The key characteristics of successful recruiting are similar to building a house; you have to have a strong foundation to start from. Building a strong team will depend on how well you, as the Team Leader, sell, develop a unique selling proposition and have productive sources. Since we are building a house of bricks here, not sticks and straws, the core and the success of the team will depend on the strength of the leader.
The Team Leader must sell a lot of houses. Ideally, this level of production means selling in the top 1% of sales or volume in your city, county, or area. In smaller areas, the numbers work out to be about 35-50 sales and/or $8-10 million or $12-20 million in minimum luxury production per year.
When you become too busy to handle the administrative tasks and leads that you have, it’s time to recruit your first hire. How do you know when you get to this point? You have to enlist help when you have closings and a pipeline of potential business that are not getting the attention they deserve.
Essentially, if you cannot produce 30-40 sales in a year, you are likely going to struggle to recruit and train. The most important thing about growing and recruiting agents for your team is to be believable. Most of the recruits probably won’t do more than $5 or 8 million in sales themselves, unless they are a mega-producer. But typically, the team leader has to be elite (meaning production), because if you do a great job and help provide good leads, your team will excel.
You will need to develop a USP or a system to train agents. As you move into recruiting more agents, you will be chasing the business vs. managing the business you procured. The system is usually based on your “USP,” unique selling proposition. This is your special way of doing things; I call mine my “secret sauce.” The more unique you are, or the more custom the way that you do things, the easier it’s going to be to attract more agents. This, combined with selling lots of houses, demonstrates why it is so powerful in the marketplace and creates the attraction to fuel your recruiting. If you have not sold a lot but want to recruit, there is still an opportunity for great success in recruiting, but you will be limited to mostly recruiting new agents or agents destined to fall into the massive new agent failure rate.
The industry focuses a lot on attracting new agents, and often there are many different motivations for people to come into the business, but there is an 87 percent failure rate of new agents after five years in the business. You may pride yourself on your ability to find the rising stars, but, unfortunately, if you don’t develop a successful USP to teach people how to win, then attracting good agents is going to be very difficult.
You need a productive lead source or sources. This is why I compare recruiting to building a house with bricks, because building a team is based on your past success and firm foundation. This leads you into the natural progression of creating a team. I’ve watched teams develop over the last 15 years, and I’ve watched a lot of teams fail because people try to jump ahead before they are ready. Some team leaders want to provide leads and good coaching but lack in training and systems necessary for their team to thrive. Unfortunately, when the team lead hasn’t converted leads, and they are asking their agents to close, there is no belief, trust, or critical training needed through the process. Coaching without training has its limits.
Offering what the agent is looking for; quality leads, a proven track record of closing the deal and training, is the best way to become an attractive team leader. Training is developed off your USP and processes you have defined. If you sell a lot of properties, it is proof the leads you developed, and the training you employ are working.