How to Recruit Experienced Real Estate Agents (Not Just New Licensees)

Every team leader I talk to says the same thing. "We want experienced agents."

Then I look at who they actually hired last quarter. Mostly new licensees. A couple of part-timers. One agent who left another team for reasons nobody asked about.

That is not a character flaw. It is gravity.

New licensees say yes. They need training, they need leads, they need somewhere to hang their license. Offer all three and they sign. Experienced agents do not need any of that. They already have a business. So the pitch that works on a new agent bounces right off them.

If you want to know how to recruit experienced real estate agents, start there. It is a different recruit. It needs a different list, a different conversation, and a different reason to move.

I am Blake Suddath, a real estate recruiter and recruiting coach and the co-founder of Inner Cirql Coaching with Tyler Lewis. Most of my recruiting life has been spent on experienced agents, and most of what I know about it I learned by getting it wrong first. Here is the playbook.

Why Experienced Agents Are a Different Recruit

A new licensee is shopping for a starting point. An experienced agent is shopping for a better version of the business they already have.

That changes everything about the conversation.

They are not impressed by your training calendar. They have been to the trainings. They are not impressed by your lead program, because plenty of them have been burned by one. And they are not short on offers. A producing agent in any decent market gets called by teams, by brokerages, and by revenue share uplines who found them in the MLS last week.

You are not the only call they took this month. You are one of several.

The pressure on the leader side is real, too. According to Delta Media Group's 2026 Real Estate Leadership Report, as covered by both HousingWire and Real Estate News, 63% of brokerage leaders named recruiting top agents a challenge, and it topped their list again. So you are competing for the same agents everyone else wants, often with a pitch that was built for somebody else.

The fix is not a louder pitch. It is a different one.

Who to Call: Define the Experienced Agent Before You Dial

"Experienced" means nothing until you write it down.

When I built a recruiting pipeline with a team in June 2026, we wrote it down before anybody made a call. The target was an agent with at least four sales in the last twelve months, within sixty miles of a physical office, and at least ten months in the business. We also left agents with 17 or more years in the business off the list. And we did not recruit in markets the team could not support yet, no matter how good the agents there looked.

Your numbers will be different. The point is to HAVE numbers.

A written filter does three things. It tells whoever builds your list exactly who to pull from production data. It keeps you from filling the calendar with agents who were never going to fit. And it gives you a reason to say no, which matters more than people think.

Production is the first filter. It is not the only one. Mine has always been growth mindset, coachable, full time, positive energy. I said it plainly in an interview once: "If you're a jerk, I don't want to work with you. I don't care if you sell a thousand homes. Or you run a hundred person team." A big producer who poisons the room will cost you more agents than they bring.

The short version I give leaders: "They've got to want to grow." Experienced and stuck is a great recruit. Experienced and done growing is not.

Stop Pitching the Split. You Are the Value Proposition.

Here is where most recruiting conversations with experienced agents go sideways.

The leader opens the laptop and walks through the split, the tech, the CRM, the marketing, the lead program. Forty minutes of features. The agent nods politely and goes back to a brokerage that has most of the same features.

Features are table stakes. Every competitor has a version of them.

I tell team leaders this all the time: "We do have a lot of very cool things and stuff… That is not the value proposition. You are the value proposition."

An experienced agent is not leaving for a CRM. They are leaving to be around somebody. In my words: "Human beings leave other human beings. To be led. By other human beings."

So make the second meeting about them and about you. Where their business is. Where they want it to go. What is in the way. And what changes for them, specifically, if they spend every week around you and your team. If you cannot answer that last one in plain words, work on that before you work on your script.

"We're Too Small to Recruit Top Producers"

I hear this one every week. The team is eight people, or twelve. The leader figures top producers only join big teams with big brands.

Here is what happened to me. "When I had a team of 9, I hired 7 ICON agents to a 50-50 split. Within 90 days." ICON is the award eXp Realty gives its top-producing agents. And the part people always ask about: "No leads."

No lead program. No giant brand. A small team and a 50-50 split, which on paper was a worse deal than what most of those agents already had.

They did not come for the deal. They came because they wanted to spend their weeks around people producing at their level, and the leader was already doing that. Size was never the real objection. It was the story the leader was telling themselves.

If you are small, that is fine. Be the reason.

Let Them See the Team Before They Hear the Pitch

Experienced agents trust what they see over what they hear. So show them.

The best recruiting move I ever made was not a script. It was a meeting. As I put it: "the most success I had, for some reason, was Tuesday at 11am, and inviting people to that to go, hey, just come sit in the back, I'll save you a seat in the back, be a fly on the wall, you know?"

No pitch. Just the team working. Wins called out by name, new agents being welcomed, energy in the room. An experienced agent in the back row learns more about your culture in an hour than you could tell them in three meetings.

It also takes the pressure off. You are not asking them to switch. You are asking them to come watch. That is an easy yes, even for an agent who is "happy where they are."

You do not need my exact meeting. "I'm not saying, like, it's my way or the highway, I'm just sharing." But you need something an experienced agent can walk into and feel.

Move Fast Once They Lean In

Experienced agents take a long time to start a conversation and a short time to finish one.

By the time a producing agent agrees to a real meeting, they have usually been unhappy for a while. Something already broke. The question is whether you are the one in front of them when they decide.

