Simple is not easy. In fact, simple is much more difficult than complex.
 
This is especially true when designing and executing important business systems in your organization.
 
We tend to make things complex when we believe something is essential or critical.
 
But simple works better.
 
Great thinkers have always known and operated by this principle.
 
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the famous French writer once said,
 
You know you’ve achieved perfection not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away.
 
Is your recruiting process simple for a prospect to understand?
 
Have you boiled down your value proposition to a single sentence or phrase (think headline)?
 
Do you have simple diagrams or analogies explaining what you do?
 
By doing the extra work to make things simple, author Jory Mackay says you’re clearing the way for your prospects to quickly and easily engage.
 
We love simple things because they’re easy on our brain—it doesn’t have to work as hard to understand them.
 
The choice is yours:
 
You do the extra brain work to make things simple, or you can make the mistake of insisting your prospects do it for you.

Last week, we discussed the benefits of smiling while you’re talking to recruiting prospects.

It helps your recruiting prospects feel less defensive, and it’s the foundation for building quick rapport.

Even if your prospect can’t see your face (i.e. you’re on the phone), researchers have found your smile can be “heard” by those on the other end of the line.

A positive attitude also comes across in your emails, text messages, and social media posts.

With this much riding on your positivity, protecting yourself from negative influences is something you must consider if you want to perform at a high level.

This is why a new study conducted by the University of Houston is so important—it revealed a source of negative emotion that is rampant in most workplaces:

Multitasking and constant interruptions at work can lead people to display negative emotions in addition to stress.

The connection between negative emotion and constant interruptions was so strong, the researchers likened it to a contagion.

This emotional contagion can spread in a group or workplace through the influence of conscious or unconscious processes involving emotional states or physiological responses.

This data draws a clear conclusion:

It’s important to spend focused time on recruiting in a place where you’ll not be interrupted or distracted.

Anything less will allow negativity to seep into your conversations and steal away your effectiveness.

Salespeople often get told to “smile and dial” early in their careers.

They’re given this advice because prospecting is the part of the sales process most people don’t enjoy.

It’s also the part of the recruiting process hiring managers tend to avoid.

Since it must be done, does it really help to smile while you’re making calls?

More than you might imagine.

Smiling has been proven to reduce stress, lower your heart rate, and help you feel more relaxed when you’re doing something that makes you nervous.

Even if you’re faking a smile (which most people have to do when prospecting), researchers found you’ll still experience the smiling benefits.

Mustering the motivation to make the dials is important, but the benefits don’t stop there.

Smiling also helps your recruiting prospects feel less defensive, and it’s the foundation for building a quick rapport.

But here’s the interesting part of smile research:

Smiling can be “heard” by the person to which you’re directing your smile—even if they can’t see your face.

So many of the in-person benefits of smiling are also experienced over the phone.

The old saying is true–when you’re smiling, the whole world smiles with you.

Especially those you’re trying to recruit.

I’m not much of a gardener, but each spring I try my hand at planting some different types of lettuces and greens in the small garden we have in our back yard.

To get started, I read the back of the seed packages each year and remember that after the seeds sprout, the small seedlings must be thinned out to allow the others room to grow.

In the end, only a few of the seeds we planted will turn into mature plants ready for harvest.

This process reminds me of something I’ve read hundreds of times in articles and books about success.

Everything in business operates on the indisputable law of the farm.

Seeds must be planted and nurtured in order to experience a harvest.

This nature-inspired concept is the downfall of many recruiters and hiring managers.

Why? Because they don’t consistently plant enough seeds to allow for the natural attrition that happens in every recruiting pipeline.

Even if you do a great job of nurturing your recruiting prospects, much of what happens is out of your control.

What if a new agent prospect takes another job, moves out of the area with a spouse, or suffers an illness that keeps them from pursuing a real estate career?

What if an experienced agent prospect receives an unexpected retention bonus, concludes the timing is not right to make a move, or gets promoted to a management position?

Farm-minded recruiters and hiring managers plant a lot of seeds, do everything they can to nurture those seeds, and rest assured the odds something will work out are in their favor.

According to author Scott Anthony, innovations come in two flavors.
 
Core innovations are lower potential projects expected to offer rapid returns, and they are near and complimentary to your current business process.
 
Competitors will often be aware of these innovations and likely be implementing many of the same ideas you’re considering.
 
New growth innovations push the frontier of your strategy by developing something utterly original or doing something in a novel way.
 
These innovations have the potential to produce substantial returns, but it takes much longer to realize revenue from them.
 
When attempting to innovate your recruiting process, which framework does your organization use?
 
The cadence of your actions will be different depending on which strategy you choose.
 
Core innovations will require you to execute better than your competitors.
 
New growth innovations require good ideas– plus the resilience and long-term focus to stay committed to them.
 
Neither one guarantees success, and both strategies produce some winners.
 
Pick one and then stay the course.

If you’ve been to the doctor’s office lately, you may have noticed that physicians are not very good listeners.
 
A post from the archive highlighted one study showing medical doctors spend an average of 13 seconds listening to their patients before interrupting them.
 
And they interrupt to ask yes/no questions intended to drive towards a preconceived diagnosis.
 
By contrast, many alternative medicine practitioners have mastered the art of listening to their patients.
 
They spend more time with each individual and ask open-ended/probing questions designed to learn more about their patient’s problems and concerns.
 
It’s not clear whether the second approach produces better outcomes, but alternative medical providers have carved out a sizable niche in the medical industry by focusing on this differentiator.
 
Like in medicine, many real estate managers are naturally bent towards providing quick, preconceived solutions to those they coach and attempt to recruit.
 
