How to Choose the RIGHT Real Estate Brokerage for You and Your Business

How to pick the perfect brokerage. Hey, my name is Chance Brown. I'm the broker owner of CB&A Realtors. And let me start the how to pick the perfect brokerage conversation by telling you there's no such thing as the perfect brokerage. So, you have to find the brokerage that checks the boxes for more of the things that are important to you and your business and where you want your business to go than what you might perceive of a brand, what you might perceive of a position in the market, or anything else. Because at the end of the day, if it's not supporting your long-term goals, it doesn't matter. But it's never ever going to be perfect. There are going to be times when something, you know, sticks in your craw. There going to be times when something doesn't seem right. But if it's helping you get where you want to go, you're at the right place. So let's talk about what that might look like if you're out there searching for a brokerage. Number one on my list is always support. Because if you're a new ly, you need it all the time. If you're an experienced lency, you might not need it a lot, but when you need it, you need it. It blows my mind all the time when we interview somebody and they tell us that they call their broker and they don't get an answer for days. Like if I am not getting an answer back to somebody in an hour or two, it freaks me out. Like I'm recording videos and wondering what the hell is happening on my phone right now. So that one for me is always paramount. Before we take out a new technology, before we take out a new system, process, tool, training, anything that we're going to do inside of our brokerage, we always ask ourselves, what is support look like for this? Are we going to be able to actually deliver not just the product, but also the how to use it and what to do with it that is necessary. Number two is growth. And this doesn't necessarily mean brokerage growth, but how is it going to foster your growth? Whether that's an intellectual growth, whether that's a financial growth, a team growth, a business niche, or whatever that might look like for you that you're trying to grow. Is your brokerage able to help you with that? Is it able to provide the tools and technology for that? Is it able to provide the support and coaching, mentoring, anything like that that you might need? Number three is culture. Because you may think, hey, I'm a Realtor. I'm out here on my own.

It's a solo sport. And you're not wrong. But man, it sure is nice to have people you can reach out to when you need help. It sure is nice to have an office to go to and actually be able to talk to people and tell them what's going on in your business. It's nice to have people who will share experiences. It's nice sometimes just to be out of your house and out of your office and with other people. So, I think culture I mean it it ensconces all the things that we're talking about when it comes to training and tech and tools and support and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, I also I also think it really comes down to just the people and people are important. This is a relationship business and that relationship just isn't with your clients. It's with your fellow agents. Cost. I was talking to a top producing agent that doesn't even work for my brokerage this morning and we were talking about costs. And whether it's a brokerage, whether it's your business, you need to know your cost of goods sold. You need to know what your fixed costs are. You need to know what your variable costs are and understand that fixed costs can kill your business so very quickly. When you look at total cost of a brokerage, that's all your splits or fees. It's any tackon fees.

It's ENO. It's file fees. It's this, that, whatever. Because you're going to have your MLS wherever you go. You're going to have your state association, local association, whatever, wherever you go. So, when we really look at fees in a brokerage, it's what does it cost me to do business here based on my volume? If it's eating up a big chunk of your revenue, is it worth it? And it might be. It might be for what they get you get for that. But the question is, are you getting the value for that cost? And you have to answer that question yourself. Technology. Every brokerage is going to have some. The question you have to ask yourself when it comes to technology is, do I care? Am I going to use it? Because if I give you all the technology in the world as a broker and you don't use any of it, what the hell difference does it make? None at all. So, does the technology match up with those goals you have and is it going to enhance your service, enhance your experience with your clients? Along those lines is marketing. Marketing is super important. In fact, if you read most of the surveys out there that the big consulting firms do, they ask agents what's the most important thing to them in their brokerage and they say marketing. The problem is they don't know what the hell that looks like. Like what is marketing? And when they provide piles and piles of marketing, once again, they rarely get used because they're just out there doing stuff on Canva. They're doing stuff on their own.