What are the 3 factors you should consider when choosing a real estate brokerage to align yourself with?  There are many different real estate firms out there to choose from as a real estate agent.  There are also many factors to consider when it comes to making a decision as to where you should hang your real estate license.  Things such as market share, brand recognition, and physical location come to mind.  However, as a real estate agent, the 3 main factors you should be looking at when deciding on a firm to align yourself with are: Training, Mindset (both of the company and the agents within), and Business Development Opportunity.  These all build off each other, and once these three are met, everything else can be worked through.  Let’s take a look at each one individually:

1) TRAINING

It all begins with the training.  Whether you are a brand new agent, just passing your real estate exam, or a seasoned veteran doing 100+ transactions a year, you will want to choose a brokerage who offers a wide variety of consistent, free training and classes. 

The worst thing that can happen if you are a brand new is having your broker or manager point to a cubicle with a telephone and a computer telling you to “have at it.”  You most likely are already feeling overwhelmed and unsure of yourself. Let’s face it, what they teach you in real estate school does not prepare you to help clients through the biggest transactions of their lives.  You will want to choose a brokerage that will teach you how to not only navigate through all the documents and paperwork such as the agreement of sale, but one that will also teach you how to be a salesperson.  Please don’t forget that you are now in sales, real estate just happens to be the product that you are selling.  You will want to make sure your brokerage offers regular classes on all topics that will help you to be a stronger agent.  This includes but is not limited to how to work with buyers, sellers, and investors; how to handle the different personality styles of the clients you will be dealing with; how to prospect and lead generate; how to take your client through each phase of the sales cycle, and many similar topics.  Ideally, the brokerage can offer you a mentor, a productivity coach, or both.

If you are an agent who is not brand new, and are comfortable with the basics, you’ll still want to find a brokerage that will continue to educate you on how to bring more value to your clients.  Important aspects would be a brokerage that keep you up to speed on changes within the industry, one that is technology driven, and most of all, one that offers higher concept training, such as how to compete and win in multi-offer situations.  You will also want a brokerage that fosters masterminding with other top agents to source ideas such as creating systems to scale your business and how to expand into other markets profitably.

2.)  MINDSET

When it comes to mindset, we are talking about both the mindset of the brokerage, as well as the majority of the agents that work out of your particular office.  So much of your success in this business will come from your mindset and the environment you choose to operate in.  In fact, 80% of your success will come from your mindset, and the other 20% will come from your actions and work ethic…this is known as The Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 Rule.    This is why it is imperative for your brokerage and the agents you surround yourself with to always be focusing on abundance, growth, and the opportunities at hand.   The doom and gloom of any particular economic cycle, changes in the status quo of day to day business operations, and the overall victim mentality is what you want to avoid like the plague.  There will always be challenges in any market at any given time, and these challenges need to be seen as an opportunity to rise above the competition which, for the most part, will be focusing on the negatives.  I had the pleasure of moderating a Listing Presentation Panel today in my office.  We had leaders of three of the top teams in the area share and discuss their tactics, thoughts, and mindsets in an open forum discussion.  There was a huge turnout of agents, not just from my office, but we opened it to agents from other brokerages as well.  There were so many takeaways and actionable steps that will lead to more business for every agent that attended.  This is the type of information you want to have available to you.  These are the types of agents you want to surround yourself with, not the ones that keep their “secrets” to themselves in fear of some healthy competition.  Choose a brokerage that has a growth mindset, as well as one that invites its agents to choose a growth mindset as well.  

3.) Business Development Opportunity

Make no mistake, you are your brand, and thus you are your business.  You want to choose a brokerage that will not only help you develop the “brand” of yourself, but also help develop a business which is consistent, scalable, and most important, profitable.  You don’t want to be the type of agent whose monthly P&L statement looks like the Rocky Mountains.  You want to build a business that has both new clients and repeat/referral clients coming in on a consistent basis.  You want to have the ability to scale your business so you can leverage your time.  You’ll want to make sure you have a business that is profitable from the start.  This means helping you understand your financials, keeping you accountable with your business plan ( you do have one of those don’t you??), and offering you opportunities for profitability outside of property sales.  These include, but are not limited to: mortgage and title opportunities, profit sharing, and ownership opportunities.

Choosing which brokerage you decide to associate yourself with is an important decision.  It doesn’t matter how nice the signs look, how many “leads” they promise you’ll get each month, or if they give you free business cards.  What truly matters is will you get consistent training that will allow you to bring value to your clients, will you be in a growth oriented environment, allowing you to focus on not only thinking big, but achieving big results, and will you have the opportunity to develop a business that will generate sizable profits for you and your family.  Remember, choosing to be a real estate agent is not a job.  If you take it seriously, and want to succeed, you need to treat it as a business…your business.

What brokerage firm did you choose, and why did you choose it?