Ask any brokerage what they lead with when recruiting, and the answer is almost always some version of splits, culture, or leads. That's not wrong exactly, a June 2026 industry survey of 153 agents by Real Brokerage found commission economics is still the single most-cited factor agents name when first choosing a brokerage. But the same survey found something else: once agents are already producing, the factors that keep them shift toward support, culture, and growth opportunity.
What outperforms a splits-first pitch, based on tens of thousands of recruiting texts run across client accounts, is a research-framed opener: "what's the one thing you wish you had more of right now, support, referrals, whatever it is, we're doing some research to be better for agents in the area." That's the actual template running live today. It doesn't ask the agent to defend a decision.
Once an agent responds with what's missing, that's the conversation. In a smaller sample of our own client onboarding data collected over the last 3 months, 83% of brokers who described agents' complaints in detail named lack of support, not compensation, as what frustrated agents at their last brokerage.
Splits and comp still matter, but they come up later, once the agent has named what's missing.