Hiring your first junior broker
Hello all,

I'm looking to add a junior broker to my team in the first 12 weeks of this year. Unfortunately, I work at a small firm and do not have mentors in the company that can guide me on how to go about doing this. 

What did you do when you brought them on? What did you have them doing? How did you work up a split/what did you provide them?

Thanks!
[{"id": "dby7md0", "text": "Where are you based out of, is this a 100% commission role?", "replies": [{"id": "dby9jil", "text": "Nashville, TN and yes, it would be completely based on commission", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "dbz35zv", "text": "As a junior broker myself at a large independent firm, I suggest letting the junior shadow you, go on meetings with you, and just join you in your daily routine. Hopefully the junior will already have his license, so 1-3 months of this then let the junior start cold calling, bird dogging and doing what they can to pick up listings. New listings that junior picks up will be co-brokered with you. \n\nI've been at my current company for 2 years now and the biggest contributing factor is having a mentor..I was able to close 22 deals my first year in CRE. \n\nI had a mentor during my first 3 months under one of our top retail brokers. He put me on 1 project with him mainly returning voicemails and touring prospects. I'd spend most of my days driving and familiarizing myself with the market. Id call every center in 3 mile radius to figure out what other centers were quoting, vacancies, and going door to door to hand out flyers, business cards, and attempt to figure out what the tenants were actually paying (and lease expiration). This was extremely valuable to me as I believe this to be fundamental when picking up any new listing (market knowledge). \n\nDuring this time I would cold call to try and set meetings in which my mentor would accompany me. We would split new listings 50/50.\n\n After the 3 months, I broke off and started to set meetings to pick up listings in land, investments, and industrial so I had a taste of all product types. I would then choose to partner with a senior broker that specialized in the particular product by bringing them on the meetings with me.  This not only allowed me to learn from a specialized broker but incentivized me to pick up listings because I was the one bringing people on meetings not the other way around. \n\nOut of the 22 deals, half were retail leases the rest were sales.", "replies": [{"id": "dbzp565", "text": "Loga - Great to hear from a junior broker. \n\nWhat was your approach to cold calling? (please refer to my comment above to Limkar)\n\nThanks!", "replies": [{"id": "dc0a5j2", "text": "Market knowledge is the key here. Whether it be poor property management (i.e. trash in the center) or vacancies in a market seeing high occupancy rates, whatever the case may be to turn a cold call into a warm call. I would even leverage tenants that other brokers in the office represented as an excuse to call an owner. \n\n\nCoStar, Landvision, BWise and white pages premium are the softwares that we utilize. \n\n", "replies": [], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "dbz68gf", "text": "Congratulations on the success!\n\nAdding a new team member is quite an undertaking, but if you have a good program can certainly pay off.  Here is the basic outline on our program.  Our last guy just got off and is on his own and doing quite well.\n\nStep 1: Hire the right person.  From what I have found, you have to have a real estate license to be of any use, if they don't have one then they need to get it before we actually bring them on.  Second, they have to have some reason to want to do this other than \"I want to make money.\"  The business is incredibly frustrating and I have watched too many people go away after we invested time, energy and money training them because they found another opportunity elsewhere.  I want successful brokers around me and from what I can tell every successful broker I know loves this business for some reason apart from the money (my current theory is that you have to be a little insane to be successful in brokerage).\n\nStep 2: Have a training program ready for them.  Figure out what you need, are you a leasing guy?  Then run them through proposals, leases, and market research. Investment sales?  They need to know how to prospect, how to run an analysis on an investment, who the local players are, and what a marketing plan looks like.  If you train them and they feel like they know at least something, they will convert cold calls to leads much better than if you send them straight to the wolves.\n\nStep 3: Establish goals and targets for them and monitor their progress.  Weekly cold call review meetings, find out their successes and build on them, find out where they are struggling and help them.\n\nStep 4: Give them stuff to work on, feed them leads at first... even if you started out the hard way clawing and scratching for every deal.  It helps them build confidence and helps educate them on the process.  Chances are if they botch the 1,500sf industrial lease they will learn something.  Hopefully they won't make the same mistake on a 10,000sf sale.\n\nStep 5: Figure out a fair compensation plan, they are not your slave and do not now owe you in perpetuity.  You do want to recoup your cost of training and your time.  Figure out a way in advance that you can do this that works for both of you.\n\nFeel free to PM me, happy to chat anytime.", "replies": [{"id": "dbzp09x", "text": "Limkar - What resources are you providing them for cold calling? I haven't actually done much cold calling - I found my success in face to face meetings (i.e. stopping by a business). Do you have them practice with scripts?", "replies": [{"id": "dbzqead", "text": "The super simplified version is as follows:\n\nFor industrial we focus on a specific geography.  We have them go door to door to collect business cards and develop their database, then work on following up on that database (calls, letters, stopping by, etc...)and building leads from there.  We use the pretty standard set of tools (Landvision, CRM, ProspectNow, etc...) to help.", "replies": [], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "dbzi8we", "text": "3 years into the cre business here with now 2 Jr. agents.\n\nBoth are producing, both are on a 50/50 split with me. \n\nMy first Jr. isn't a year in, with over $50M in aggregate listings, second one just a few months in with his first listing and deal under contract. \n\nI had them start on the phones, and only the phones.  Getting many repetitions of talking to landlords in is crucial to their early and longterm success.  \n\nAs they improved on the phones, obviously, they would need to take the client further, which is where I take the reigns and they would watch.\n\nEach repetition of this teaching them more and more.\n\nDon't make the mistake of being a tutor and distracting from your core business.  It's a 'do like I do' mentality, with them observing your process.  You're not a lecturer, you're a doer. \n \nShow them how you succeed", "replies": [{"id": "dbzotuq", "text": "That's awesome! Congrats on your success.\n\nHow do you have them contacting landlords? I do have a few big office buildings and shopping centers listed, but the majority of my business has been tenant rep work. I would love to expand my landlord rep business, but don't exactly know how to go about doing so. \n\nThank you! Definitely going to have him watching me, instead of teaching. There's just too much to teach.", "replies": [{"id": "dbzrtmt", "text": "In reading through your replies I had a question... why do you want to hire a junior broker?", "replies": [{"id": "dbzt5qa", "text": "With everything that I'm working on now, I need a junior broker on my team to free me up from some of my current responsibilities, i.e. site tours, cold calling, etc. I've found that the biggest return on my time is being in front of larger groups to generate leads - business networking groups, chambers, speaking opportunities. But I know the value of hitting the streets every day and can see how adding someone to my team to focus on that and \"headhunt\" could be very beneficial and add to the bottom line.", "replies": [], "depth": 4}], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}]