By making listening one of your signature strengths, you’ll stand out among your competitors and engage more recruiting prospects.
 
Every human wants to be heard, and there’s always a shortage of those willing to listen.

If you want to connect with someone beyond the surface level, find something they’re struggling with and share in their pain.
 
Authors Chip and Dan Heath describe how this works:
 
One study found that when strangers were asked to perform a painful task together—in one case, submerging their hands in tubs of ice water to perform a sorting task—they felt a greater sense of bonding than did strangers who had performed the same task in room temperature water.
 
This bonding happened even though the task was pointless.
 
As you might suspect, the research showed even more compelling outcomes when a common struggle was focused on a meaningful cause.
 
For recruiting applicants, start by asking your prospects: What are you struggling with?
 
Just acknowledging their problem as something your organization also struggles with will help build an initial connection.
 
At this point, resist the temptation to offer a quick solution.
 
Instead, attempt to connect them with others on your team who have worked through (or who are currently working through) similar difficulties.
 
The engagement, trust, and connection are built through experiencing the common struggle, not just solving the problem.

Author Adam Lashinsky frequently speaks about the organizational best practices Apple uses to optimize employee performance.
 
One of the simplest practices is assigning a directly responsible individual (DRI) to something important that needs to be done.
 
The desired result and an associated deadline are documented where everyone in the organization or team can see it.
 
Next to the result is a person’s name—the DRI.
 
It’s the organization’s responsibility to support the DRI by providing the resources needed to get the desired result.
 
Simple, right? Yes, that’s the point.
 
But many real estate managers are reluctant to be this direct with those in their offices.
 
Why? They’re fearful to ask for what they really want.
 
It’s easier to be nebulous and indefinite about the desired outcomes—no one gets offended and you don’t get blamed for coming up with less-than-perfect ideas.
 
High performing leaders don’t take the easy way, they muster the courage to define and publicize the desired results.
 
They also create productive and supportive cultures so their DRIs (agents) are equipped to win.

In this week’s podcast, we’ll be talking with Laurie Brill, the Director of Strategic Growth at Howard Hanna Real Estate Services.
 
Howard Hanna is the fifth largest real estate company in the country and has grown tremendously over the last decade.

Laurie is part of the team that engineered and managed this growth, and she focused much of her time and talent on the recruiting and retention strategies that equip her company to find success.

Prior to Howard Hanna, Laurie was a full-time, high-performing realtor for 18 years. During that time, she started and ran two successful teams.
 
She then founded and managed her own brokerage for several years before being selected to lead a Keller Williams office on the westside of Cleveland.
 
Altogether, she has been in the real estate industry for 35 years, and I think you’re going to learn a lot today.

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Most real estate offices operate like small tight-knit communities.

Agents seem to participate in the community for common reasons, but getting them to consistently focus on a set of productive activities can be a challenge.

To overcome this common obstacle, online community expert, Richard Millington, suggests a simple solution:

If you want better contributions from members, give them clearer instructions and templates to work with. It sounds obvious, but it so rarely happens.

Create a template with clear boxes of what’s expected in each area, give plenty of great examples members can see, edit, and tinker with.

Provide them with simple training they can take. And, most importantly, give them constructive criticism so if it isn’t good enough, they can improve it.

There is a good chance you’re already using this basic formula to help your agents succeed.

But let me ask you a quick question: Do you use the same formula to help yourself recruit?

Mundane activities like recruiting go better when you’re following a preplanned regiment that include scripts, time-blocks, and ways to collect feedback on how you’re doing.

You already know that sloppy execution doesn’t work for selling.

It doesn’t work for recruiting either.

In a post from the archive, renowned psychologist Walter Mischel reminds us of the connection between long-term, noteworthy accomplishments and delayed gratification.
 
To make his point, he references the famous Stanford marshmallow experiments done in the early ‘70s where children were given the choice of eating one marshmallow now or waiting to receive two marshmallows later.
 
If I want to reach the goal I have in mind — I want the two marshmallows — I have to inhibit interfering responses.
 
People who are successful focus attention on monitoring progress towards the goal and do whatever necessary to make it possible.
 
Planning, future-oriented activities, and controlling one’s own emotions require delaying gratification.
 
These fundamental skills allow you to have control over stimuli rather than being controlled by them.
 
For many hiring managers, this is the struggle going through their minds when faced with completing the unpleasant tasks of recruiting.
 
I’ll just work with my own agents and make them more productive.
 
I don’t want to appear too aggressive, so I’ll wait for this prospect to contact me.
 
I don’t think my follow-ups are making a difference—do I really need to spend time on this?
 
Embracing a delayed gratification paradigm starts with a mindset that believes increasing self-control is possible.
 
It rejects that idea that willpower is a state of being over which you have no control.

In this week’s podcast, we’ll be connecting with Scott Nelson, the CEO of Comey and Shepherd Realtors in Cincinnati, OH.

Comey and Shepherd was started just after WWII and has been in business for more than 7 decades.
 
Scott’s dad bought the company in 1968, and Scott took the helm in 1990. 

Over the last 30 years, Scott has built a remarkable organization. They are #166 on the Real Trends 500, and they are #1 in market share in the Cincinnati metro area. 

They’re known across the country for the productivity and professionalism of their agents.
 
In today’s episode, Scott will share how he maintains an average per agent productivity that is 2.5X the NAR average while hiring 75% new agents.

He will also explain how he retains his high-producers when big-name competitors try to lure them away with large signing bonuses.

Side Note: During the discussion, an article was referenced that describes Scott’s new agent training process. Download it now, if you’d like to learn more.

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