Recruiting experienced agents is a critical piece to your business plan. But where do you start?
A couple years ago I was training a group of managers and one of the first comments was, "I have mailed out 5,000 postcards to experienced agents and have not received a single call."
What are the two most used prospecting methods for recruiting experienced agents? Postcards and mail have been my observation. What is the least effective prospecting method for recruiting experienced agents? Postcards and mail is also my observation (a caveat to that is the effectiveness goes up dramatically with a follow up call, but who's making consistent experienced agent recruiting calls?).
I will share with you some prospecting methods to recruit experienced agents, but remember this; they are all worthless without picking up the phone. We will visit the telephone prospecting later in the article.
Strategy #1: The Postcard: "Wait a minute," you're saying, "You just told me that's the least effective form of prospecting." You're right, I did, but I kind of left myself an out. You've got to pick up the phone. You can't just rely on reactionary prospecting. You've got to take action. There are some rules that go with this strategy.
First I have a question. If you sent out 500 postcards to an agent office, how many would actually be received by the agent? That would be zero, but I see it still taking place. Any and all recruiting mail must go to the agent's home address.
The next question: What are you communicating in your postcards? There's only one communication, how you can personally take their business to the next level.
What you want are simple postcards mailed to their home address that provoke thought about your ability to take their business to the next level.
Strategy #2: Training Events: Rent a training room at a local hotel and put on a half day training event for all the agents in your marketplace. That's right, train the competition. How else will they be able to measure you and your leadership, training, and coaching skills? These are the reasons an agent will join your company. If you are not comfortable enough with your training skills, then bring in an industry trainer to your market and invite your agents and your target recruits.
Strategy #3: Acknowledgment: Do for your recruits what their manager is not doing for them, acknowledge them for their work. On a weekly basis, have your assistant monitor the sales and listing activity of the agents you are trying to recruit. At the end of the week make a simple call to each and every one of them. Hi Eric, this is Jon with ABC Realty. I wanted to call and congratulate you on your new listing and sale this week. If there is anything I can do to help you sell more real estate, please don't hesitate to call. Very simple and not a big old sales pitch. One other question: Is their manager acknowledging them on a consistent basis. More importantly, are you acknowledging your agents for their work?
Strategy #4: Pick Up The Phone and Prospect: I know, we just talked about picking up the phone in strategy #1. That was just to warm you up. Strategy #4 is the real deal. This call has one purpose -- get an appointment.
Before we go further, I would like to ask you to reflect on your current calling strategy. The call is quite simple and is not designed to "sell" the recruit; it's designed to provoke thought and allow them to see value in meeting with you.
Here's what it looks like:
"Hi Eric, this is Jon with ABC Realty. I'm calling today for a couple reasons. First of all I want to congratulate you for the great work you are doing with your business. Second, I wanted to know if you are open minded?"response
"Great, I would like to take the time to sit down with you and learn more about you while coaching you with some strategies and tactics that I'm sure you can use to increase your business."
Notice I'm not leading with my brand new super cyber prospecting secret that all of our agents are now using to make a billion dollars. That's the antiquated method of recruiting. It's about having the confidence and ability to sit down with an experienced agent and display your value proposition by coaching them.
