Time to Plan: How to Get Your Agents to LOVE Planning!
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Note: Through November and December, I’m going to help you with your 2020 business plans. You’ll find free documents from my business planning system for owners and an invitation to a complimentary webinar. Why not subscribe and be sure not to miss a thing?
Let’s get real. Your agents aren’t motivated to build that business plan–and we aren’t either. We know we’re supposed to write business plans. Yet, if your agents are like 95% of real estate professionals, doing that seems just like an exercise in futility. Most business plans don’t inspire.
Leaving out the ‘Magic’?
I’ll give you specific guidance for you to put that magic into business plans, so you and your agents are inspired every day to not only to complete the plan, but to use it as a very personalized and specific guide to your success.
Why Are Most Business Plans Useless?
Unfortunately, when most people write business plans, all they do is fill in some blanks with “guess” numbers. The problem here is that numbers in blanks aren’t inspiring. They aren’t motivating. They don’t call out and suggest to you that you should look at those numbers once in awhile!
What Really Motivates Us?
If numbers inspired us, we’d all be gazillionaires selling real estate. After all, we say we want to sell more homes than the average agent. We want to make more money than the average agent. You know the drill, and we’ve heard it from hundreds of agents hundreds of times. Yet, if numbers and money were motivators, our results would be different than they are. The fact is that money, in itself, is not a motivator.
It’s what we want to do with the money.
And that’s as individual as we are. Martin Luther King didn’t say, “I have a business plan.” He said, “II have a dream.” You must include the dream part–the emotional driver–of your future in your business plans to make that plan useful to you. That means, you as a business consultant, need to include the three ‘missing’ parts of business plans that I describe below.
Building the Why Into your Business Plans
That’s the motivator. In other words, we have to have a big why. Most business plans don’t build in the why. So, they fall flat, and leave us cold. That’s why agents don’t want to go through the exercise of creating them. Managers always commiserate that they can’t get their agents to write business plans. You wouldn’t want to write a plan, either, if you know it wouldn’t help you with your business the next year.
The Tools to Find that Why
Most people think of business plans as projections of numbers. But, that’s not all there is to a real strategic plan. There are three parts of a business plan that provide that inspiration, that motivation. Those are the parts of the planning process that are most frequently left out:
- Your vision--why you’re in this business; how you see yourself after you retire
- Your review–what happened in your business that will make an impact on your business in the future
- Your mission–who are you in the business
In the next few blogs, I’ll show you how to create these parts of your business plan and get your agents to plan, so you give yourself the inspiration and motivation you need to create and implement your plan.
If You Teach: How Do You Know How You Did?
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If you teach: Do you know how you did?
If you rely on people’s comments after the event, good for you. But, what if you knew the good, the bad, and the ugly–so you could keep all the great things and improve on everything else? That’s what a survey can do for you.
At the end of this blog, grab one of my surveys. Click here.
Surveys Should Throw Some of the Accountability to the Student.
I’m a member of National Speakers Association and they are great proponents of surveys. Surveys can do many things for you. Of course, they tell you how you did from the student perspective. But, more than that, a good survey should throw some of the accountability to the student. What was the learning they accomplished? How would they apply it?
We do surveys in our coaching company, both in the middle of the program and at the end of the program. We ask, “What did you learn? What did you apply? Was there any reason why you couldn’t finish the work?” Build some accountability for student learning into your surveys.
You’ll Get Nice Comments for Promoting your Course, Too!
In my speaking survey, I ask attendees if I can use their comments as testimonial. Most of time they very nicely say yes. Testimonials are very, very important to put in your marketing. After all, we believe what others say about us, not what we say about ourselves! Yes, I’m even starting to do video testimonials. (much better than just written ones!)
Here it is: Grab one of my surveys. Click here.
I can help! Let me assist your association or company. I’ll share innovative training techniques that are easy to apply and instantly energize your audience and help you become more effective–and confident. Contact me and I’ll customize a training to fit your needs:
425-392-6914 or carla@carlacross.com
Trainers: Are you after better performance–or just giving them more knowledge?
Are you standing in front of your students to create better performance, or more knowledge?
