The Boutique Broker's Guide to Delighting Agents and Winning Star Talent

Adkins, who works with a range of different brokerages trying to solve this problem, suggests that perhaps a one-size-fits-every-agent isn’t always the best solution. So the first question is, what’s your path forward, and how do you want to think about your offerings?

“I’m a deep believer in a traditional brokerage model if the agent gets more than just a company sign and ‘We’ll enter your listings for you.’ I don’t need you to get a big chunk of my commission for that. But give me really professional advice on my business, and how I can adopt these tools and grow. 

“That should start in recruiting and carry through after they sign up. And I know that’s easier said and done for brokers, but is your goal to have 25 amazing agents? Or 100 agents, with 25 who are producing?”

And when scaling, “eliminating agent choice is definitely key,” he adds. Brokers need to determine what they’re providing, marketing-wise—content, social media, emails, postcards, all or some or none of those things?

Maybe you can find one vendor that can do all of those things, ideally—or they do some of those things and offer add-on solutions for others, or simply say they can’t provide a full spread of services. “But it’s got to be scalable; they have to provide consistency,” Adkins notes.

He also says that hiring people from outside the real estate industry to help with staffing and management solutions can be one of the best things a brokerage can do for itself. They’re willing to ask “why are you doing things that way?” instead of following the same tired path, and it’s possible their suggestion will be game-changing.