June 22, 2021
Maybe it’s because Garden State Real Estate Academy only hires instructors with decades of REAL industry sales success, but many of the questions we get have nothing to do with getting a real estate license. Their questions often surround the lifestyle of a real estate career and what their income potential could be once they are engaged in that career as REALTORS®.
The National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) and other trade organizations regularly conduct surveys of licensed agents to determine such things as average income, job satisfaction, number of transactions, etc. Garden State Real Estate Academy also frequently asks brokers what they are looking for most in new agents—and what attributes causes those new agents to succeed the most.
What brokers look for in new agents.
Real estate brokers face and average turnover of 25% of their agents, according to NAR, so they are almost always looking for new agents. In Garden State’s surveys of brokers, they tell us the characteristics they look for the most in new agents are:
- Integrity.
- The attitude of a self-motivator who takes responsibility for their success, rather than someone who expects leads to be constantly given to them.
- Great networking and people skills.
- People who can contribute to the company culture.
- Somebody who is good with follow-through.
What our Classroom Guests tell us they want most in a brokerage.
When we ask our pre-licensing classroom guests what they are most interested in when selecting a broker, they most-frequently tell us:
- Training.
- A coach or mentor, especially in their first year.
- Some assurance of what income to expect in the first few months, or realistic income in the first year.
- When to join a team or start as a solo agent.
- Commission splits.
What Garden State Real Estate Academy advises brokers and our classroom guests.
Many real estate schools have instructors who have not sold real estate for years and simply teach from a textbook. Garden State’s instructors pass on their decades of real-world real estate success to our classroom guests as part of their 75 hours together.
- Starting in the first hour of class, we advise our classroom guests the habits of the superstars by telling them how important it is to build a database, have a regular communication plan with their database, how critical it is to establish a discipline for prospecting, etc.
- Some schools allow their favorite brokers to go in and give students sales pitches—and then exclude the brokers they don’t like or who won’t reward the school. We think that is wrong. You did not pay good money to have sales pitches thrown at you every day.
- “If you want to talk to our classes, give them something useful.” We tell brokers who want to address our classroom guests that we will make time during non-teaching hours for them to provide genuine value-added advice—but not a sales pitch! For example, we have had brokers give 20-30-minute talks about what agents should do in their first 30 days after licensing, how to prospect for business, how to prepare for successful open houses, the positives and negatives of joining a team, etc. Really interesting, useful information they can use.
Ready to start YOUR real estate career? Have questions about getting started? Garden State Real Estate Academy is New Jersey’s top-ranked real estate school, according to Google. You can numerous helpful free articles—and you can register for our day or evening pre-licensing classes, now taught by live instructors and available anywhere in New Jersey by Zoom—at www.GSREA.com.
David C. Forward is a licensed real estate broker and instructor and was first licensed as a Realtor® 33 years ago. During his career, David and his business partner sold more than 500 homes in South Jersey. He is now School Director of Garden Real Estate Academy, has won numerous awards for real estate sales, is a much-requested public speaker who has addressed audiences on six continents and is the author of 19 books.
