How to Find the Brokerage that Fits
By Kelle Sparta | September 2009 (Abbreviated excerpt)

"Figuring out which brokerage you should work for involves more than determining commission splits. It's also a matter of work styles and values." - Kelle Sparta

If you choose a brokerage or office for the wrong reasons, you'll end up very unhappy with the end result. Here, I'd like to provide guidance so you can make sure the brokerage you choose will be the best fit for your working style, business goals, and personality.

Picking a Brokerage: 3 Questions to Consider

Do office policies fit with the way you do business?

Does the company's services versus the commission fit with your goals and business practices?

After you answer these questions, then and only then do you look at the commission split being offered. However, most sales associates, unfortunately, get it backwards by shopping for the commission split and nothing else.

Nobody's Perfect

Just like marketing, if you try to talk to everyone, you end up talking to no one. In the same way, if you try to pass yourself off as the "perfect" candidate when you're talking with potential brokerages, you'll fail. And this is because all brokers have their own definition of what a perfect candidate is.

So instead of trying to please anyone, start by pleasing yourself. Spend a moment determining who it is that you like to spend time with and what qualities make up the people that you choose to work with. What kind of relationship would you like to have with your broker? What business support do you want? These are the questions that matter.

If you're a person who works really hard to create relationships and do a consultative sale, then you're never going to please a broker who's big on cold calling. If you're an experienced sales associate with an established business and you bring in all your own leads, then you won't fit well into an office that requires you to take 'floor duty' every week.

It's important to know yourself and how you do your business before you try to find a match with a broker. Some relationships were just never meant to be.

Will You Be Able to Meet Expectations?

There are some universals. For instance, I don't know a broker out there who'd be happy with a sales associate who has made no sales. How many sales you need to make per year depends on the broker, but it's a good bet that the minimum for most full-time associates is somewhere between 8 and 12 transactions per year. (Edina Realty requires a minimum of 3 closed transactions per year to remain an active sales associate). Know the standards before you affiliate yourself with a particular broker. If you're uncomfortable with what's expected of you, the relationship may not work out well.

How You Work

What is equally important to your broker is how you do your business. For instance, practitioners who bring in all of their own business and do only 12 transactions a year are worth more to most brokers than those who take all of their business from broker leads and do 16 transactions a year. Why? Because the former is bringing in business that the brokerage wouldn't have had and didn't have to pay to generate. This isn't to say that you shouldn't use the services available to you. Sales associates who don't use any services from the brokerage and who don't provide the services themselves tend to do less business.

If the Personality Fits

The one piece of the puzzle that no one talks about but that's critically important is your personality. Are you a team player? Are you easy to get along with? Do you provide value to the office above and beyond the production that you create? Are you a problem solver? Is your sunshiny personality the sparkle in everyone's day? Each person's personality contributes to the whole office's dynamics. If that contribution doesn't take the office in a positive direction, that person isn't an appropriate fit.

Self-Assessment Time

You'll need to know what you need in terms of services from your broker. What most of us don't look at is how our very presence is not what we do or how we do it, but who we are as human beings affects the rest of the people in the office. If you can be honest with yourself about this, you may find some areas that could stand improvement and figure out where you really belong. It's the law of attraction: When you're the kind of person that everyone wants to be around, you'll get the greatest opportunities in life.