This column is dedicated to the thousands of people across America now taking required courses to get their real estate license and those who have passed the state license exam but have not yet placed their license. Here is what I know about you. About 93 percent of you are coming to real estate from another field, according to the National Association of Realtors 2001 Member Survey, and 86 percent of you come from professions other than full-time sales.

Your decision to get your license was your first important decision. Your next most important decision is which real estate office to join.

Most new agents join an office for three fundamentally wrong reasons:

1. The office is close to home.
2. They have a friend working there.
3. The office that offers the highest commission split wins.

These reasons are not good or bad in themselves. They just are not the right reasons for joining a real estate office.

Ok, maybe I am being a little too tough here. After all, you have no idea what to ask or what the broker’s answers mean.

Here is the good news. The broker needs you more than you need that particular broker. Don’t forget that! There are more offices looking for agents than agents looking for offices, so stand a little taller when you walk in for the interview.

You may be offered to join the company on your first interview. Don’t let that flatter you. In fact, I would be a little guarded, because this could be a company that has aggressively recruited, because they lose so many agents for whatever reasons.

You might be asked what your first year goal is. The truth is you probably have no idea, but you will say to earn $30,000-$75,000.

The broker knows that the national average for a first-year agent is about $20,000 or less. That’s not bad, by the way. It means that although you did not earn income the first three months, you are probably in the $4,000 to $5,000 per month category by your tenth month or so. Your second year should be a great one.

Before you try to impress the broker or your spouse with a high sounding number, let me recommend some goals to you.

Your first-year goal: To survive the first year without going into more debt than you have incurred right now. Very few people make more money their first year in any business than they did before they went into that business. Real estate is no different.

Only you know what that number is. This means you get your finances in order so you know what your needs will be. If you don’t know what you financial needs are, you have no foundation for your goals.

Your second goal: To learn to sell. In today’s market you will not survive if you depend on giving off-the-cuff responses to serious questions, getting by on your personality alone, outsmarting the customer, or whatever else you talk about when you don’t know what you are talking about. You need a lot of training

If you do not learn how to lower sales resistance and build sales acceptance, your commission split won’t matter.

What does the broker do for you in this area? Ask to meet the person who trains. Ask to see the training curriculum and when the next training class starts.

Learning to write contracts and do paper work is important, but you need sales and prospect training.

Do not under any circumstances go with the first office you visit on some impulse. Prospects who are fast to buy, are fast to cancel. In your case, agents who are fast to jump in are fast to jump out.

If, after you join an office, you start thinking “Maybe I should have interviewed other offices before I joined this one, your attitude will greatly impact the discipline you need early in your career to do what it takes to become productive.

After the recruiter (if it is a franchise) shows you the recruiting video, two training manuals, a rack of marketing materials, and sells you on one-stop mortgage and title service, you will be asked, “Do you have any questions?”

Until you read this article you would probably say, “No, you covered it (because you can’t remember 1/10 of what you just saw. And you don’t understand the 90 percent you did see.)

If you are interviewing an independent broker/owner, chances are you will not see sophisticated training materials, but you will be reporting directly to the broker for your training. Make sure you know what “training” means to the independent broker, too.

Here’s the problem. How can you ask an intelligent question when you can’t speak “real estate” yet.

Here are questions brokers don’t hear from new agents, but they should, so you be the one to ask the following questions:

1. “May I read your policy manual, before I make a decision?” If the answer is “no”, then you need to thank them for their time and move on.

   Read the policy manual before you sign with an office, not afterwards, because you will probably sign an agreement that says you have read it, understand it, and agree with it. Don’t ask to take it home. They won’t let you and shouldn’t. As you read it, jot down concerns you need to discuss.

2. “What is your exit policy?”

   This is a policy that effects your commission if you decide to leave the company and have booked sales or sold listings that have not closed.

3. “How soon can I have floor time?”

   Floor time means you get to answer the phone and greet walk-ins, great ways to get prospects from the broker's advertising. If the answer is “as soon as you are trained.” Then ask the obvious question: “When does training start?” If it starts in three weeks, what are you supposed to do for the next three weeks, other than go further in debt?

4. Is your office policy an “open” or “closed” floor?

   An “open’ floor means you get floor time as soon as you learn how to handle the phone and the broker feels you are comfortable with inventory. A closed floor means that all calls are referred to the listing agent.

5. “How much will it cost me out-of-pocket the first month”?

   Have this number tallied for you during your interview. There are other fees that come out of closing proceeds, perhaps. While the policy manual should list these, it never hurts to clearly understand this issue up front. Not all companies have a policy manual, by the way. That doesn’t mean they are not a good office.

6. “ When can I expect to work with a buyer prospect?” How the broker answers this question will tell you about all you need to know about the company and its concern for helping new agents get off to a good start.

   You cannot afford to get off to a slow start. You cannot afford to be expected to ‘sink or swim’ because you will sink. The best way to prevent sinking, at least at first, is to at least learn to float. That’s the least you should expect from your broker.

Published: August 21, 2003

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David Fletcher has been a Florida real estate condominium and new homes broker for 30 years with more than $3 billion in new construction sales. In 2008, Keller Williams Realty International named him a "Lifetime Achiever." Along the way he has chaired the Florida Homebuilders Associaiton Sales and Marketing Council, trained thousands of general agents and on-site agents to work together, and was a featured speaker at the National Association of Realtors. Recently he founded New Homes Niche, a builder-certified co-broker training system "to meet the growing trend we see in short sale buyers moving to new homes for a lot of reasons." Call David at 407 234 2349, , and visit his website.