The challenge of being a real estate broker today is keeping your agents up to date and productive in this changing and changing market. Many marketing techniques and skills that work in a seller’s market are counterbalanced or less effective or completely irrelevant in a buyer’s market. Thankfully, you can train your real estate agents to make this sales transition.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!I should know – I’ve done it before. During the Great Recession of 2008, I had the opportunity to lead a large brokerage firm. After much trial and error, I found a proven way to guide my agents to not only survive…but flourish In a changing market.
Within two short years, the Keller Williams brokerage I was leading went from nearly bankruptcy to number 10 out of over 700 brokerages! In this article, I will share my secrets for effectively training your real estate agents to sell and outperform the market in 2023.
Shift from Marketing to Prospecting
Reflecting on the Great Recession of 2008, I can remember previously successful agents sitting at their desks staring at their phones wondering why they stopped ringing. The previous years of a strong market had taught him that all he had to do was advertise his listing and himself in order for the phone to ring, and buyers would simply call.
However, once the market moved, the buyers stopped calling — and then so did the sellers. Without an increase in rents, buyers are less motivated to trade their leases for titles. And with less equity, sellers are more focused on paying off their mortgage than on moving into a larger home.
The solution I found was to move my agents from a marketing-based business plan to a prospecting plan.
As simple as it sounds, it is not! This is because it requires agents to develop new sales skills, habits and tactics.
Teach Agents to Prospect
If you are a new broker, you may never have experienced a buyer’s market and therefore may not know how to steer your agents through the transition – let alone a recession. The thing is. One of the biggest challenges guiding real estate agents during difficult times is finding the right lead generation techniques without risking too much money and wasting too much time.
Thinking back to the last recession, training my agents to move from marketing to prospecting not only resulted in more transactions, but also helped my team grow further. Not only did it save them money, but it taught them new skills and made them better agents.
Prospecting is the act of going out and finding business, rather than having business come to you and find you. It is the lowest cost, highest return lead generation activity real estate agents can do to generate business in a down market during periods of recession.
When the economy turns, so does financial uncertainty. This uncertainty leads to homeowners who fall behind on payments, investors who are struggling to keep properties, and marriages that fall apart.
The challenge is that, in many of these very personal situations, these potential sellers don’t ask for help. Embarrassed or just private, they choose to try to navigate these difficult times on their own. Since they are not calling us, we need to find them, talk to them and help them!
pro tip: If you don’t already offer your agents a tool to reach distressed or reluctant landlords, we like the prospecting platform REDX that allows clients to subscribe to rent by owner and preforeclosure lead lists. gives. His auto-dialer is also one of The Close’s favourites.
Finally, here are some articles you can use to create agent training focused on prospecting:
Focus and organize the team
You’ve heard it before, but it bears repeating in a changing market: Doing the same thing expecting different results is the definition of insanity. When an agent’s marketing stops working, it’s time for them to do something different. The challenge many agents face is trying to figure out what strategies and techniques are effective in this market.
The overwhelming decision of what to do, combined with their fear of making mistakes, leads to perfection paralysis. they can do no wrong (not in This market), so they don’t make any decisions or make any changes. They are completely caught up in the madness!
In order to successfully guide agents during a meltdown, you must have them all focused and moving in the same direction together. Your new direction will include new training, skill development and habit building techniques that will deliver quick results.
Combined effort, accountability and visibility will deliver group results and confirm that new training and lead generation techniques are working. This will motivate and inspire the rest of the team to continue their effort. New focus and enthusiasm can be contagious and eventually lead to good habits and great results.
Track their progress and hold them accountable
Ask most agents why they got into real estate instead of pursuing a traditional 9-to-5 career, and they will tell you that they wanted the freedom, flexibility, and unlimited income that a career in real estate provides.
While real estate offers all of these things, it does not offer them all at once. An agent may have freedom and flexibility, but then the dream of unlimited income is not going to come true. Those of us who have experienced the excitement of making over $100,000 month after month in real estate also know that it doesn’t come from freedom or flexibility. It came from a lot of discipline and accountability!
To successfully transition your brokerage to a prospecting-based culture, you’ll need to add tracking and accountability to your weekly activities. Understandably, this will not be accepted by all of your agents. Especially the highly independent types.
Start with a small group of new agents, if necessary. Once a week you will guide them to set personal prospecting goals. We call these key performance indicators or KPIs.
KPIs include the number of actions they take (call, text, door-knock, message), conversations they have, appointments they schedule, and appointments they keep. Each agent should set their own personal goal of what they want to accomplish for the week.
At the end of the week, they will report on their KPIs. With a little guidance and accountability, you’ll see conversations turn into appointments and appointments into agreements.
pro tipDon’t forget to consider the current policies you have in place and how they may need to change in response to this pivot. The My Brokerage Processes and Procedures Planning Template is a helpful tool in this process. Download it for free below!
circle of success
If you want to turn your office into a profitable prospecting machine, So your #1 job at the end of each week is to celebrate each agent’s successes., no matter how small. Many agents will set aspirational goals and are embarrassed or ashamed to report their numbers. If they feel defeated, they will not continue to participate and eventually they may quit altogether. That’s why you should appreciate even the smallest effort of each agent.
When you set consistent goals and acknowledge the small victories, you’ll find that it empowers agents to pursue more possibilities. And the more chances they have, the better they get as their skills improve. Additionally, the prospecting culture you create will motivate other agents to participate. Your prospecting group will grow as it attracts other agents who want to be a part of something exciting and productive. i call it circle of success,
Add and recruit the right agents
It may seem strange to expand during a recession. But the health of a brokerage can be directly attributed to the number of real estate professionals (or agent count) at the brokerage. So, during a downtrend in the market, you should induct more and more agents in your brokerage.
When you are effectively training your team away from an individual agent marketing culture and toward a group accountability prospecting culture, you will automatically attract agents from other brokerages who are looking for the same company. Which is better suited for the current market.
Your tendency may be to invite them all to participate in your prospecting culture. While newcomers can bring excitement to a group, they can also bring fear and criticism. So before you add outside members to your potential team, make sure they understand and agree to the rules. Here are the five rules for my prospecting team.
Sean’s Prospecting Team Rules
- be on time and professional
- Opportunity first, market second
- honesty leads to clarity
- Accountability Improves Performance
- We celebrate progress, not achievement
Feel free to use mine or make up your own. Clear rules and expectations of your future team will preserve the culture and ensure that there are minimal barriers to entry from new team members.
Disruptions create chaos and negatively affect progress. So, both your team and your pocketbook will appreciate clear expectations. Now let’s go prospecting!
ground level
If you want – or need – to change the trajectory of your real estate brokerage during this changing market, you’ll need to potentially retrain your agents and generate leads again. To do this, you need a clear plan for organizing the team, teaching them new skills, holding them accountable, and celebrating their progress.
This, along with the cycle of success, was the secret to my success in leading my brokerage through the greatest real estate recession in history. I believe it will be effective for you too. Please share your success stories in the comments section below!
