There are three ways, and only three ways, to grow your real estate business:
- You increase the # of transaction sides
- You increase your net commission from each home (by either charging more, or by raising your average transaction price point)
- You bring in new agents, who are either already producing, or who can plug into a system you've created to quickly get into production
With 50% less homes selling in some markets, it's been a tough couple years for increasing # of transaction sides.
It's also been tough for net commission. Price points aren't going up and there is more pressure to lower commissions than ever.
But for bringing in new agents?
This market has been an absolute goldmine for some of our teams bringing in new agents. I've spent the last decade heavily entrenched in hundreds of real estate businesses—and I don't think I've ever seen a riper field for recruiting.
It's an unfair recruiting market
While it's the best market I've seen in a while for recruiting, it's absolutely an unfair market. It hasn't been kind to everyone.
Tough times test your culture.
Most of our Sisu clients already had this dialed in years ago, but in the crazy Covid years of 2020-2022 we saw teams recruiting heavily on two value propositions:
- Better splits
- Lead generation
It's not that they intentionally went out and said "let's recruit on a better split". Definitely not. But when you got deeper into their recruiting process, you saw more and more that that's what they were leaning on to get the deal done. Because there wasn't enough depth there.
When you lead with these two value propositions, you tend to attract a certain type of person. Someone who wants an easy button.
So when the fire comes, and the market gets tough... your culture gets put to the test. The people who joined you for the promise of "easy" will leave you or wash out as soon as it's not easy.
Some of these teams were not built on a sound cultural foundation—and now that the storm is here, we see them washing away.
The Ultimate Agent Attractor
We ran an analysis (both quantitative and qualitative) on the teams in our Sisu ecosystem who have grown tremendously in 2023 and into 2024.
We looked at things like:
- # of agents recruited
- Retention (net agent growth)
- Top recruiting Lead Sources on these teams
- Interview/Onboarding/Training processes
- Makeup of social media profiles (what kind of content is being posted?)
One thing is glaringly obvious across our research.
The teams recruiting the majority of the agents, who also have high agent retention numbers... they recruit on one thing. And one thing, almost exclusively.
Leadership.
Two types of agents
In my mind, there's really only two buckets of agents in this industry.
There are agents who want easy.
And there are agents who want more.
The beauty of recruiting on leadership is that you're sending a signal to the market that only attracts the Agent Who Wants More, and scares away the Agent Who Wants Easy.
That's why these handful of teams are dominating this recruiting market. They're taking the lion share of those dedicated agents, Agents Who Want More, because those agents are looking for leadership in tough times.
Sending leadership signals to the market, in order to attract Agents Who Want More
The weird thing about leadership is that leaders have all kinds of different builds.
You have really outgoing leaders and you have really introverted leaders.
You have experienced leaders and you have young leaders.
You have big idea leaders and you have fine details leaders.
There's really not a through-line when it comes to personality type for leadership. I believe there is really only one reason why somebody would choose to follow a leader.
People follow leaders who have a proven track record of Getting People What They Want
So how do you send leadership signals to the market?
You PROVE that you are that leader. Prove that you are getting agents more, and you will attract the Agents Who Want More.
Three leaders who are crushing this
In our research, we found some really interesting things from across the Sisu community.
The leaders who are dominating with agent attraction are relentless with sending these leadership signals to the market via their social media pages.
Three excellent examples that come to mind are Dj & Lindsey Dellasala out of Florida, The Utah Life in Utah (Spring Bengtzen and Justin Nelson) and Team Borham (Jeff Borham), also out in Florida.
We ran numbers across our database to analyze the top teams when it comes to agent attraction in the past 12 months. DJ & Lindsey were at the top with an insane 153 agents added in the last 12 months. Utah Life brought in 87 and Team Borham brought in 63, putting all three of these teams in the very upper percentiles of recruiting teams in the world.
Some examples that we love, taken from each of their social media profiles:
- DJ talking about his team's unfair competitive advantage—and notice how he doesn't talk about leads or splits once, but rather doubles down on accountability and growth, so that the messages speaks strongly to the agent who Wants More.
- This one from DJ is awesome because it's in the weeds, tactical help that will help an agent and also shows leadership in the trenches working with the team. It's making a deposit in the bank account and not expecting anything back.
- At the end of this article I talk about "getting your first agent case study". You need that story that shows you get agents more, even in tough markets. This one from Utah Life is especially cool because it's not coming from Spring or Justin, it's coming from Jace, who was brand new to the business 3-4 years ago, crushed it, is now in a leadership position, and does an excellent job of communicating "this is a science".
- Notice, in general, how The Utah Life's entire social page talks about agents, not homes. Not only does this charge their recruiting efforts, but it actually does a better job of attracting clients at the same time.
- This is a mic-drop testimonial from Jeffrey showing an agent who is getting More of What They Want via his systems and processes.
- This is a strong message from Jeffrey that is going to attract the Agent Who Wants More while at the same time pushing away the Agent Who Wants Easy.
Show people you can get them What They Want, and they'll follow you. But you've gotta be the real deal.
How to deliver on getting people What They Want
So at the top of your funnel, you're sending a message "we get agents more even in this tough market".
As people move down the funnel, you need to prove to them that you are the real deal—that it's not all some show for social media.
So how do you do that?
I'll tell you how our top Sisu teams are doing it.
Show Them The Money!
A great recruiting appointment has three objectives:
- Qualify that this person is truly an Agent Who Wants More
- Ask what they want. How much more do they want?
- Prove to them that you have the systems, processes, and knowledge to get them What They Want.
Sisu clients have the most advanced accountability dashboards in the industry. Once they've satisfied points #1 and #2, they'll flash a dashboard like this one to start proving #3:
This is an agent I have worked with personally. 265k GCI in his first full year. Pacing at 400k+ GCI this year.
I'd probably then zoom in on this:
Top numbers are actuals. Bottom numbers are goals.
I'm trying to communicate that "this is a science".
You come in, follow our processes, and you get a certain outcome. The only question is how bad you want it, because if you want it bad enough, I can take you there.
For the right agent, this is the sweetest recruiting message you can possibly deliver.
You're proving that you get people What They Want. Numbers speak louder than words.
Things you can do today
- Figure out your first agent case study. You need a story that you're ready to fire off at any moment, about how you helped an agent from point A to point B. You should be equipped with all the numbers, and even better, a visual representation of what this agent has done.
- Figure out your Math of Sales. You need to know how many conversations it's going to take to create x amount of transactions/GCI. If you're on Sisu, you can use the goal calculator to make this super simple with your actual conversion ratios. Make it part of your recruiting process and leadership signals you send to the market.
- Elevate any playbooks/training materials. Make them look nice. Maybe print them out. This sends a message that you are a dialed in, well-disciplined team.
And if you're not on Sisu, and want to see how our Sisu teams are dominating....
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