Groom your new employees to be great commercial real estate agents with these 9 keys to success.
In this article:
- Create a Training Checklist
- Objectives Are Important
- Make a Sales Kit or a Training Guide
- Place Coaches or Mentors
- Educate Through Examples and Role-Plays
- Train on a Regular Basis
- Encourage Your New Hires to Step Up
- Never Rush Your Training
- Track and Review Performance
9 Keys to Success | Train Your Real Estate Agent for Success
Keys to Success Tip #1: Create a Training Checklist
Before you train your new hires for brokerage services, you must first determine what they need to learn. Start with the basic skills and knowledge they should know in the commercial real estate business. What is commercial real estate? Who are your target clients? What is included in their job description? What are the basic documents that prospective customers need to submit?
After laying down the foundational skills and information they should know, you could then create a checklist for the more advanced skills. How do you get prospective clients? What info do you need before cold calling? Which property should you recommend to your client?
With a checklist of what they need to learn first and pay attention to, you can create a better training program. Identifying which are basic, foundational skills versus the more advanced skills will make your training more effective. Since they already have the foundations, related skills and knowledge will be easier to learn.
Aside from this, having a checklist will be helpful once you are already conducting your training. It will help you track the progress of the different individuals, their progress, and the training gaps that need solutions.
Keys to Success Tip #2: Objectives Are Important
Behavioral objectives tell what new employees should be able to do by the end of the training program. Objectives of the training program must be clear and concise to the employees. That way, everyone, both the trainers and the trainees, is set on achieving that objective. For instance, you are conducting a training for commercial real estate loans. At the end of the program, your new employees should be able to explain available CRE loans to interested clients. With an established behavioral objective, you will easily identify whether you achieved your goal at the end of the training program.
How to Make Your Behavioral Objective:
- Your behavioral objective must clearly state expected behavior of the employee as a result of the training.
- The behavioral objective should also be an observable, measurable action. Measurable actions can prove that the training is effective.
- It should focus on the actions of the employee. The training objective should focus on what the TRAINEE should do rather than what the TRAINER should do.
Keys to Success Tip #3: Make a Sales Kit or a Training Guide
What are the best practices used by your star sellers? Do you have a spiel when calling clients? What are your SOPs? Mastering all of these takes time. One way to help new employees remember and avoid making mistakes is through a sales kit or a training guide. These guides contain everything your new employee should know about the job, industry, services, costs, and procedures. It aligns the objectives of both your old and new employees on the same page.
Additionally, a sales kit serves as a guide in case the employee forgets something. It can also contain best practices, client testimonials, keys to success, and other information.
Keys to Success Tip #4: Place Coaches or Mentors
Mentoring and coaching are two other effective development strategies to train newly-hired employees. Despite being used interchangeably, they are two different approaches that lead to different outcomes. Learning which of the two your new employees need will ensure better results.
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Keys to Success Tip #5: Educate Through Examples and Role-Plays
Simply telling your employees what they need to do is not enough to make them competent and effective CRE agents. They may need other training methods to fully grasp the abilities of a successful sales rep.
- Cite real-life examples. For example, you are training your employees on how to recommend a property for sale. Merely stating the standards and principles in recommending does not fully make employees capable of making the right recommendations. However, imagine if you cite an example of how Employee A recommended Property B to Client C because of the certain factors. This will make your new agents visualize and pay attention to what takes place in real life. Which, in return, helps them set certain expectations when put on the same spot. Giving more scenarios ensures that they know what to do even if they have not experienced it yet.
- Conduct role-plays. Another way to train employees is to do a role-play. This enables trainees to apply what they learned so far. For example, your training is about cold-calling clients. Letting them role-play, with one side being the prospective client, and the other, the sales rep, allows them to experience cold calling first hand. This will serve as an initial evaluation of what they learned and what they need to improve. Constant practicing of cold calling will prepare them to be more confident and experienced when they call a prospective client for the first time.
Keys to Success Tip #6: Train on a Regular Basis
Hold regular training sessions for your new commercial real estate agents. A regular session once per week or per month will help maintain skills and knowledge. These sessions are also a great way to develop advanced skills for your employees.
In terms of retention of knowledge, having a once per week seminar would be better than a one-day session. In the first session, you can teach all the basic skills and information about CRE sales agents. Your employees will apply these learnings in the following week. Eventually, they will discover gaps in their learning, which you can mend in the succeeding sessions. Additionally, each following session will discuss more complex subjects such as sales techniques and strategies. In the end, regular training gives your employees a competitive edge.
Keys to Success Tip #7: Encourage Your New Hires to Step Up
Your company probably already has set standard procedures, policies, and practices that are included in the training. However, encourage your employees to think outside the box. Empower them to try new things, if it helps to get more work done. Having a fresh set of eyes will also help your business change for the better.
Keys to Success Tip #8: Never Rush Your Training
One common mistake when it comes to training employees is cramming too much information in a short time. Businesses think that shorter training time will lead to less cost while training employees. They completed the training, yes, but have they learned anything from it? Were the behavioral goals met after a shorter amount of training? Businesses may not realize this, but they may be sacrificing tomorrow’s game for easy wins of today.
Remember, effective training programs focus on quality instead of quantity. Give ample time for your employees to learn and absorb skills and knowledge for the job. They will not become top real estate agents in a snap. Let them grow, learn, and adjust their mindsets to be stellar commercial real estate agents.
Keys to Success Tip #9: Track and Review Performance
Another key to effectively train your new employee is to conduct a post-training evaluation. This will help you determine whether your training program is effective or not. If it is, then congratulations for getting ahead of your competition! If not, you may need to identify areas for improvement in your training for the next set of new hires.
The training review should measure how new employees are using what they learned from the training. Consider getting an opinion from a third party to observe and comment on your newly trained employees. After which, you can also get opinions from the trainees themselves to evaluate the training program itself.
Capable new employees do not appear in an instant. Train your new agents in a C.O.M.P.E.T.E.N.T way.
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