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One-size-fits-all recruiting pitches are costing brokerages top talent, writes recruiting expert Brett Jennings. Here’s how an assessment-driven, customized approach changes everything.

Inman Connect

Invest in yourself, grow your business—real estate’s biggest moment is in San Diego!

Most of us didn’t grow up saying, “I want to be a real estate broker when I grow up.”

Like many, my real estate career started as a Plan B and a desire for something more. I’d sold a previous business; had a background in sales, marketing and coaching; and decided to join a team. I already had an idea of the kind of agent I wanted to be.

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I learned quickly and grew even faster. Within four years, I became a top producer, had my first million-dollar year, launched my own team and eventually founded my own brokerage.

That’s when I hit my plateau. Production was strong, but my business wasn’t really growing. The problem wasn’t my brand, my marketing or my systems. It was my recruiting.

I was making the single biggest recruiting mistake most real estate leaders make: I was using a one-size-fits-all value proposition to recruit every agent.

When ‘one message for everyone’ stops working

Recruiting for a small team was simple. I had one pitch: leads, support, coaching, culture. It worked — up to a point.

But when I shifted to growing a brokerage, that same generic message started falling flat. I was talking to:

New agents are trying to get their first few deals
Mid-level producers are stuck at the same income
Team leaders are overwhelmed by growth and responsibility

And I was trying to recruit all of them with the same story, the same tools, the same slides.

No surprise: It wasn’t connecting.

When I stepped back, I realized something obvious in hindsight:

Agents don’t want “everything you offer.” They want the specific thing that will help them get from where they are now to where they want to go next.

That insight changed everything.

Instead of treating recruiting like a generic sales pitch, I started treating it like one-on-one coaching. In coaching, you don’t start with solutions — you begin with an assessment.

Phase 1: Build a clear roadmap for agent growth

We created a roadmap that defined the stages of an agent’s growth, from brand-new to high-level leader. In our world, agents typically fall into one of seven stages:

The Solopreneur: Little guidance, feeling lost, wondering if this business is really for them.
The Seeker: Willing to work, has closed some deals, but doesn’t know how to create consistent growth.
The Grower: Good at getting clients, but income and production swing wildly from month to month.
The Hustler: Overworked and maxed out, doing everything themselves, burning the candle at both ends.
The Entrepreneur: Strong producer, but life and business still feel unstable; craving structure and leverage.
The Leader: Running a team, carrying responsibility for others, feeling the weight and complexity of growth.
The Visionary: Has stepped out of the daily grind, focusing on purpose, impact and doing more of what they love.

This roadmap gave us a language and a lens. Instead of “agents,” we saw where an agent was on their journey and what the “next level” looked like for them.

Phase 2: Assess before you pitch

With the roadmap in place, we created a simple assessment for every candidate.

The goal wasn’t to impress them with a long list of tools, tech and splits. The goal was to:

Understand their goals
Clarify their pain points
Identify which of the seven stages they were actually in

Once they could see themselves on the roadmap, the conversation changed. Now we could speak directly to their current frustration and clearly show how we help them move to the next stage.

Instead of “Here’s everything we offer,” it became: “Here’s the specific part of our platform that solves your problem right now.”

That’s what makes you and your team the obvious choice.

Phase 3: Show them the solution — and a glimpse of their future

Once we understood their stage and their primary challenge, we connected the dots:

The right systems
The right support
The right structure
The right playbook for their next level

But we didn’t stop at telling them. We showed them.

We used storytelling — real agent success stories that mirrored their situation and aspirations. And we invited them into our world: a sales meeting, a training, a team huddle, so they could feel the culture, see the systems and experience what it’s like to be part of our ecosystem.

If there was mutual alignment after that, making an offer was natural.

Why a customized recruiting message wins in today’s market

Every broker in your market is pitching the same generic value props: tech, brand, marketing, leads, culture. To the agent, it all sounds the same.

When you use an agent growth roadmap plus an assessment-driven conversation, you flip the script:

You demonstrate that you understand precisely where they are
You spotlight only what’s relevant to their journey
You position your brokerage as the guide that helps them reach their next level

In a crowded recruiting landscape, custom beats generic every time. The most significant recruiting mistake is trying to reach everyone with a single message.

The most significant opportunity is meeting each agent exactly where they are — and showing them how, with you, they can grow into who they’re meant to become.

Brett Jennings is the founder and owner of Real Estate Experts powered by ERA. Connect with Brett on LinkedIn and Instagram.

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