By Diana Zaya – Relitix, Vice President of Sales & Marketing
Agent recruitment is a tough job
Much like any industry, identifying and recruiting top talent is an important step in any company’s success. Real estate agent recruitment is no different. When you ask most brokers, signing revenue-generating agents is listed as one of their top priorities. However, when it actually comes to undertaking the task of agent recruitment, most brokerages will admit that they fall short.
Estimates are that about 20% – 25% of any brokerage’s volume will exit annually. Some of that exiting volume is attributed to agents leaving the business, either retiring or moving on to other ventures. However, many of those agents are likely to leave for another competitor brokerage. There is no disputing that agent recruitment should be a top priority…so, why does it typically fall to the wayside?
After interviewing hundreds of brokerages of all sizes across the nation, we found that the reasons fall into 3 major categories.
1. Managers are typically tasked with agent recruitment: Brokerage managers are typically juggling many tasks and dealing with critical issues that require immediate attention. Making cold calls for the purpose of agent recruitment will then naturally become a lower priority.
2. Most brokerages lack a systematized approach to agent recruitment: It’s common to see brokerages with multiple offices that have varying degrees of success across their offices. This is typically due to one office that has prioritized agent recruitment or has a manager that was once a recruiter. Whereas another office may be really struggling with this process. This is mainly due to a lack in the adoption of a standardized recruitment process across the company.
3. The industry has been lacking powerful agent recruitment tools: A common challenge across the industry is having access to smart tools that can bring ease and efficiency to agent recruitment. For the recruiter, these tools fall into two categories: good data and an easy-to-use CRM.
The importance of good data
Until recently managers and recruiters were limited to subpar data provided in hard-to-access formats. Beyond agent production and YOY changes, deep insights into the agents weren’t available. This increases the challenges to managers and recruiters when attempting to make cold calls. Imagine making a cold call to an agent to ask them to consider joining your brokerage but the only context available is what they produced within the last year. The manager then goes on to regurgitate the company’s features and benefits. This is a hard sell.
Relitix is changing the game when it comes to providing managers and recruiters with insightful data points spanning an agent’s career. Since its inception, Relitix has quickly grown to become the industry leader in using big data and AI in brokerage management. Our clients turn to us for key insights into their companies as well as for unparalleled competitive market intelligence. What sets our system apart from others is our innovative use of AI predictive analytics as well as a system that has been meticulously designed with the knowledge and expertise of real estate industry veterans. We wrap it all up in the best data visualization technology, encouraging efficient exploration of the data and allowing the user to pull actionable insights quickly and easily.
Our AgentIntel.AI system allows leaders to view in-depth agent reporting spanning an agent’s career. Users can uncover long-term trend information on agent production and listing activity as well as view an agent’s dominant markets, team composition, and sales price distribution over time. This robust system gives the user insightful competitive intelligence with the ability to view competitive office production, market coverage, and agent productivity.
Our AgentIntel Monthly Reporting Packet delivers a neatly packaged, and high-impact reporting bundle that forms the foundation of any successful agent recruitment and retention program. Using the latest in AI predictive analytics, this system makes daring predictions about agents’ future success rates as well as possible future agent departures. Users can compare agents on dozens of data points and take appropriate action, leading to higher retention and recruitment rates.
What’s a CRM got to do with it
Let’s first begin with what a CRM is. CRM stands for “Customer Relationship Manager” and is a software system that allows users to easily manage and track their communications with clients and prospects. A good CRM will allow users to not only track communications but also set tasks for future reach-outs, and trigger email campaigns as well as text campaigns.
Until recently real estate managers and recruiters were relegated to using CRMs that were not specifically designed for the purpose of agent recruitment and retention. Most CRMs available were not even necessarily created for the real estate industry at all. In fact, many real estate leaders we spoke with are still working off spreadsheets, which is fine if the prospect list is short but when working with hundreds of leads in your market, a CRM is a great way to store and utilize that data.
BrokerKit is a CRM that not only has been created with the real estate industry in mind but one that was specifically designed for the purpose of agent recruitment and retention. Managers have the ability to pull in their prospects as well as their own agents for a seamless way to manage touchpoints.
Bringing it together
Having smart data as well as a well-designed CRM is a magic combo that all managers and recruiters have been searching for. The search is finally over. Relitix and BrokerKit have teamed up to bring our clients the integration that they have long been desiring. Now real estate leaders don’t have to pull lists every month, upload them into a CRM or work off spreadsheets. All it takes is a one-time, 15-minute set-up and your customized agent lists are pulled into your CRM and automatically updated each month. The Relitix data is robust, offering dozens of data points to engage with agents including many AI-powered insights. The BrokerKit CRM mobilizes this data with well-designed text and email campaigns and allows users to record communications as well as set future tasks and reminders. To learn more about the integration, please contact us at sales@relitix.com.