- Think of your office as a built-in productivity coaching company.
- Get your agents focused on the right goals for the stage they’re in.
- The inside sales associate role is the toughest to coach -- if you haven’t done the work, you won’t have the credibility to hire and coach an ISA.
Whether you’re recruiting to build a team or a brokerage, you have two duties:
- Increase your agents’ production
- Increase the size of your office by recruiting agents
Either way, your office must be set up in a way that helps your agents sell more real estate. You have to be able to produce results, then get that message into the community. In our latest mastermind, Brian Icenhower shares how embedding productivity coaching at every level helped make his recruiting efforts explode.
Elite Real Estate Systems Hangout
Hosts Jeff Cohn and Matt Johnson with guest Brian Icenhower
Icenhower moved to Kansas City three years ago, taking over a KW Market Center that had hovered between 50 and 80 agents for the previous decade. Icenhower’s background in coaching led him to bring an entirely different model to his office.
Initially, Icenhower coached agents himself. But as his office attracted more agents, he installed productivity coaches. This model helped each of his agents sell more real estate. Now Icenhower has a whole team of productivity coaches with each handling specific levels of production. These days, Icenhower coaches only the top producers and team leaders himself.
“If you’re able to succeed and show that the majority of people who come to your office increase their production and make more income, the proof is in the pudding … It’s like breaking open a piñata. Everybody wants to join your company.” – Brian Icenhower
Icenhower also shared how he encourages each agent to maintain a database and how his staff helps them compile that database and enact follow-up programs. Icenhower set a goal that 85 percent of agents in his office will have their database set up this way.
Then, we dive into how Icenhower started a real estate school in his office and developed a recruiting pipeline directly from the school to his office. He discussed how once students enroll, they can start attending meetings, put together a database, a website and marketing materials — before they’re even licensed.
Icenhower even gives them access to a productivity coach while they’re taking real estate courses. This allows new agents to hit the ground running.
“There’s this huge income gap that you must bridge,” Icenhower explained. “So if we can shorten that by getting them into productivity prior to practicing, the licensing school gives them a big angle. And that draws a lot of classes.”
Icenhower then talked about opening up all meetings to local agents of any brokerage. This includes training sessions, weekly agent masterminds (during which agents share what’s working) and monthly team-building sessions.
Then Cohn and Icenhower discuss some of the trends developing in real estate teams, especially the inside sales associate (ISA) role. Icenhower explained why he tends to coach agents into not growing a team and why the ISA role is the toughest one to coach.
Icenhower’s website, TheRealEstateTrainer.com, helps build local and national credibility, which attracts agents to his office while speeding up the coaching process by systematizing some of the knowledge transfer part of coaching.
If you’re recruiting agents and building your team, one of your roles is to install a culture of coaching and abundance. You want your top agents helping your beginners and each other.
You need everyone on board recruiting and sending referrals. Leadership and coaching have been keys to Icenhower’s success and can drive yours as well if you invest in yourself and your team.
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Matt Johnson is the CEO of Pursuing Results, a podcast production and PR firm, as well as co-host of real estate podcasts and video series such as Real Estate Uncensored and Elite Real Estate Systems Hangout.
