How to answer the 3 questions that matter most to agent recruits

There are three recruitment questions that an agent will want answered by a broker and the brokerage when they decide to move their license. Without these three things in place, regardless of what else you offer them, they won’t come.

You can tell the recruit how great your company is and show them all your statistics, show them your fancy advertising, and it won’t matter at all. Over time, I learned that my values are the best recruiting tool that I have.

What agents need

I think most times, what happens in a recruiting appointment is that we just hit the recruit with everything that we have to offer because we are so excited about it, and we just want them to see how much stuff we have. 

But in reality, they just want to know the answers to these three questions first:

• Do you care about them? You just can’t fake this. Do you really care about what happens to that person sitting in front of you?
• Can you help them? They made an appointment with you because something was missing at their current brokerage. They need help with something. Answer this question for them, and you are almost there.
• Can they trust you? Will you deliver everything that you say over the long term? Trust is something that will shine through, or it won’t.

When we realize how important the first three questions are, then we can change the way that we approach the appointment with the recruit. 

Once these three things are out of the way, the recruit will be open to seeing all the other things that your brokerage has to offer. 

College coaches

Let’s take a look at a college football coach who does a lot of recruiting. In that space, a lot of time is spent on the first three questions when they are approaching a top candidate. The college may even assign somebody different to start talking about things that address these three questions before the coach ever gets involved; it’s that important.

After all, they are asking a young athlete to leave his or her family and lifelong home, travel to a strange city, and put the athlete’s career in their hands. 

Only after this will the coach start talking about the offense, the stadium and the workout facility. See, it’s all meaningless without the first three. Same thing in recruiting real estate agents. Do you care about me? Can you help me? Can I trust you?

How to address the 3 most important recruitment questions

Here is how you can address all three.

Do you care about me?

This starts with finding out more about them as a person. 

• Where are they from? 
• What do they do for fun?
• What are their goals in the real estate business? 

Share your history of how you developed other agents. Let them see some of the relationships that you have built.

Can you help me?

First, we have to uncover why they took your call. What are they missing? Then you can break down in detail exactly how you would fill that need and any others that they may have. You also have to show them how you personally have the knowledge and know-how to specifically help them with what they specifically need. No generalizing.

Can I trust you?

Here’s what they need to know:

• What is your reputation in the business like? 
• Have you acted professionally when scheduling appointments with them?
• Have you kept all the appointments? 
• Are you really concentrating on your time with them and making the meeting individual to them and not a canned speech?
• What would your current agents say about you? 

Let the recruit speak with some of them.

This would be a great start, and then you will really show them by your daily actions once they come over. Did you do everything that you said you would do before they arrived? Trust is something that, when it’s gone, it’s not coming back. 

We can also apply these three recruitment questions to our existing agents. Yes, they have the same three questions. When agents move on to other brokerages, it could be for a million reasons, but when you look back, you’ll often find that you, as the leader, did not satisfy them on these three questions.

In this busy, competitive business, you will find many agents who put culture over commission because who they work with is more important than what they get paid. Great values will bring them in, and more importantly, great values will keep them with you for a long time.

You can use these same three questions with your staff as well. In fact, you can use these in all of your relationships. Human nature and human needs will always win over everything else. 

By understanding and using this information, you can approach your recruiting meetings differently and hopefully bring more people over to your office in a meaningful way. Everybody wins.