I learned this the hard way. After graduating with a degree in piano performance, I applied to and had been awarded a scholarship to UCLA as a graduate assistant in the music department. But, after I was at UCLA a few weeks, I became disillusioned, for I found out that the UCLA music department was all about ‘knowledge’, not performance. Professors earned tenure by publishing papers about sixteenth century Elizabethan madrigals–but they didn’t have to be able to play the madrigals…My interest and experience in music had been performance.
Are You After Better Performance or More Knowledge?
I’ve never forgotten that lesson about the difference in the knowledge about something–and the performance of it. Which is more important in what you are teaching? What do you want your students to be able to do as a result of your presentation/training? Sure, just like musical performance, you must have some technique to perform. But, also like musical performance, lots of knowledge doesn’t make you a good performer.
If You Want Better Performance…
Here are five areas to look at to assure you’re creating performers, not just know-it alls.
1. What percent of your program is instructor focused? That is, the instructor performs. If it’s more than 50%, you have a knowledge-heavy program. Model your program like the piano teacher teaches piano. He talks very little, demonstrates some, and listens to the student play and gives positive reinforcement and re-direction.
The teacher knows he taught because the student can play.
2. Do you choose your instructors based on their knowledge and their ability to deliver the message attractively? Start choosing your instructors, instead, on their ability to facilitate performance. They should be able to demonstrate a role play, set up a role play, and draw conclusions. Like great piano teachers create increasingly difficult programs for their students, your instructors should be able to craft ever-increasing difficult rule plays.
Think of them as creators of ‘virtual reality’.
3. Who is held accountable for the program–the instructors or the students? In most programs, we ‘relieve’ the instructor if he doesn’t get good reviews from the students. The instructor’s the only one accountable. Turn it around. 75% of the accountability should be on the students to demonstrate they have learned the skill. Why? Because, without student accountability, managers get your ‘graduates’ who can’t perform.
4. Is your focus on curriculum? Are you attempting to create value for the program to management or owners by providing more information than the other school? Most training programs could cut 50% of their curriculum and graduate better performers. Instead of focusing on curriculum, create your program as ‘virtual reality’. Have a system that provides a series of “performance building blocks”. Don’t tell them all about playing a concerto. Just tell them enough to let them ‘get their fingers on the keys’.
5. Are the objectives of your program knowledge-based? How do the students graduate from your program? Do they pass a written exam? Managers want a graduate who can perform the activities of a real estate salesperson to reasonably high performance standards. A good training program should identify, teach, observe, and coach performance in several critical performance areas until the student can perform well enough to graduate.
The Right Performance Test
As a piano performance major, each term, I had to play a ‘mini-recital’ in the music auditorium for an audience of four–all piano professors. I couldn’t just talk about music theory, or answer a multiple choice exam. I had to play. And, to pass the ‘course’, I had to play to certain set performance standards. The more your training program resembles the ‘virtual reality’ of your specific performance, the more valuable your program to the people who hired your students –and you.
Raise Your Trainers’ Level of Performance
Carla is helping trainers everywhere become even better at what they do. Why not invite her to work with your association or company? Here are some of the areas Carla addresses:
- How to put more participation into your courses (so you quit boring them to tears)
- How to give students a much different experience, by using creative, effective training methods
- How to arrange your course so it has a natural ‘flow’ and students are really competent by the end of the course
- Invest in your faculty. They will go out and recruit more great faculty members and your training program with grow with purpose!
Contact Carla at carla@carlacross.com or 425-392-6914. She’ll find out your needs and customize a program just for you.
Trainers: How do you assure that your attendees actually capture strategies that they feel will help them in their careers? Or, do you just expect them to be able to make the leap from what you’re teaching to how they’ll use the information and skills?
The strategy I’m explaining below is excerpted from my training programs, which certify instructors in Washington state to teach clock-hour approved courses. See Train the Trainer, my distance-learning version, or Instructor Development Workshop, my live version. Both can be found at Cross Institute.
The situation: The attendees sits all the way through that day-long class. In the after-class evaluation, he says, “I didn’t get anything I could use.” Oh, boy. Here you’ve worked hard to bring each attendee the strategies needed to propel careers forward. Yet, this attendee (and it’s a common problem), said he didn’t get anything useful from the class.
