In the CRE industry, good talent is hard to find and even harder to hold on to. The best agents are incredibly valuable: As much as 80 percent of CRE business is done by just 20 percent of the brokers, which means the cream of the crop is in high demand.
The value of retaining these brokers is significant. Once an agent has secured his position with a client, it is very likely that the client will return with another listing—80 percent of buyers say they would use their agent again or refer their agent to others. And more than that, repeat clients on average spend 67 percent more than first-time clients.
But in order to hold onto top talent, brokerages need to do something new—and fast. In 2015, one-third of real estate professionals left their firms to move to another, likely taking their loyal clients with them. This reflects a 67 percent increase in turnover from the previous year, so unfortunately, this problem isn’t going away.
To avoid excess costs of recruiting, hiring and training new brokers, you must actively take steps to improve retention. One of those steps is using Buildout.
The benefits of Buildout for your brokers
With Buildout, your brokers can create high-quality, professional proposals and produce brand-consistent marketing materials like flyers, brochures, websites, emails and OMs. With Buildout’s tools at their fingertips, your team will also be able to create those documents more quickly, allowing your brokers to be the first to propose to represent a client and giving them more time to build relationships and provide the best service possible for existing clients. And this can all be executed with Buildout by your brokers or your on-staff marketing team, meaning no matter the size of your brokerage, high-quality marketing materials are never out of reach.
No matter the size of your brokerage, high-quality marketing materials are never out of reach.
What exactly does this mean for retention? All these benefits translate to higher client and broker satisfaction, and in turn, higher client and broker retention. Due to the relationship-driven nature of the CRE industry, retention is absolutely crucial to the success of your brokerage.
How Buildout can improve broker retention
A broker may choose to leave a firm for one of many reasons. Maybe they’re on the hunt for more business and growth opportunities, better support from their brokerage or a better split. No matter what they’re looking for, there’s no denying that talent turnover is rampant. In fact, as of a 2014 survey by the National Association of Realtors, agent turnover is at its highest level since 1987.
Other brokers have cited the lure of a better reputation, new technology and stronger marketing support as their reasons for leaving a past firm. So to keep brokers feeling happy and effective as client demands and expectations evolve, you have to provide tools that advance the achievement of your team. Without these tools, it will be more difficult to retain your top talent. Buildout is one of the instruments that can help you maintain broker satisfaction at your firm.
With Buildout, you can tackle the challenges of building and maintaining a professional, reputable brand that brokers will want to sell with and stay with. Brokers will know that every one of the materials they’re putting out to promote a listing is a high-quality piece they can be proud to distribute to buyers. Brokers can get more opportunities to win listings through the ability to create proposals more quickly and easily and win even more of those listings with beautiful proposals using an established brand.
Plus, once brokers and marketing functions are able to create materials more efficiently, your agents can rest assured that they’ll never be left trying to put together a proposal or successfully market a client’s listing at the last moment. Once a proposal is submitted in a timely manner with the help of Buildout, a broker will have the opportunity to direct his attention toward another proposal. And brokers know that the more opportunities you have to propose, the more opportunities you have to close.
To learn more about how Buildout can help you keep your top talent, check out our webinar “Arm your brokers with a winning tool” today.
