Talent is the lifeblood of any business. And in order to keep a competitive edge in an already crowded marketplace, real estate brokers always have to have a pulse connected to top talent and a steady heartbeat with their efforts to recruit.
As a broker, you’re always networking, staying connected to the big players in the market, but in order to lure them away from their current role, you need to interrupt their day with something compelling and show the true value your brokerage can offer.
All that starts with having a marketing system to build relationships for the long-term.
What is IXACT Recruiter?
IXACT Recruiter is a robust contact management system that puts you in the driver’s seat for attracting and retaining top-tier talent. IXACT Recruiter is a customized version of IXACT Contact’s industry-leading CRM for real estate agents, with the functionality and content tuned to the unique needs and requirements of real estate recruiters.
There are very few CRM solutions specifically for recruiters, and those that are available are VERY expensive. IXACT Recruiter fills the gap with recruiting contact management, keep in touch, and email marketing functionality, at a fraction of the cost.
How IXACT Recruiter Helps Bring New Blood Into Your Business
Whether you’re a big brokerage with a dedicated team of recruiters scattered across the country or recruiting is just part of your job as the managing broker, the goal remains the same – making connections and building relationships. Here are three key areas where agent recruiters can streamline their executive search strategy.
- Content as a Value Add
IXACT Recruiter’s automated e-Newsletter functionality produces five uniquely written articles designed to educate agents with phenomenal content. With set-it-and-forget-it automation, the ability to be fully customizable and fully branded, this original content is researched and written by IXACT Contact’s marketing experts. It covers pertinent topics such as, how to be a better realtor, how to make more money, increasing your market share, how to overcome challenges in this competitive field, along with world-class tips and resources for talent attraction.
From a recruiting standpoint, this valuable content is hard to come by. Having unique and tailored material can be scarce because not many people are writing about real estate recruitment – not to mention having a stream of fresh content being delivered to you every month. And it gets real estate agents thinking: “well this brokerage has given me more resources for my career than my own firm – what’s that saying about their vested interest in my career development?”
Content serves as the Holy Grail here, and is a key differentiator in terms of retention and recruitment.
- Drip Marketing Plans
Similar to the activity plans that IXACT Contact has for real estate agents, IXACT Recruiter has a slightly different look and feel for recruitment. Understandably, there are many different ways of categorizing an agent. How do you systematically go about communicating with top producing agents, struggling agents, or new agents – rather than a one-size fits all approach? You need to have the customizable freedom to target agents at different points in their career.
You have the power to leverage nurture campaigns to keep in touch with a new leads that might not be ready to make a move yet, but it allows you to keep your brokerage in front of them as the months roll by. And with any marketing drip campaign you run, these are entirely customizable where you can edit the copy and imagery, add in your own articles, or even delete articles you want. Plus with comprehensive email reporting you can better understand who is engaging with your content and on what screen. Staying in front of prospective agents means staying in front of whatever screen they use.
- Blending Automation With Personalization
The future is defined by automation. IXACT Recruiter allows you to be purposeful and proactive to whom you are talking to and when you’re talking to them. It mixes the art of being personal with the power of automation. And when those two ingredients come together, it allows for a potent outcome with the ability to be very precise in your messaging.
You can break down your contact lists into different segments, such as, reminders on birthdays, big events, anniversaries, tidbits you took away from your last touch point – it’s completely up to you to customize. IXACT Recruiter allows you to categorize agents at every different level so your communications with them on the topics and issues that are relevant to them, both from a personal and professional standpoint.
IXACT Recruiter allows you to be Purposeful and Strategic
Recruiters are operating within a very select circle. They want to only recruit from within their market. So how do you pull away the superstars within your talent pool?
There are two different recruiting techniques to attract the best talent. One type of agent recruiter is out there everyday, setting up meetings, pounding the pavement, going to board and local association meetings, and have shaken hands with every single agent in town. It’s an aggressive approach to power through their database, and one that is rather time consuming to set up these meetings that might not amount to any conversions.
The other kind of recruiter is one that leans on their CRM to allow them to be more purposeful and strategic about their approach. They can build a big database complete with rich profiles of these prospective recruits and really get to know an agent on a personal level. It allows them to take a holistic view of their background, why they went into real estate, what their vision is, any family information, interests and hobbies. It’s the type of intangible ammunition that allows them to have a much more personal conversation instead of approaching it with your own brokerage’s needs first.
This is vital information that can be the final selling point to make them change organizations, but it can’t just rattle around in your head – you need a CRM to categorize and optimize this intel.
Where The Part-Time Recruiter Benefits
We broke down the two different styles to real estate recruiting in the section above, but those mostly apply to the full-time recruiters. What about those brokers that run this function in addition to working 12-hour days?
What happens is this naturally slides to the bottom of their to-do list.
Real estate is a complex business and part-time recruiters have a lot to navigate to help look after their team – the last thing they have time for is to work on their recruitment strategy. And while it might not seem urgent, automation can help these processes continue organically in the background. Consider it your virtual assistant that allows you to keep on track with your recruiting efforts – while still running a profitable brokerage.
IXACT Recruiter as a Retention Tool
We’ve discussed the power of IXACT Recruiter as a way to nurture talent, but from the flipside here, it can be an outstanding tool for agent retention. Just because you have them on your team doesn’t mean you stop providing them with resources to help them strengthen their craft. Having a high-powered CRM can do wonders for your internal database with so much value to provide to your own agents. Employees of any kind want to know that their company are investing in their success, and this is just one of many ways you can do that for your agents.
Staying top of mind to capture the attention and interest of a recruit takes consistency. IXACT Recruiter is extremely cost effective and the best value as a CRM solution available for recruiters on the market.
To learn more or to sign up for an IXACT Recruiter™ free trial account – click here for more information.