FOR BROKERS: Education

BY ROBERT FREEDMAN

1. Curriculum: paperwork
2. Curriculum: sellers
3. Curriculum: buyers
4. Curriculum: business development
A REALTOR® University sampler
Training for life
Advancing online
Adding up basic training

Basic training

Providing training for your rookie associates is integral to your efforts to beef up profitability, because associate competence is directly tied to profitability. Rookies who don’t know how to present themselves to consumers or, worse, aren’t up to speed about the latest disclosures could become costly liabilities.

And the issue of new-associate training is gaining importance for the industry as some states report huge swells in licensee numbers around the country. The biggest growth so far in 2003 appears to be in large states, such as California, Florida, New York, North Carolina, and Ohio, says Craig Cheatham, executive director of the Association of Real Estate License Law Officials. His agency says there were about 2.2 million reported licensees nationwide at the end of 2002.

When you affiliate rookies, you can’t simply rely on the fact that they took pre-licensing classes. “Students just memorize concepts,” says Eileen Taus, director of education for the Westchester County, N.Y., Board of REALTORS®. “Once they get into the industry, they need to learn the practicalities of the business.”

So how do you ensure that associates absorb and use the practical skills you teach them? Successful learning emphasizes interactivity rather than lectures. It should also focus on a few key topics.

No matter your state, new recruits need to learn how to fill out and explain to customers the paperwork of real estate, including the sales contract and disclosure forms. They also need to learn the basics of working with consumers, how to develop a clientele, and how to stay out of legal trouble, including mastering the intricacies of agency.

In broad outline, these basic training courses are typically organized in a two-week program, the first week conducted in the classroom and the second week in both the classroom and the field.

You can organize your basic training in roughly four modules: paperwork, buyers, sellers, and business development.

1. Curriculum: paperwork
For the first day and a half, have students do nothing but practice filling out business paperwork—forms for listings, seller and buyer disclosures, the purchase contract and its addenda, and agency disclosures.

Teaching technique: Have students complete documents based on different scenarios—for example, on a sales contract, ask them to list certain buyer requests, and see if they attach the correct contract addenda—then build discussions around their mistakes. New salespeople may be timid about discussing mistakes at first, but they’ll come to see that open dialogue helps in their learning and their ability to explain the forms to others. Training is the time to make mistakes.

Some trainers opt to weave lessons in paperwork into broader modules, such as those covering buyers, sellers, and business development. The rationale: Students, in theory, are already familiar with real estate documents—they’ve had roughly 30 hours of these forms in pre-licensing school.

So, for example, when you discuss financing have students complete an application for FHA mortgage insurance as homework. Then review it the next day for correctness.

2. Curriculum: sellers
Devote a day to covering seller issues, weaving in additional instruction on paperwork as needed. Be sure to cover:

• Pricing and marketing property
• Measuring property
• Conducting market analysis
• Choosing comparables
• Analyzing properties and adjusting for differences
• Determining costs to seller and seller net on sale
• Making listing presentations
• Obtaining appointments
• Presenting yourself and your company
  
  Teaching technique: Help rookies write a seller presentation, including an explanation of the value of hiring them to market and sell the home and the value the company brings. That way, when they leave class, they’re ready to start looking for clients. Have the class discuss aspects of the presentations, including who had a good first sentence.
  
  In addition, use role-playing: One student acting as the sales associate practices trying to persuade another student acting as the seller to give the associate the listing contract. Such role-playing builds students’ confidence in communicating their strengths as salespeople and overcoming objections.
  
  3. Curriculum: buyers
  Spend a day on how to find and work with buyers. Along the way, revisit paperwork issues such as writing contracts. Among the points to cover:
• Showing property
• Determining buyer costs
• Qualifying buyers and understanding the loan approval process
• Matching loan products to buyers
• Writing and negotiating offers
• Marketing buyers to potential sellers, an emerging trend. Communicate to rookies the importance of letting other associates know about their buyers and what they want by sending e-mail to local associates or talking with colleagues in informal networking sessions.
  
  You may want to avoid teaching rookies how to show a house, because that lesson can collapse into canned salesmanship. When associates try to push a buyer into a decision during a showing, they can damage their reputation.
  