What’s going on? What’s going on is that attendees may not have a method to translate what you’ve shared in class to apply to their own situations. You need to provide them a method to ‘translate’ your strategies to their solutions, and capture those translations to put to use once they’re out of class.
The Action Plan Method
Here’s a great method to do just that. At the end of your warm-up, or, at least in the first 1/2 hour of your presentation, introduce the action plan. In this section, I have given you a couple of examples of action plans. Also in this section, I’ve made a sheet called your action plan. Put this sheet in your handout, or make it a separate sheet.
Take a look at the Action Plan template here.
If I were teaching this class ‘live’, I would ask attendees to take this sheet out of your handbook and keep it beside you, as you go through this course. I encourage you to include an action plan ‘template’ in your outline when you’re teaching, and ask the students to take it out of their handbook, and keep it beside them as they go through the course so they can capture action items. These action items don’t have to be things that you say. it’s whatever pops into their heads. Many times when I’m teaching, I tell people that the person with the longest action list gets the most out of the course. So if they paid $250 for the course, and they’ve got an action list of four pages, they really got a $2500 course. Whereas the person who paid $250 for the course, and has three items on the action list, probably should have paid only $50 for the course! (Or, at least that’s the value they got, because they couldn’t apply all the principles and skills to become a better instructor).
It’s not the information you get. It’s what you do with it.
Including this step increases your adult learner’s desire and ability to create practical action steps to implementing the concepts and skills you are teaching.
Adult learners many times don’t have the skills to translate the concepts you’re teaching to ‘real life’. Using the Action Plan process teaches them to learn better.
How do you provide ‘reflection time’ so that your attendees have a quiet moment to think through possible action items and commit?
Let me know how this terrific method works for you!
1. Create an effective 3-60 minute persuasive presentation, so you’ll get more business when you’re in front of 2 or 200 (especially great for affiliates–mortgage and title reps, home warranty companies)
2. Learn and apply new teaching methods to keep our audience engaged–so you’ll get great reviews and more trainings
3. Get exciting, easy, and effective creative training strategies to put more ‘zip’ in your presentations–and polish your courses
Contact me at carla@carlacross.com or call me at 425-392-6914 and we’ll explore how I can help!
Quick! Count the Number of Ways You Teach
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Quick! Count the number of ways you teach. Are you a ‘one-trick’ pony, or do you vary your teaching methods and strategies often?
The picture is from the last Instructor Development Workshop I just taught. My awesome attendees posted what they thought were the most valuable teaching strategies they got from the session. Wow–they won’t be boring presenters now!
Are you stuck in one method?
We all have a favorite method to teach. Why? Because it’s our behavioral ‘style’. Many of us in the real estate industry like to lecture. Admittedly, it’s the easiest. We can control the audience–we think! We are the whole show. We don’t want input. After all, we must know more than the students, right? We are experts. We want to provide lots of information, and we don’t have much time to do it. So, we talk–and talk–and talk.
The problem with the presenter being the whole show…..
Unfortunately, though, the attendees get real tired of hearing us in about 10-15 minutes. Oh, I know. A very few lecturers can be entertainng for longer than that. But, learning studies show that learning drops way off in a short period of time when the students are not involved.
How much do you want your students to learn–and retain?
You would think, that, the more we talk, the faster we talk, and the more information we provide, the more the students grasp and remember. But, as you can see from the study below, that’s not the case. If we’re just talking, the student retains only 20%. But, if we’re using various other training methods, the student retention goes WAY UP.
The REAL Reason We Rely on Lecture
OK. I’m going to throw back the covers on a dirty little secret: We lecture because we aren’t trained in other methods of teaching. In addition, the courses we are given to teach are not even courses–they’re little books, or ‘streams of consciousness’. So we grab them and talk.
The other big problem with relying on lecture
When I teach Instructor Development, the attendees always want to know how to deal with the ‘chatty Cathys’ or the ‘disruptive Dans’. So, let’s look at how those challenges occur. They occur when we rely on lecture. It’s easy to lose control when someone wants to take over and teach the class to us, or argue, or comment with a war story! And, that only occurs when you lecture or hold a discussion.
