Real Estate Team Onboarding Process

Use this real estate team onboarding process and calendar to systematically onboard and train new Realtors joining your organization to get them into production quickly.

Do you have a solid real estate team onboarding process? (Do you have an onboarding process … at all?)

We’ve all heard the stats. 33% of agents fail in their first year, and 87% of real estate agents don’t make it past 5 years in the business before quitting. Poor onboarding is one of the main culprits.

Most of the 87% never got their sphere of influence (SOI) database together. They never got a contact plan together. They never got their CRM set up with a system for staying in contact with their own people. The vast majority of those 87% never took part in any of these essential activities because it wasn’t a priority during their onboarding process.

This is a leadership failure.

VIDEO: Real Estate Team Onboarding Process

What is your real estate team onboarding process?

From an onboarding process standpoint, which applies to all agents when they first start in the real estate business, you’ll see lots of different systems out there.

Today I’m going to talk about the onboarding systems that lead to failure, and the systems that absolutely change the game for leaders and provide a route to success for agents starting out.

To-do lists: not a viable real estate team onboarding process

A standalone to-do list is not my favorite. You’ll see onboarding to-do lists like “100 Day Checklist” or “30-60-90 Checklist.” Sure … it’s better than nothing.

These checklists contain important things that need to be done in the first X amount of days. They are usually broken down weekly – sometimes daily.

Why am I not a huge fan of these checklists? I feel like nobody actually uses them.

Getting everyone you know uploaded into your CRM (your SOI) is one of those tasks that needs to happen right away when an agent first starts out. This is when an agent has the most free time because they don’t have any current business to take up any of their time.

A checklist provides too many decisions to be made. Okay – these are all things that need to be done – but what’s the priority?

To-do lists are optional. They are things we know we need to get done, but without a “when,” they quickly become meaningless.

A checklist provides too many decisions to be made. Okay – these are all things that need to be done – but what’s the priority?
Brian Icenhower

Onboarding calendar: the right way to create a real estate agent onboarding process

This real estate agent onboarding process provides a “by when” and the structure needed to ensure that an agent will accomplish what needs to be done as they start their career.

The calendar provides due dates which instantly make all of the items on it actionable.

To-do lists are okay if they are used in conjunction with a calendar. You can use the to-do list as a way to keep track of all the items that must be done, but then they must immediately be put on the calendar to make them actionable. Otherwise, that to-do list is a ticking time bomb that quickly becomes useless.

What does a good onboarding calendar look like?

Today we are sharing with you our 2-week calendar, which shows all of the week’s training and onboarding activities, all on one page. You can download this real estate agent onboarding process for FREE by subscribing (scroll down!) Here at ICC, this is the onboarding calendar we give o ur clients to use as a template.

Typically, you might print two, three, or four of these if you want to create a real estate agent onboarding process over the course of a few months.

On this calendar, we have it broken down into time blocks. We have the agents showing up at 8:30am, as if this is a “normal” job.

Every morning, the agent works on adding SOI contacts to their CRM.

Every morning, they prospect.

These habits start now! You must set this expectation right out the gate.

For the rest of the day, you have them training. Watching training videos, working through training courses, walking through administrative checklists to set up their work accounts, etc.

After lunch, you can have them begin to do some field work. They schedule time to shadow buyer consultations, learn about the administrative team and how they work together, etc. We put it on the agent to schedule these important training sessions.

More training can happen after lunch, working through online courses and training.

The exact content of our example real estate agent onboarding process calendar is not crucial to your success. But, the structure is.

These habits start now! You must set this expectation right out the gate.
Brian Icenhower

Why is the real estate agent onboarding process so important?

Believe it or not, a new licensee or someone relatively new in the business expects this type of training. If you get a job in other industries, this is the type of training schedule you would likely receive.

If you don’t start your agents off like this, once they’ve been working for you for 6 months or so, they are spoiled. They are ruined. They have no structure and they are not likely to accept this kind of schedule or accountability now. After 6 months of no guidance or tight mentoring, they will develop bad habits. Soon they’ll be telling themselves they can work from home and only show up at the office once or twice a month. And, they wonder why they fail!

They aren’t showing up. They aren’t doing the work. This is a failure of leadership on your part.

If you want your organization to have agents that put forth that type of effort, start them off on the right foot with a dialed in real estate agent onboarding process with an onboarding calendar.

FREE DOWNLOAD: Onboarding Calendar Template

Today’s subscribers will receive a free download of our sample Onboarding Calendar Template. Use it to build your own real estate agent onboarding process, and make your training process actionable, with a higher rate of success for your agents.