  Teaching technique: To supplement instruction, host a panel discussion with a handful of veteran associates who work with buyers. The panel format encourages wide-ranging discussion of key issues, and gives students a peek into strategies of experienced colleagues. The panels are also a good way for associates to network.
  
  4. Curriculum: business development
  Spend two days acquainting students with techniques for finding clients, presenting themselves, writing ads, calling prospects, and building rapport and loyalty. More than anything, business development should focus on helping new associates overcome their natural hesitation in promoting themselves. Address the fear of prospecting and fear of rejection. And make sure they have the right vision for the business, which means not waiting for the phone to ring but staying in touch with people and building a sphere of influence.
  
  In addition, encourage students to market their ability to counsel consumers, not just sell homes. That is, they can position themselves as service providers who help buyers find houses, help sellers move on to a new chapter in their lives, and bring people together in a transaction.
  
  Teaching technique: With a “soft” topic such as business development, sessions should be interactive. That means using discussion, role-playing, and team breakouts, and limiting your use of media, including PowerPoint presentations and video programs. Although they can be entertaining, multimedia presentations are passive training tools that, used improperly, can reduce interaction time.
  
  Once the basics are out of the way, often during the second week of training, managers or veteran associates in the office take over. They coach and mentor new licensees as they start to put classroom learning into practice. And really that’s the heart of good training, says Ruth Marcus, ABR®, CRS®, director of training for Russell & Jeffcoat, REALTORS®, Inc. in Columbia, S.C. “It’s all about learning by doing.”
  
  Training techniques contributors: Jan Brand, ABR®, CRS®, career development director, Ebby Halliday, REALTORS®, Dallas; Pat Gill, ABR®, executive vice president of training, Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, Lexington, Mass.; Ruth Marcus, ABR®, CRS®, director of training, Russell & Jeffcoat, REALTORS®, Inc., Columbia, S.C.; Eileen Taus, education director, Westchester County Board of REALTORS®, N.Y.

Training for life

For veteran associates seeking credit hours to maintain their license, company training programs generally are built around six to eight hours of core classes, usually on legal issues, including agency law.

For a class to qualify for CE credit, the trainer must be state-certified; large company and local board of REALTOR® programs typically are.

Beyond licensing renewal, to help veteran associates stay on top of their game, companies typically host advanced training classes covering key topic areas such as risk management, technology, selling techniques, and negotiating. Specialty classes, such as selling to seniors, understanding cultural diversity, taking safety precautions, or mastering technology, are often contracted out rather than taught in-house, because it’s not cost-efficient to keep the expertise in-house, say trainers.

Westchester Real Estate Inc., a network of 10 brokerages in Westchester County, N.Y., partners with its local board of REALTORS® to bring in trainers on hot topics, such as selling luxury real estate, for special half-day courses. Costs to bring in a nationally known speaker typically run from $5,000 to $10,000, so partnerships help spread costs around and keep seminars affordable for associates.

The Westchester network charges associates a modest fee, mainly to give associates who RSVP an incentive to show up, says Gail Fattizzi, the network’s director.

Remind your associates, too, that they must complete the new Quadrennial Ethics Requirement by Dec. 31, 2004, in order to maintain their NAR membership. The deadline only applies to members who haven’t taken the new-member Code of Ethics training.

Advancing online

If your associates are seeking advanced training without having to make a substantial time commitment, direct them to online training options.

The NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OFREALTORS® launched REALTOR® University in the late 1990s to provide continuing education credit, professional development, and designation certification to practitioners in an online environment.

Classes take from one to 12 hours and cost $45–$295, depending on class length, complexity, and whether they apply toward a certification or designation. Topics include business planning, ethics, financing, fair housing, business valuation, and time management. There’s also an Internet marketing and professionalism program called e-PRO® (www.epronar.com).

A REALTOR® University sampler

Whether you provide your training in-house or contract some or all of it out, keeping your associates up to speed isn’t cheap. At the same time, you want to keep your training fees down as a service to your associates. Companies with in-house programs typically charge associates between $100 and $260 for basic training, which can last up to two weeks, including reference materials. Some offer free courses. Here’s a snapshot of some basic training programs:

For information on training available through NAR’s REALTOR® University and other educational resources, click the links below.
REALTOR® University

All available NAR courses

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