them, recruitment and retention becomes a hot topic and the real estate industry is particularly interesting in this regard.
Real estate agents are usually independent contractors. They typically market their personal brand first, and their company’s brand second. When agents develop a recognized name in town and start generating referral business it may become easier for them to move between brokerages.
With several brokerages in an area competing to recruit the same pool of agents, it becomes harder to attract agents to a particular brokerage. Agents weigh brand recognition, provided resources, commission splits, culture, available technology and many other factors when choosing where to hang their hat.
Here are a few tips to both attract and retain agents at your brokerage in 2019.
Use Technology to Your Advantage:
People expect technology to fit seamlessly into their personal and professional lives. If you aren’t providing the best technology to your agents, chances are they will go to a brokerage that does.
Having technology for document management, online listing management, pipeline management, and sophisticated online lead matching tools will help your agents be more successful, and they will have you – their brokerage – to thank.
If you use any technology vendors, ask them if they have white-labeled marketing materials you can brand with your logo to explain the technology in which your brokerage invests.
Market Your Unique Value Proposition (UVP)
While there is an abundance of brokerages in any given city, no two brokerages are alike. Values, leadership, technology, resources, and company culture are all part of the unique blend that makes up your brokerage.
Take time to define what makes your brokerage different than the office down the street. Write out the differentiators for those factors listed above, and then use this to create marketing materials to recruit agents in your area.
Advertise your UVP on social media and job sites. If you don’t already have one, create Google+, Glassdoor, Indeed.com, and Facebook profiles for your brokerage and utilize those resources for recruiting new agents.
Reward Success and Show Appreciation
One of the top reasons people leave their current employer is due to a lack of appreciation, and real estate agents are no different.
Opcity uses data to help brokers reward their agents. Its system tracks agent engagement and performance over time, and using an algorithm based on their stats, high performing agents are rewarded with access to higher quality leads before their less-engaged counterparts.
Managing brokers can see this information and use it to recognize their top performers. It’s great to do this at a weekly team meeting and provide recognition in front of the agents’ peers.
Provide Training and Professional Growth
Many of Opcity’s partners are using its new Emerging Agent program to train and ramp up their new agents. Agents at participating brokerages can apply for Opcity, regardless of transaction history, and go through a training program that teaches agents how to convert leads they receive from listing sites and teaches good habits and proven processes they can use in their career.
If you have an agent who is succeeding with online lead conversion, encourage leadership by pairing that agent with someone who is weak in that area and ask them to mentor the struggling agent. This will show faith in the senior agent and provide professional growth opportunities.
Running a brokerage in 2019 all about making your agents’ lives easier, and making work fit in with their personal lives, instead of the other way around.
According to Forbes® Magazine, 91% of millennials expect to stay at a job for less than 3 years. So, while unemployment rates fluctuate, with the rise of millennials and gen Z in the workplace, recruitment and retention is not going to get any easier.
“Opcity partners with more than 5,000 brokerages in the U.S., and a surprising thing we’ve realized is how much our partners use Opcity as a benefit when recruiting new agents,” says Ben Rubenstein, Opcity’s Founder and CEO. “Thanks to Opcity, agents at participating brokerages no longer have to cold call online internet leads. Instead, Opcity calls those leads for them, collects all of the information that an agent would ask on an introductory call, and then transfers the lead to an agent via a three-way phone call.”
The Opcity app is available for Android and iPhone and makes tracking and managing leads a breeze. Click here to learn how you can take advantage of Opcity to attract and retain agents at your brokerage.
