A Seller’s Market

Hey everybody, Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute, this week coming to you from Vancouver, Washington. You know, the housing market right now is crazy. People are putting their houses up for sale at 9:00 or 10:00, they are getting multiple offers before noon, and they are accepting an over-asking-price offer of 10-20% with a cash offer with a pass on the inspections. It is absolutely a seller's market. Unfortunately, the same thing is happening when it comes to agency employees. Particularly, if you are looking for someone in account service, if you are looking for... Sorry, if you're seeing me pet right at the bottom of the screen, this is Hailey. Say hi, Hailey. There we go! Anyway, if you are looking for account service folks, if you are looking for digital folks, strategy, those people are hard to come by and they are entertaining multiple offers. So many agencies are doing things like signing bonuses and some cash up front and some loaded vacation time. I was talking to a recruiter the other day, and he was saying that it's taking them four to six months to fill an AE position for a small to mid-sized agency. So a couple of things I want you to be thinking about: #1, if you have a good candidate on the hook, land them quickly. #2, you are going to have to know that you're going to pay a premium price for them right now. And #3, if you feel like with what's going on in the agency with biz dev and everything else that's going on, that you are going to have a need coming up pretty soon, start looking now. Also, the other thing you need to do is you need to pick up the pace on your interview process and your job-offer process. So they are fielding multiple offers at once and if your process is elongated and taking too long, then they are going to choose another offer because a bird in the hand. So don't be surprised if they start playing offers against each other, or they say to you, "You know what? I've already taken another offer," right when you're in the middle of negotiating. I've had several agencies that have actually hired someone and before that person started, they called and gave notice saying that they were negotiating with multiple people at the same time and they decided even after they accepted the offer, to take a different offer. So know that it's rough out there right now, particularly for account people. It's always rough for digital people. But prepare, know that you're going to have to pay a premium price, and don't wait too long. All right? I'll see you soon.