Divide and conquer
What if you could develop alternative methods to deliver your content? What if you could divide them in various ways so those chatty Cathys and disruptive Dans couldn’t run their schticks? What if you could control your audience with grace? What if you could help your attendees learn more and retain better? What if your attendees could find your training fun, exhilarating, exciting, and engaging? It’s possible if you learn and use other methods of teaching. That’s what we explore and practice in my Instructor Development Workshop, and my distance learning version, Train the Trainer.
Are you doing sales presentations and need to capture interest and action?
Are you doing clock hour trainings and want to put the excitement and participation in your course?
Do you want me to certify your instructors to teach clock hour courses? Contact me and we’ll get it done! carla@carlacross.com
I’m working on converting my Train the Trainer distance learning course to a new course software format. The information below is excerpted from the course.
How do you like to learn? I ask that question in my pre-conference survey before I teach the ‘live’ version of Train the Trainer–Instructor Development Workshop. (coming up in Bellevue, WA. Oct. 3-4). Interestingly, people’s answers vary greatly. Here are some of their answers about how they like to learn:
•Concrete sequential •Interaction and involvement •Experience first-hand how to teach a class •Listen and see visual examples •Small groups •Interactive environment •Take notes and ask lots of questions •Variety: lecture, video, exercises Doing/listening/visual
Do We Teach to How They Like to Learn?
Too often, we launch right into creating a course without acknowledging how adults learn. To optimize adult learning, we must include in our course those methods that are proven to result in better adult learning. This will solve many of our teaching challenges! that means we have to have a wide ‘repertoire’ of teaching methods!
How Adults Like to Learn
1. Adults learn through association: “We learn what we already know”.
I’ll bet you can remember a time when you took a course and got lost because the instructor didn’t relate what he was teaching to what you already knew.
Give an example of a time when you took a course, or taught a course, and the students didn’t understand what the instructor was talking about, even though the instructor kept trying to explain.
In both my ‘train the trainer courses, I show you how to teach with relevance, so you never ‘lose’ the student along the way!
2. Adults learn and retain best by doing.
Life is “do it yourself”. This means that the highest level of learning occurs when the student practices in class. Otherwise, there is little skill developed and little retention.
Can you remember a time when you saw the instructor demonstrate the skill, but you had no chance to practice the skill in class. (This is too often the case in real estate courses!)
How did that affect your ability to do the skill later—your retention?
What does the research about retention suggest about the importance of role play (each person practicing the skill in class) in the learning process?
3. Adults learn from each other – Use teaching methods to encourage information exchange.
What teaching methods do you use in your teaching to ‘choreograph’ (organize and facilitate) the students in your class learning from each other?
4. Adults learn through repetition – Use several approaches to the same concept/process.
What kind of repetition have you seen be effective to increase students’ retention?
What do you plan on doing to provide repetition and thus, long-term retention?
In both my courses, we explore several methods to provide repetitition–without being repetitious!
5. Adults learn through rapid recall.
What methods have you seen used by instructors to provide situations where students could practice their recall, and thus, increase their retention?
In my new Train the Trainer course, I introduce Rapid Recall, where those taking the course have an opportunity to revisit the important concepts in that section of the course.
6. Adults seek to satisfy individual needs – Experience levels vary greatly.
What methods have we already discussed to discover individual student needs?
How have you seen instructors (or how have you) revisited those student needs during the course to remind students of their needs, and to see that you are meeting their needs?
7. Adults learn practical information best. They want to know how your course content applies to their lives.
What methods do you use to assure that students can apply what you’re teaching to their lives?
Expand your teaching ‘repertoire’ with dozens of interesting, exciting, and new teaching methods. Explore either my distance learning Train the Trainer Course, or, my ‘live’ Instructor Development Workshop.
Trainers: Three Mistakes We Make in Starting a Course
By · CommentsHere are three common mistakes we make in starting a course–and what to do to launch it right. This is excerpted from my Train the Trainer distance learning program, that qualifies as an approval method to become a clock-hour instructor in Washington state.
- Mistake One: Not doing a warm-up, or the wrong warm-up
In starting a course, step one is to create rapport. To do that you use warm-ups. Have you ever been in a class where students were directed to introduce themselves and say what they did? That was a kind of a warm-up, and but it’s just so boring! You hear about three or four people and you’re thinking, “Oh, please, please just quit before you get to 30 or 40 of them.” You don’t really learn anything, do you? Avoid those kinds of warm ups. In the resource section of Train the Trainer, and my ‘live’ version, Instructor Development Workshop, there’s a list of great books with warm ups and exercises. Get those books, and start thinking about what warm up would be appropriate to what you’re teaching.
