What are some inexpensive things that we can make available for our agents. I want to offer as much as possible without bumping up their monthly fee. I would like to keep the monthly fee at $99. Right now that goes to paying mnthly expenses for the phone system (about $5 per agent) and e-mail accounts for each agent ($5 per month), access to the intranet ($15 per month), access to post thier listings on the company internet, lots of free training, and access to our state contracts.
What are some other things that would be a nice benefit for my agents? Do you have any feedback on the following services that I am considering making available company wide?
-Sharper Agent- not sure about corporate pricing, but individual pricing is $30/mth.
-CreateAPlan- about $14 per month per agent when purchased in packs of 10.
What other ideas do you have? I'm looking for things that will help my agents be more successful and give them a more prefessional look.

Carla,

What is/are your goal(s)? Agent retention (keep them from leaving your company)? Recruitment (lots of goodies to tempt them)? Success (keep them from dropping out of real estate all together)?

I think it would be fair to say that I want all of those things. The problem that I anticipate running into would be the success items, especially if it increases the expenses of my agents. For example, I would LOVE to get all of my new agents in coaching right off the bat- and provide that for them through the company seperate from mentoring. But that would translate into higher monthly fees. And as valuable as I believe coaching is, I know that the last thing a new agent is looking for is another expense. Any ideas?

You'll see part of my reply on the other forum.

Can you offer coaching that is paid for out of the agent's closings?

hmmm... let's talk. I would probably have to adjust my split. Right now I just take $1,000 per file which works out to less than 20% on average. I really can't cut into that profit any, and I also want to be very careful about getting it any higher. I was thinking coaching would be great with CreateAPlan I think the business planning would be much more valuable if they had someone to hold them accountable. As much as I enjoy training and mentoring my agents, holding them accountable to their goals isn't really something I want to get into.
What I was planning to do over a year ago was hire experienced agents who were willing to take a few new agents under their wings for a while, and set them up into small groups whose main purpose was to hold each other accoutable to their goals and daily acvities. I wanted to set each person up with an accountability partner within their group. As an incentive for experienced agents to give a little time to the a few newer agents I was planning to not charge them the $1,000 fee per transaction- just the monthly fee and the fee for our transaction coordinator.
But I have had a hard time finding like-minded people out there. I know that their are agents out there who enjoy being available to help newer agents even without any perks...but they've been harder to find than I expected.
My initial goal was to turn around the success and failure rates. I wanted to see 90% of new agents who joined my company to still be around a few years down the road. So far, I haven't had anyone drop out- but I know accountability is very important to that, and they aren't getting it from me past their first 3 months of training.