i have just opened a new brokergage in ontario, canada

what are the succesful strategies you have used to attract sales people

what do you think of advertising methods

radio

newspaper

mass email to agents

real etstate magazines

what would make the agents attracted to you...eg: location, personal experience, brand name

thank you in advance for your responses

Both Brokerages I worked for I went to because of word of mouth.

In my case, I went to the local association of realtors and asked them which office had the highest sales per agent. I had to talk to three people before they could get me that info, but I got it.

As a brokerage, you need to be filling a need for agents. Many are motivated entirely by money - and that is fine. So much of this is going to depend on your recruitment strategy.

Do you want tons of agents and figure a few will rise to the top? Or do you just want to bring in the "quality" agents?

I have seen both models work, but frankly, the policy of getting as many agents as possible has appeared to provide the biggest payoff for the least amount of effort.

However, when brokerages have really focused on quality agents, the ended up getting a much higher percentage of top notch producers. But this method takes a whole lot more time to pay-off. At least from what I have seen. It is also more possible to fail with the quality model if you don't do it right.

R

i am looking to get quantity of agents--pls note this is a startup brokerage and the more the agents=more listings=more exposure to other agents looking at the mls....

what is the method to attract agents

thank you

Perhaps instead of quantity of agents you should concentrate on quality of agents. It would be better to have 5 or 6 very productive agents instead of 10-15 unproductive agents.

I have to say that I disagree with your equation of more agents=more listings= more exposure. It simply is not always that way.

You can prove this to yourself by just looking at a few numbers such as listings per office then seeing how many listings the office has. You will find that many offices with hundreds of agents don't have as many listings as an office with just 10 or 20 agents.

I have seen offices with over 100 agents that only had 5 listings. If you have 100 crappy agents, your going to get crappy results. Whats worse, is once you get known as the office that will take anyone with a pulse - no matter how incompetent, you will find that no decent agent will want to have anything to do with your office. I guess what I am getting at is you still need to be careful when going for quantity or you can end up ruining your brokerages long term prospects.

However, I won't start taking this down that road. You want to know how to recruit.

I would suggest putting together Real Estate Seminars specifically aimed at people considering getting into real estate.

Actually, if you do a search on this board, you will find a post by someone in Colorado I think that has been doing this with great success.

She used radio advertising to promote it and got some good results in terms of recruited agents.

R

I am not a broker YET (working on it and will be in the next few weeks)

I feel I can contribute coming from a company that started with about 50 agents when I joind and is now pushing 2,000 3 years later.

One thing not mentioned here is TOP PRODUCERS will not want to hardly pay anything to a principal broker.All tp's in our area are on a transaction fee say 300 to 500 per deal with 100 percent or 95 percent comission split.Top producers usually don't get the broker sliscense because they don'w want the hassle of running a brokerage and all the bs that goes with reporting and being randomly audited by the r.e. commission for compliance.If you charge too much of a fee the tp's will get there broker's liscense and go on there own.

You can market to tp's but even if they do a bunch of transaction the money you make is small.If you get a new agent on a fat split 50 percent to the brokerage and then they BECOME a top producer you have made a ton of money but with that comes a ton of training,liability,etc.

So you have to decide what type of brokerage you want to be.The company I work for now doesn't allow any new agents.We have a ton of top producers and the principal broker does it through volume of only a 300.00 transaction fee.


What experieinced agents want is a low commission split and possibly leads.What new agents want is defintely leads and training and if they can get a lower split.

I would say the quantity of advertising to attract new agents isn't nearly as important as the MESSAGE that you have.

For instance you could advertise in 20 formats and have a weal message to agents and get little results.You could also advertise in 3 formats but have a great message and program to get agents to sign up and then they go tell all there FRIENDS.

What our company does is give us 70 dollars for every agent that changes and signs with us,we just have them fill out a form.

Super realtor...how many office does your broker have those 2000 agents spread out over? Are there big offices with much space inside for agents? I am looking to open a similar format office as you are at and am trying to figure out how much space is really necessary. Do you find that the top producers want an office or are they working from home more often? Do you have a monthly fee on top of the per transaction fee? Are you capped at any point after paying for so many transactions per year? Any help you could give would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Dave-PA

She has been an investor for years.She started out with about 30 agents about 4 years ago.She had just one building that she purchased for the r.e. business.As the agents grew she started buying more offices,she remodels the space and then rents out the upstairs units for cash flow.

There is a cap of about 13,000 a year on trans. fees.I pay 45.00 a month for mls access and about 210 a year for e & o.

She has started franchising her model in other states and is already in a few.Go to http://www.solidsourcerealty.com and go to contacts and talk to Michele Shoda principle broker.

good luck

super realtor

what type of message is your company sending out

I have to agree. When I was looking for a broker, I skipped over the office with so many agents it was obvious they would take anyone. I interviewed with a broker who only takes agents willing to take responsibility for their own career, and then only by referral. I'm glad I did. Everyone in my office is serious about selling real estate and serious about protecting the broker's reputation. He is a legend in his town and lying or manipulating will get you shipped out the door because that's not how he does business. I was told on my first day that there is no mistake my broker won't fix for me as long as I admit what I did right away. He'll even spend money that he doesn't have to, to help out his agents, because they're hand-selected people who have a good chance at being successful. Clients come to us because they will be treated like royalty. It's much easier for me to know I'm expected to do what it takes to make clients happy than to deal with someone at the next desk who might try to run me over for a paycheck. Wouldn't you rather have a team of 10 agents who are willing to work together to make everyone successful than 25 who rarely show up and don't even know each other?

A company in our area has been attracting agents like flys by charging a $75 monthly fee and $300 or less per transaction. (Their fee per transaction goes down for more productive agents...)
On a more serious note, any time I have advertised I attract new agents. Experienced agents come by word of mouth. For advertising to the new agents I like radio ads for a career seminar night. Have a school go in and split the cost with you.