The Three Agent Retention Constants

by | Nov 26, 2018

by Ben Hess, Managing Director, ThirdPool Recruiting

Next to recruiting, the retention of profitable agents is something that exasperates every real estate leader.

It’s difficult and expensive to recruit, train, mentor, and coach a new agent. Seeing your investment walk out the door is heartbreaking—and bottom-line breaking.

For years, human resource consulting firms have studied the reasons for employee attrition.

CEB Corporate Leadership Council published their findings in a recent report on how to create compelling careers for today’s employees.

Some of these reasons are constants (they seem to show up in every study), but new variables are now emerging due to the tight labor market and innovative data collection techniques.

Here is the prioritized list of the attrition constants:

1. They don’t see opportunities for promotion and growth.

2. They don’t like their bosses (especially their first-level managers).

3. They are proactively offered a better opportunity (usually involving higher pay/better split).

If you’re not focusing most of your retention effort on these issues, you’ll miss the mark.

There are new retention variables to consider as well. We’ll cover those in tomorrow’s Insight.

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The Attrition Variables

The Attrition Variables

While these attrition constants still have the greatest influence, there are some emerging attrition variables worth noting. People also tend to leave companies when: They feel like they’re not doing as well as others in their peer group outside the company. They feel like they’re not as far along as they should be at a certain point in life.

The Attrition Constants

The Attrition Constants

If you’re not focusing most of your retention effort on these issues, you’ll miss the mark. If you’re not focusing most of your recruiting effort on exploiting these weaknesses among your competitors, you’re missing the best opportunities.

The Persistence Mindset

The Persistence Mindset

A leader equipped with this mindset can have a profound effect on the life and career of each individual they engage. It works because an agent is getting a real-time glimpse of what it would be like to work on your team. But it only becomes believable when it is persistently applied over time.