Use This Real Estate Team Onboarding Checklist & Process

Use this thorough real estate team onboarding checklist and systematized process for getting agents quickly trained and into production fast.

Do you have a real estate team onboarding checklist? If you don’t, or if your onboarding process isn’t what it should be, this blog will help you create a system that works efficiently and brings tremendous value to your agents.

VIDEO: Use This Real Estate Team Onboarding Checklist & Process

Real estate team onboarding checklist: NOW is the time

Now is a great time to formalize your real estate team onboading checklist. Agents are looking for value. As sales volume started to dip with the increase of interest rates, all of a sudden, everybody admits that maybe they have a thing or two to learn in order to succeed in real estate.

We call this our “team onboarding process” because it is more typical for team leaders to adopt this type of system to support their agents.

The Team Onboarding Calendar

I created a “Team Onboarding Calendar” and I expanded it to include 8 weeks of specific training. I’ve systematically implemented all of the various facets of necessary training for an agent joining a team.

You may have heard of a “30-60-90” checklist, or “First 100 Days,” or even a “First Quarter” checklist. Agents and teams have used these checklists for years, and there are good aspects to these various checklists.

But, I don’t love them. Here’s why. They become to-do lists.

I don’t like to-do lists. I don’t find that teams or brokerages ever really use their “30-60-90” checklists. They may have good intentions to use these checklists, but the agent rarely follows up and actually benefits. The reason it doesn’t get traction is due to the general principles of time management.

A real estate team onboarding checklist that works

So, what can you do to make a real estate team onboarding checklist that works?

Everything needs a “by when.” Not even just a “by when” day, but a specific “by when” time that is blocked off in your calendar to get the important activity accomplished. This is why time blocking is so vital.

If you don’t use time blocks to carve out time for your essential activities, you are leaving it up to your own brain to remind yourself and prioritize correctly, which is not wise. Something will come up. Excuses will happen.

We don’t have “to-do lists,” we have “must-do lists.”

These “must-do lists” include the specific time in a day when each activity will get done. It goes straight into your calendar. That is why our real estate team onboarding checklist comes in a calendar format.

If you don’t use time blocks to carve out time for your essential activities, you are leaving it up to your own brain to remind yourself and prioritize correctly, which is not wise. Something will come up. Excuses will happen.
Brian Icenhower

Make it your own: real estate team onboarding checklist

Yes, I’ve crafted this real estate Team Onboarding Checklist very careful. However, we made the calendar editable, because every team/office is different. You may have different priorities and different goals.

Make it your own. Move things around. Add more trainings. Personalize it to fit your company culture!

In the video within this blog, I go through many of the training items on this calendar. I walk through why some of them are so important. So be sure to watch the video.

Real estate team onboarding checklist: why it works, especially for newbies

New licensees don’t know any better. Many of your new agents will be brand-spanking new. They may have just gotten their license, or they may be in the process of getting it.

In either case, this is a great time to use the real estate team onboarding checklist calendar. You are training them before they become jaded, or before they start to realize that most real state agents don’t “work.” When they are fresh and hungry, they will come in excited and actually do all of the training!

New agents may even expect to have an orientation process, like most “normal” businesses provide for new hires.

Traditional brokerages leave it up to the agent to “learn on the fly” and figure it out themselves. If you have a brand new agent, they haven’t been affected by this mindset yet. They are likely much easier to train, which is good for you (and good for them)! Get them started on good habits from the get-go.

Traditional brokerages leave it up to the agent to “learn on the fly” … If you have a brand new agent, they haven’t been affected by this mindset yet. They are likely much easier to train.
Brian Icenhower

Get the real estate team manual

If this topic of real estate team onboarding checklist is relevant to you, check out my latest best-selling book. The High-Performing Real Estate Team comes packed with systems, just like the real estate team onboarding checklist/calendar.

In The High-Performing Real Estate Team, you will:

Discover how to create a viral goal that spreads throughout your team and drives change
Learn to focus on core activities that result in the majority of your growth and productivity
Cultivate personal responsibility with public accountability and accelerate growth with a custom team dashboard that measures metrics for success

Written for real estate agents, teams, brokerages, and franchise owners, The High-Performing Real Estate Team is an indispensable resource that will guide you toward growth while providing you with the resources and downloadable materials to reach your goals faster.

Real estate team onboarding checklist: a “self-managed” system

I designed this real estate team onboarding checklist to be a self-managed system.

The agents are responsible to complete the items that are calendared for them. There is very little on there that they aren’t responsible to manage on their own. All the leader needs to do is provide them with the calendar, meet with them every week, and it’s self-managed.

So, if you are saying that you are too busy to monitor this onboarding process, understand that this system is designed to run almost entirely by itself. In fact, on all of our sample dashboards, you will see that there are training measures that you can hold your agents to during team meetings.

Stand out, above, and beyond the competition

This real estate team onboarding checklist is an incredible recruiting tool. You can say, “This is why our agents succeed. This is what makes us stand out, and why you should come on board with us. We provide you with all you need to get systems in place for growing a successful business. And, we do it from day one.”

Recruit with value. This real estate team onboarding checklist is one way to show that value. The whole system is designed to be self-managed, so you are only meeting with the agent once per week to hold them accountable. Otherwise, they are going to be trained well on all of these topics, and also trained on being self-managed.

They are going to be trained well on all of these topics, and also trained on being self-managed.
Brian Icenhower

FREE DOWNLOAD: Team Onboarding Calendar

This Word document template will come to your inbox for subscribers. This real estate team onboarding checklist in the form of a calendar is one of our favorite systems. Be sure to watch the video at the beginning of this blog to learn more about how to use it for the greatest impact.

Want to learn more?

Read The High-Performing Real Estate Team. You can buy Brian Icenhower’s best-selling book on Amazon.
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