One of the toughest challenges for real estate brokers and managers is recruiting and retaining top producing agents. With all the energy you invest recruiting rising stars and established professionals, first impressions matter, which is why it's critical to project your company as a modern and innovative place to work.
In order to do so, you must start with an effective onboarding process that leverages the power of technology, provides engaging content, includes coaching and accountability tools and helps your new agent stay on the productivity path. However, doing this is not as easy as it sounds. It involves organization, planning and innovation at each step of the onboarding process. Let's take a look at four essential elements of agent onboarding:
Innovative Technology
We are way past the time to ditch the three-ring binders and stacks of paperwork to complete on the agent's first few days. With agents accustomed to working anywhere and at any time, your onboarding process must be automated and available online.
Agents should be able to review documents, best practices, videos and other operational and educational content and work at their own pace on their laptop, tablet or phone. Not only will an automated onboarding process ensure consistency, it will also help your staff and managers monitor the onboarding progress of each agent in real time, directly from dashboards and automated reports.
Engaging Content
Innovative agent onboarding is more than paperwork, policies and procedures. It’s a comprehensive and engaging program that includes a welcome message from your Broker/Owner, video introductions from colleagues and staff, trainings on company, industry and local markets, sales tips and success habits from managers and top producers, and client testimonials reinforcing your organization's purpose, mission and brand. Content should be delivered as actionable, interactive learning modules delivered in success stages throughout the year.
Coaching and Accountability
In line with an agent onboarding program that stays with your agents all year long, it's important to evolve the process and integrate both automated and one-on-one coaching and mentoring. Being a Realtor is unlike any other profession. It doesn't come with traditional office hours or a guaranteed salary and therefore, requires people who treat their career as a business, learning to wear many hats from marketing and PR, to prospecting and sales, to client management and customer relations, to negotiations and market analysis. Entering the real estate industry is an overwhelming experience, but staying successful over the long run is even more difficult, so working with a dedicated mentor or coach who helps identify success habits and accountability checkpoints is essential for developing high-producing agents and teams.
The content and methodology for coaching and mentoring your agents should be an established practice in your organization, but are you sure it's being delivered with consistency of quality and content? By using an automated onboarding system that morphs into a coaching and accountability platform helps guarantee consistency and longevity of your coaching and mentoring programs.
Productivity and Goal Setting
From day one, it's important to help new agents establish, track and achieve the goals they set for themselves. Your coaching culture helps build a sense of purpose that’s based on goals, accomplishments and reaching new levels of success. Therefore, it's important to ensure that your platform continues to support your agents as a comprehensive sales enablement and productivity platform that includes these important tools:
- Annual Business Planning Worksheets
- Business Results Tracking
- Action Plans with Periodic Checkpoints
- Basic and Advanced Learning Modules
- Contests and Recognition
- Industry Trends and News Distribution
- Best Practices Resource Library
- Discussions and Online Community
These elements are tools that help agents at all levels stay productive and on the path to achieve their goals. While managers, mentors and agents all share in driving agent potential, the true responsibility falls directly on the shoulders of the new agents, so arming them with the most sophisticated platforms, programs and processes will make a huge difference in their productivity.
How does your company measure up?
From onboarding to coaching to goal setting to accountability tracking, providing engaging content and innovative technology are key elements for success. How does your brokerage measure up against others in the real estate industry? Take a just a few minutes to generate your success score with the Coach Simple Success Scorecard:
