A recent case study by ERA Real Estate reveals the six steps essential to successful recruitment—talent attraction tips proven by the professionals who employ them each and every day.

1. Think like your prospect. What you find valuable about your brokerage may be very different than what a prospective sales associate may find valuable. Shake up your thinking on the reasons why affiliating would be beneficial and adapt a different mindset, so that you can best showcase the real attractive elements of your company.

2. Do a SWOT and evaluate your office. Take a step back and think about the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) in your local market. You may think you know, but actually putting pen to paper may uncover some new areas you haven’t thought of. Evaluating your current use of physical space in the office, as well as current per-agent productivity, are good first steps to determine what resources you actually need.

3. Develop a value proposition. Here’s another place where you may think, “Of course I know what that is!” Try to articulate it right now in 15 seconds or less—could you say it easily? If not, take some time to fine-tune your elevator pitch so you can “talk the talk” about why an agent should affiliate with you. If you don’t know, they won’t know either.

4. Craft your plan.Now that you’ve done your homework, it’s time to figure out the actual talent attraction plan. How many people are you looking to bring on? Develop systems to keep yourself on task and on schedule.

5. Retention starts from day one.Enact a strategic process to bring agents into the fold once they have affiliated with you. Mentoring programs are excellent for this—and remember, retention is something that begins on day one.

6. Hold yourself accountable. At ERA, we recently piloted a Talent Attraction Accountability Session, a nine-week course made up of six live webcast sessions and three weeks of field work. Of the nine companies that participated, the group collectively attracted 68 quality agents with a projected sales volume of $76 million. Through strategies like this, you can ensure you’re staying accountable for the five steps above— and really bring in quality folks to your team.

For more information, please visit www.era.com.