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By recruiting distinguished teams, you’ll build your brand authority and effectively scale your brokerage — and its reputation. But recruiting real estate teams to your brokerage is very different from recruiting individual agents, which means you are going to need a whole new marketing strategy.
Recruiting teams to your brokerage requires you to get clear on the qualities you’re looking for and then communicate your vision effectively. Ultimately, that will allow you to impact more people than you ever dreamed possible. Here’s how to get started.
1. Develop a crystal-clear team avatar
The first step in any successful campaign is deciding exactly who you are going to target and then going to work dissecting them.
The profile you create of your targeted team avatar should include key metrics like:
- Their strengths and weaknesses as they pertain to your unique value proposition (UVP)
- Their emotional hot buttons (the triggers that make them buy)
- Their internal and external false beliefs about what your brokerage has to offer
- Their vision for the future of their team and the individual members of their team
- A picture that represents the typical team you’re after that allows you to deepen your connection with them
Let’s say that you’re targeting up-and-coming teams from the millennial generation because they have the eyes and ears and trust of millennial buyers and sellers. You need to consider the psychosocial factors that have impacted their lives and now drive their buying decisions.
For example:
- They spent half their childhoods without the internet or social media and half with it.
- They were the first generation to experience digital advertising from an early age conditioning them for mistrust
- They experienced 9/11, the war on terrorism and Columbine, which deepened their mistrust of the government, large corporations and the media
You can use these points to develop the hooks you need and value propositions that will convert like crazy.
When all else fails, ask yourself: If I was a part of a team like that, what one thing would a broker need to say or offer me to make it impossible for me to be with any other brokerage?
2. Create strategic funnels to automate systems and sales
One of the biggest stressors for brokers is the never-ending list of things and people demanding their time. The best way to simplify your life, streamline your business and blow teams away with your abilities is to plug funnels into your business everywhere you can.
Here are some ideas to get you started:
- Sales and lead generation: The best way to recruit teams to your brokerage is to build, buy or collect a suite of sales funnels and templates. You can use the funnels to attract the teams, generate leads you can give to them, or generate leads for them directly. In fact, you should already have the type of sales funnel your targets need and want the most, so you can make it part of your value proposition.
- Recruiting: Recruiting used to take hundreds of hours a month, but that time is cut to a small fraction when you offer systems and tools that help the teams you’re targeting to recruit more agents to their team. Again, sales funnels will work for this.
- Training: Training is a critical priority for teams right now, and membership platforms are the best way to save yourself thousands of hours as a broker. With even a simple one-day membership site, every agent can log in to get training on the topics that matter most, and you can even outsource and crowdsource the content.
3. Prioritize reputation management
Another leading struggle among agents, brokers and teams alike is their online reputation management and overall web presence. To reach the top of Google and achieve necessary social proof, everyone must be vigilant in collecting reviews and testimonials.
However, many fall short because they are uncomfortable asking for them or don’t know how to launch a reputation management campaign that automatically collects testimonials and feedback and either posts the positive review or alerts you to an opportunity to make things right and improve.
In addition to clients, ask referral partners, contributors and JV partners, colleagues and anyone who can contribute to the idea that you can and should be trusted by strangers.
4. Work webinars to spread the word
Webinars, when properly executed, are one of the most powerful ways, aside from live events, to scale your brokerage by attracting teams. Create webinars surrounding your targets’ most irritating challenges and how they relate to your brokerage’s proprietary way of doing things and your phone will be ringing off the hook.
Just remember, webinars are for teaching people what they need to know, but they don’t learn the ins and outs until they sign on. That is the secret to converting with a webinar.
5. Develop authority-building content
Starting either a YouTube show or podcast (or both) is one of the most impactful ways to scale both your reputation and your brokerage. Create a show that targets teams, and speak to topics that will resonate the most with the specific types of teams you’re hoping to attract.
Interview guests who share your target audience, and leverage their list to grow your own. Imagine the whiplash your competitors will feel as you scale at lightning speed without needing any paid advertising.
6. Lead with empathy
More than ever, agents are eager to work with a broker who sees things from their perspective, as well as that of their clients. They long to feel the type of loyalty generations of yesteryear felt from their employers. They want to feel heard, supported, recognized, encouraged and important.
Begin and end each day by imagining what it would be like to walk in the shoes of one of your agents, and you will naturally develop a deeper bond and sense of loyalty through empathy that will attract other teams as well.
Recruiting teams is not really all that different than signing a new buyer or seller client; when you provide overwhelming value that can’t be found anywhere else and treat people the way they deserve, you win every time.
Sarah Layton is the real estate content marketing expert behind www.bestrealestatewriter.com and owner of Layton Media.
