What happened the last time you trained a new agent on your team? Did you have a system in place?
Did it prepare them for handling leads on their own, as well as give them the knowledge of someone with decades of experience in a fraction of the time?
It’s OK if you find yourself saying no. Few real estate teams have a process in place to help new agents transition smoothly into a successful career.
If there is a system in place, it’s often more confusing than helpful, resulting in new agents tossing it aside and doing things their own way.
Onboarding is more than a process, it’s a science. When done right and implemented efficiently, I’m confident that even those with systems already in place will see greater results.
Before you dismiss having an onboarding system as unnecessary, understand what it can truly do for your agents and your team.
Craft a life you desire
Any agent you bring on your team must know what you want. Do they want to sell enough homes to live comfortably and still have enough time to relax and spend time with their families?
Having a system in place sets a foundation early in any agent’s career. Even after years of experience under your belt, it helps you do the same amount of business while also bringing some of your life and energy back.
With systems, you don’t have to sell 100-plus homes if you don’t want to. You don’t have to get twice as many leads and only expect to close some of those.
I have seen teams burn through three times more leads just to reach their goal because they didn’t have a system. I have also seen teams create a balanced, joyful life for themselves with systems in place.
Having a training and onboarding system in place that’s built with psychological elements will drastically change how you and your teams address your careers.
I’ve witnessed newly licensed agents defy logic and surpass agents who were in the business years before them. Systems are powerful and when implemented right can have phenomenal results.
Build confidence
A good onboarding process will help you map out an agent’s points of contact with a client. There’s so much scarcity of time in real estate. Agents feel like they must always be active. That desire stems from uncertainty on whether they are going to land their next lead, or if they’ll even have one.
Sometimes, when there is scarcity, you worry that you’re not doing your best at all times.
That’s why scripting is so vital to onboarding. The process of reading off a script might feel unnatural at first, but like all new processes, it’s just a matter of practice and getting used to the new process.
Once an agent becomes familiar with it, they can put their personalities into it and make it their own, and the words will roll right off their tongues. They’ll memorize the right questions to ask, when to ask them and how to ask them.
This process will help them feel more confident in their ability to get clients to book an appointment, address objections, get them to commit and set a tone for their working relationships.
Determine next steps
Sometimes, if you’re not paying attention to your results (or lack thereof), you can miss out on addressing problems and solving them.
With tracking, agents can start identifying weak spots in their performance. I love tracking my results to see exactly where I’m falling short. I’ll ask for help if I cannot immediately solve the problem alone.
Self-tracking my results and progress toward my goals also helps me set a baseline for what I should expect of myself each week. Without a baseline, you won’t have a yardstick to measure progress.
For example, agents might discover that they spent more time prospecting than nurturing relationships if they’d already established their goals of building their centers of influence (COI) list for that week, and then had tracked the time they spent doing various activities during the week.
A good onboarding process can help you to establish your baseline so that you can see where you’re improving, identify problems while they’re small, and use your time effectively to reach your goals.
Kathleen Black is the CEO of Kathleen Black Coaching and Consulting in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada. Connect with her on Instagram at either @kathleenblackcoaching, @thetop1percentlife, or through her Web site ItTakesa.Team.
