When you decide to open a real estate brokerage, you take on a whole new set of challenges. Having a brokerage can take all of the tough elements of being an agent and magnify them.
You need the right technology tools and marketing for your brokerage, you need to worry about having a great team, and you have to focus on both the big and little pictures.
The following are things to keep in mind when it comes to growing a successful real estate brokerage.
Agent Recruitment and Retention
Operating a real estate brokerage can be extremely challenging because you have to recruit and maintain a set of independent contractors. They require flexibility in how they’re managed, but you also have to ensure they’re bringing results.
A few things to remember as far as agents go, and the overall management of your business:
- You want to build a productive, thriving team because ultimately that’s the best way to get agents to stay. That’s also the best for top agents to recruit other agents. This can happen not only by encouraging sales but by regularly taking the time to meet in person and have team-building activities.
- You want to make sure you have a consistent brand across your website, marketing materials, and things like your team’s mobile apps. This is because it gives your team something to show as they represent your brand.
- Be careful when you’re hiring and onboarding. You might find a new agent with little-to-no experience, but if they have characteristics that could allow them to be successful in the industry, then that might be enough to overcome their lack of experience.
- When you’re recruiting a new agent, you want to be able to show them the turn-key technology solutions that you offer that are going to make it easy for them to build their business if they work for you. Even if you’re able to lure a top-performer away from their current brokerage, what’s still going to be important to them is seeing that you’re giving them the best available technology to do their job and it’s ready to go. Agents want solutions that will save them time and allow them to focus on making money efficiently.
When you bring agents on, whether they have experience or not, you should train them on your specific processes.
You want to help them build a foundation that will lend itself to growth, so you want to show them your systems such as your real estate CRM, and the support tools you offer and make sure they’re comfortable interacting with these platforms.
You also want to streamline communication within your brokerage. It’s tough when you have agents who are all working in their own ways and toward their own goals.
You need to be able to not only track progress across the brokerage but also break down potential communication barriers so that everyone can get on the same page.
Define Clear Metrics
Metrics are critical for any brokerage. Metrics need to be well-defined, and they need to be communicated clearly to your team. Then, you should have set processes in place for how you measure your team’s effectiveness at meeting these metrics. If you don’t have tools for setting, communicating and measuring metrics, you must put those in place to successfully grow a brokerage.
The most successful brokerages tend to have leaders at the helm who look more at the big picture and use data to do so. This will provide you with the means to have a snapshot into the health of your brokerage and determine, quickly, what works and what doesn’t.
Having metrics and tools for collecting and analyzing data will also give you a way to take smart, calculated risks.
Growth really can’t occur without risks, but you want to be wise in your risk-taking.
Building Your Brand
Good agents, along with clients are going to be drawn to your brokerage if you have an amazing brand.
That’s what a brokerage can offer an agent that they can’t get if they’re working on their own.
A few things to remember when you are building a brand for your brokerage:
- Think about what makes you different. Maybe you add value to the lives of your clients through your credentials, or perhaps it’s your sales volume. Whatever it is, set it, define it, and cultivate it.
- Once you know what makes you different, get to know your targeted audience. Know them in and out and think about not only general demographic features but what their pain points are and how you solve their problems. How do they like to communicate? Why are you better positioned to serve as their problem-solver than your competition?
- Sometimes just as important as knowing your audience is knowing your competition. If you don’t know your competition, you can’t pinpoint their weaknesses and use them to build your own brand.
- Be a content creator. As a brokerage, you want to constantly be creating content across multiple channels that reinforce your brand but also delivers true value to your audience.
- Be involved in the community where you work. Building a successful brokerage isn’t always about only focusing on the hard sell. You should be out and about and active in your community in an authentic way that goes beyond the hard sell, and encourage your agents to do the same.
Finally, along with taking calculated risks, know when it’s time to make a change. The real estate industry, in general, is fast-paced and constantly evolving. If you become stagnant in your approach or you’re not willing to regularly assess what’s working and what’s not working, you won’t be able to keep pace and grow.
You should be solving problems and addressing challenges every day, and don’t be too proud to admit something isn’t working.
You might also want to seek outside help. Find advice from experts who may know more in certain areas than you do as you work to grow your brokerage.