A short talk (YouTube video) advising managers of real estate agents on retention strategies: accept that good people will leave, don’t take departures personally, learn from exits, and maintain a supportive culture. Emphasizes investing back into current agents and relying on referrals rather than active cold recruiting.
Retention. If you are in the business of working with agents, managing agents, you are going to have very, very good people leave. And here's the thing, as much as possible, don't take it personally. Don't turn off their email and banish them and send their license back. Don't get super pissed. I know it's hard not to when you've invested in people. But here's the thing I learned early on, Lars. This job, this team, it's not about me. And if someone chooses to start their own brokerage, to start their own team, to go to a new firm, you want to learn. Yeah. Certainly you want to learn. Hey, is there something I could have done better? Is there something that you didn't like? But at the end of the day, wish people well, kill them with kindness, support them. In my opinion, life's too short. And I think for me that has again, in small markets. I think it can help you, I mean, just from a business standpoint, if you are known as just being supportive. Because again, there's so many models out there, brokerage models, team models. Because of the way I do things doesn't mean it's the right way and it's the only way. There are certain people that are going to be incredibly loyal to your team no matter what. I've got a lot of them, really good hearted people. They could run their own brokerage, they could run their own team, they could do a variety of things, but they like what we offer. And I've had a lot of good people leave for again, a variety of reasons. So I think the biggest thing I would say with retention is realize you're going to lose people, get over it in some sense, try to learn from it, but then pour back into your existing people. Most of the best agents that I've recruited over the years are all referrals. I don't actively recruit. I literally don't call other agents, other brokers. In our market, the entire team growth has been referral based. And I just want to be one of the options, 1 of 2, 3, 4 or 5. So again, I'm not a big cold caller, I'm not a big whatever, but you've got to have your value proposition and your best recruiting and retention tools are your existing agents. If they're liking it, they're going to stay and they're going to refer you as well.
