September 18, 2023Suneet Agarwal and Nick McLean discuss what they have been working on with Jon Cheplak and Preston Guyton over the last 30 days including insights into a private Reside Mastermind at Jon’s personal home, key take-aways, why people are joining Reside and a deep dive on how to recruit agents to your organization.
VIDEO CONTENTS:
- 00:00 – Introduction & What Is RESIDE
- 03:40 – RESIDE’s First Mastermind Event
- 15:07 – Team Motivation
- 23:42 – Recruiting
- 38:39 – The Value of Video
- 44:00 – Wrapping Up
Episode breakdown: leaderboards and a warm-and-cold recruiting plan
Suneet Agarwal and Nick McLean recorded this episode a few weeks after Reside launched. Their own teams were still running while they onboarded agents for other teams every week. After a recap of the launch, they get practical. They explain how they use scoreboards to motivate agents, then lay out how Suneet thinks about recruiting in two buckets, warm and cold.
Run more than one scoreboard
Suneet, Nick and Preston Guyton had just built a scoreboard framework around the point system in Follow Up Boss, where agents earn points for leading measures like calls, emails and appointments. Nick learned a lesson about scoreboards from one of his top agents. He had been reporting calls, emails and texts to the team, and she told him it didn’t motivate her, even though she kept checking where she ranked. He tells leaders to watch what agents do, not only what they say. An agent who complains about a leaderboard may just not like being in fifth place.
She was still right about one thing. She wanted to see sales numbers, because falling out of the top five pushed her. Nick now runs both an activity board and a sales board, because agents are motivated by different things. Suneet’s team publishes its top five agents every month and its top five activity leaders every week, internally and on social media. Production is a lagging measure that can take 90 days or more to show up, so the weekly board lets the team celebrate effort before sales arrive. Over time, the agents with the most points should also be the ones in the top five for sales. If they aren’t, the team is probably scoring the wrong activities.
Build warm recruiting through your own agents
Suneet divides recruiting into warm and cold. Warm starts with referrals from agents already on the team. Nick has had agents who were simply raving fans, including one who got her cousin and brother-in-law licensed and brought in about five people over the years without any incentive. The hosts’ point is that leaders have to ask for agent referrals the way they ask clients for business, and many don’t bring it up out of fear.
Suneet has also used contests. When his team was smaller, every agent who referred a recruit got a name in a bowl, and the recruit who joined added another. At the end of the contest he drew a name for a weekend in Tahoe. He also tells agents to bring friends in real estate to team events, on the theory that productive people tend to spend time with other productive people.
Let reviews and open trainings bring recruits to you
Nick ran a Google review contest for his agents and staff, keeping every review legitimate. Soon people in licensing courses were calling to interview because they had read the reviews. He says those are the recruits you want, because they research where to go and look for the best team, not the easiest one.
Suneet’s other warm channel is open group trainings and brand-neutral panels held in the office every month. Anyone who walks in for a training stops being a cold lead, and panel guests are sometimes agents a leader would like to recruit. He admits his own challenge here has been doing it consistently.
Delegate cold calls and let video warm up the market
Most leaders avoid cold recruiting because it’s hard, and Suneet says that gives the teams that do it an advantage.
Calling a random buyer or seller is a hundred times easier than calling a random agent.
Suneet Agarwal
He doesn’t like making those calls, so he pays other people to make them. What he does consistently is shoot video. He decided years ago that he would do more video than anyone, and that content now turns cold agents into people who feel they already know him. His early videos were bad, and Nick says the same of the first personal videos he sent in 2011, which worked anyway because no one else was doing it. Suneet’s team now posts twice a day. For recruiting copy and call frameworks, see Suneet’s real estate recruiting scripts.
His two quick tips are free job boards with copy that stands out from identical job titles, and Facebook and Instagram video ads, which he says can put a leader’s face in front of every agent in a market for about $300 a month.
Call strong candidates yourself and cut the friction
Suneet learned from a talent acquisition consultant outside real estate that highly qualified people don’t wait around. When a standout resume comes in, a multi-step process with personality tests and four interviews works against you.
You as the owner probably just need to pick up that phone and call them.
Suneet Agarwal
Nick agrees. About ten years ago, as a new broker-owner, he had an agent email him about joining and asked her for a resume. She didn’t have one and went elsewhere, where she sold 30 homes a year for the next five years.
You will get beat by somebody else by having all that friction. I can guarantee it on the top talent.
Nick McLean
Key takeaways for team leaders
- Run an activity scoreboard and a sales scoreboard, and check that the two line up over time.
- Ask your agents for recruiting referrals every week, and consider a simple contest to reward them.
- Collect real Google reviews and host open trainings. Both bring recruits who are looking for the best team.
- If you won’t make cold recruiting calls, pay someone who will, and build familiarity with consistent video.
- Call standout applicants yourself, right away, and remove hoops that slow top talent down.
