The Millennial Wheel: Recruiting - and Retaining - Tomorrow’s AgentBy Suzanne DeVita
At just above 30 percent, millennials now make up the largest segment of buyers. Only 2 percent of REALTORS® are under the age of 30. How can the industry reconcile such a discrepancy?
As attendees of RISMedia’s recent Broker Best Practices Webinar learned, the solution is a spoke-hub recruitment and retention strategy, centered on—what else?—all things millennial. “My study groups have shown that millennials would rather work with people close to their own age,” says Vince Leisey, president of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Ambassador Real Estate, in the DocuSign-sponsored webinar, “Bringing on the Best: Finding, Hiring and Keeping Your Next Superstars.” “If they’re truly going to be the generation with the greatest buying power…we need to understand how to communicate with them, how to relate to them, and how to attract them to our business.” One of the key spokes in the wheel? A team-oriented environment. “Most top-producing agents, especially millennials, want to be surrounded with other top-producing agents they can mastermind with,” says Rick Geha, leader of The Rick Geha Team with Golden State Realty & Leasing, and a former recruiter with Century 21 Real Estate and Keller Williams Realty. “If they can find those other top producers in their own office, they are more likely to stay.” “They are the generation of collaboration, teams, doing things together—completely unlike the baby boomer generation, which was, ‘It’s me against the world...I don’t need anybody else’s help,’” says Leisey, whose three largest teams have leaders averaging 30 years old. Leisey calls upon a numerical system, called the ‘1-3-6’ process, to teach new recruits how to set goals and manage their time. The first step, the ‘1,’ requires agents to ask themselves, "What is my one objective?" In the second step, the ‘3,’ agents must ask themselves, "What are the three action steps I need to do every day to achieve that objective?" In the third step, the ‘6,’ agents map out the six activities they need to either stop doing, do less of, or delegate to accomplish their goal. “Our belief is that we need to re-recruit the agents that we have first,” Leisey says, “and that if we do a great job of taking $6 million dollar-producers and making them $7 million dollar-producers…everybody in the marketplace takes notice of that. It becomes real easy to recruit.” The most valuable takeaway from the webinar? Successfully executing these strategies begins and ends with culture, agree Geha and Leisey. “If you have incredible culture…you’ll have no problem recruiting new agents, because they’re going to be influenced by you, your disposition and your confidence level,” Geha says. “Culture is No. 1 in an organization,” says Leisey. “Let’s work with purpose, but let’s also give [agents] an environment where they can take a break, have some fun and relax.” Suzanne De Vita is RISMedia's Online Associate Editor: sdevita@rismedia.com. |
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