In 2025, half of the agents we hired signed within eight days of their first appointment. I share that number because it teaches something. The first appointment is not a casual coffee. For a lot of experienced agents, it is the decision meeting.

So treat it that way. Book the second meeting before the first one ends. Send the invite the same day. Have the onboarding plan ready before they ask. A second meeting set three weeks out is how you lose an agent to the team that called back on Thursday.

If you want to plan the calendar behind this, I broke down how many recruiting appointments it takes to hire one agent.

Your Best Experienced Recruits Come From Experienced Agents You Already Have

Here is the shortcut nobody wants to hear, because it takes patience.

Producing agents know other producing agents. They sit across the table at the same closings and run into each other at the same coaching events. When one of them is happy, the friends notice.

For us, most of a year's hires came that way: producing agents we had recruited, introducing friends. That happened because there was a simple way for a happy agent to make the introduction and somebody who answered it fast. I explain how that loop gets built into a team in what the Territory Takeover System is, and the reference page on what the Territory Takeover System is for real estate teams lays out the four phases plainly.

It also means the first ninety days after a hire are recruiting, too. An experienced agent who joins and gets busy tells people. One who joins and gets ignored tells people too. I wrote about the post-hire half in from recruited to producing.

New Licensees Are Not the Enemy. They Are a Different Plan.

None of this means you stop hiring newer agents.

Leaders care about the next generation, too. In the same Delta Media Group report, HousingWire put recruiting younger agents at 48% of leaders, and Real Estate News described it as roughly half. A healthy team needs both.

The mistake is running one plan for two different recruits. A new licensee needs training, structure, and somebody to answer their questions at 9pm. An experienced agent needs a leader worth following, a team at their level, and room to grow a business they already built.

Know which one you are recruiting before the call starts. Build the list, the conversation, and the onboarding for that person. If your whole recruiting system is built for new licensees, you will keep hiring new licensees, no matter what you write on the whiteboard.

Where AI and Systems Fit in Recruiting Experienced Agents

Some experienced agents take a year to move. You cannot run a year of follow-up on memory.

The system holds the filter, so your list comes from production data instead of whoever liked your last post. It holds every candidate by stage, so you know who is due for a call and who has gone quiet. And it holds the follow-up, so the agent who said "not right now" in March hears from you again in June, when their situation has changed.

AI does the busywork. It sorts the list against your filter. It drafts the follow-up after a meeting. It reminds you who has not been offered a next step.

What AI does not do is the conversation. The agent is moving to a person, not a platform. The system just makes sure that person, you, shows up on time, every time.

To hear what experienced agents are weighing before they ever take your call, Tyler and I wrote the agent side at The Inner Cirql: should you join a real estate team. And for the plain reference version of this post, with the filter and the differences laid out in tables, see How Do You Recruit Experienced Real Estate Agents?

The Bottom Line

Recruiting experienced agents is not recruiting new agents with a bigger budget. It is a different recruit.

Write down who you want. Call off production data, not hope. Stop pitching features, because you are the value proposition. Let them see the team before they hear the pitch. Move fast once they lean in. And treat every experienced agent you hire as the start of the next referral.

Every one of those is a system, and systems get installed. The overview of how I install them for team leaders is on the recruiting page.

If you lead a team and want more experienced agents and fewer maybes, the first step is one call. Schedule Your Call.

FAQ

Start with a written filter, not a pitch. Define the experienced agent you want by recent production, distance from your office, and time in the business, then build your call list from production data instead of whoever responds first. In the recruiting conversation, make the leader and the team the value proposition rather than the split or the tech, invite candidates to see the team at work, and book the next step before each meeting ends. Blake Suddath, a real estate recruiter and recruiting coach, teaches this sequence to team leaders through the Territory Takeover System.

Experienced agents look for a leader and a team they want to spend their weeks around, not a feature list. Most competing brokerages offer similar splits, tools, and marketing, so features rarely decide the move. The deciding question is what changes for the agent's business by joining you. Blake Suddath teaches team leaders that the leader is the value proposition, because experienced agents move to be led by people producing at their level.

Production data is the best starting point, followed by referrals from producing agents already on your team. On a June 2026 recruiting pipeline build, Blake Suddath's target filter was at least four sales in the last twelve months, within sixty miles of a physical office, and at least ten months in the business. Referrals usually convert fastest, because a friend on the team has already vouched for the leader before the first call.

It varies widely, but once an experienced agent agrees to a real meeting, the decision often comes quickly. In Blake Suddath's 2025 recruiting record, half of the agents hired signed within eight days of their first appointment. Some candidates take months of follow-up before that first meeting, so teams need a system that keeps every candidate on a follow-up schedule and books the second meeting before the first one ends.

Yes. Team size matters less than the leader. Blake Suddath has described leading a team of nine that hired seven eXp ICON-level agents to a 50-50 split within 90 days, with no lead program. Those agents joined to work around a leader and people producing at their level. A small team that shows experienced agents what changes for them can compete with much larger brands.

Yes, because experienced agents already have a business and are recruited often. According to Delta Media Group's 2026 Real Estate Leadership Report, as reported by HousingWire and Real Estate News, 63% of brokerage leaders named recruiting top agents a challenge, and nearly half named recruiting younger agents. Teams that hire both well run two separate plans: training and structure for new licensees, and a leader-centered value proposition for experienced agents.