The short answer
Every team has a value proposition. Most don't know what it is or how to package it for top talent. Unpack it, define the agent you want, package it well, and put it in front of those agents.
What happened
The team was an independent residential real estate team in the Southeast. I was advising them on their Zillow business when their recruiter was promoted to sales manager, and I stepped in and built their recruiting department.
It was raw. There was no process, system, or strategy. Most days meant six to eight phone calls with agents who applied from an Indeed ad, repeating the same pitch for six to eight hours a day.
So I built a three-minute video. It walked through the team's value proposition, including the math on commission splits. By the end of the video, a candidate had qualified or disqualified themselves. Agents who met the hiring criteria and wanted the role scanned a QR code to a booking link. They arrived as warm, excited candidates.
The results:
- Hire rate went from 35% to 70%.
- I hired 70 agents in six months, with 16 in the biggest month, and the team grew from 60 agents to 120 in seven months.
The four steps
The story above, in the order you'd run it:
1. Unpack your value proposition. For this team, the biggest draw was leads: Zillow plus several pre-qualified lender lead sources. Growth tracks for agents to become a team lead or grow their own team. And an ISA team that screened leads before agents spoke to customers, which cut drive time and meant agents mostly met viable buyers.
2. Define the agent you want to recruit. Design your ideal agent profile before you pitch anyone. That profile decides who moves forward.
3. Package it the right way. The three-minute video is the package. It carries the value proposition and the commission split math, and it does the qualifying for you: the right agents finish it excited and book a call. The wrong ones disqualify themselves before they take your time.
4. Get it in front of those agents. The team recruited from Indeed, cold outbound, and agent referrals. The video went out when agents applied on Indeed, or after a cold outbound call.
Keeping the agents you hire
Recruiting only pays if agents stay. This team used an extensive onboarding program to ramp agents into production, plus ongoing training, internal leadership roles, multiple lead sources, and culture.