My Warm-Up for the ‘live’ Instructor Development Course
When I’m teaching this course live, I start it by inviting people to tell me who their best teacher was, and why. Actually, I don’t have them tell me. I have them tell each other. Then, we make a list of best teacher attributes. We get people talking to each other, we get them refining things, we get them sharing common things that they have experienced.
Later, when I ask little tougher questions, they’re going to contribute because they know I’m not going to hurt them! And, the people in the class aren’t going to hurt them.
Why I Use the ‘Best Teacher’ Warm-Up
Why do I use the warm up of the best teacher? Because that’s part of the course. See if you can come up with a warm up that lead you segues you into what you’re going to teach.
2. Mistake Two: Spending Too Much Time Telling about YOU
Have you ever been in a course where the instructor spent the first half-hour (or more), telling the attendees about himself/herself? Don’t do that! You’ll see, from , my courses, there’s a natural flow to the four-step course launch process. It doesn’t include a half-hour on instructor bio! Instead, you can introduce yourself in 3 minutes. And, provide your bio–and most importantly–why you’re qualified to teach this course–in your outline, in your pre-course email, in a handout, etc.
3. Mistake Three: Launching Right into the Course By Saying ‘We’ve Got a Lot to Cover’
Oh, how exciting!!! It’s about as exciting as saying ‘I’ll never get through that outline, so bear with me.” If you have 3-4 hours of class, take time to go through the four steps as I’ve described in my courses. Those steps include telling the benefits the attendees will get from the course, and then asking them what they want from the course.
Launching your course is the most important part of the whole experience. People remember the beginning and the end. Be sure your beginning is carefully ‘choreographed’, and you do what needs to be done for specific reasons–not because you saw someone else do it!
Trainers: Setting Up Your Room for Optimum Learning
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Trainers: Here are some pointers on setting up your room so you achieve the highest learning from your efforts. (excerpted from my upcoming Train the Trainer 2.0 distance learning course–all in new software; coming in November).
Note: At the end of this blog, grab my schematic of various room configurations. Decide which is best for your training purposes.
Many times I walk into a room and it’s not set up right, even though I gave the meeting planner a schematic of exactly how I want the room arranged. I have to be there at least an hour before to get it set up right (and I highly recommend you always check out the room beforehand and get to the meeting room an hour before you speak).
The Magic of the Chevron
What do I mean by chevron? That means the chairs or desks are arranged in a V, with the point at the back of the room. The reason for the V is that the people at the outside corners of the room, or along the side of the room, can see the instructor. If the desks or chairs are arranged straight across the room, the students are not facing toward where you are in the middle.What about Round Tables?
Round tables are great if you’re facilitating a lot and people are going to work together. But, round tables may work against you because they take up a lot of room. Let’s say you’ve got 100 people in the room and they’re at round tables. You’ve got a lot of space to cover. Also, if you’re going to be switching deliveries often (that’s how you teach, to avoid lecture) (and I hope you are), you may be asking people to switch tables frequently and that can be confusing. Be sure you match your room configuration with the kind of teaching that you’re going to do.
Is the Room Big Enough?
Sometimes the room isn’t big enough. When I’m doing this distance learning Train the Trainer class as a live class, (Instructor Development Workshop--coming up Oct. 3-4, 2019 in Bellevue, Wa), I need to have a room at least twice as big as one would need if I was just doing a lecture; because I’m dividing people up and they have to have room to roam. They have to have room to do exercises, And, on day two, students are going to actually do a presentation to their peers. I either have to have quite a large room where I can separate into groups of eight or nine people, or I have to have two or three rooms depending on how big the class is. Do you have some special considerations? Be sure to spell them out to your meeting planner prior to your presentation.
Communicate with Your Meeting Planner
Be sure to communicate with the meeting planner the room space you need. I have a 3-page schematic and description for my Instructor Development Workshop set-up so I don’t have any surprises when I get to the room!
Grab the schematic on room configurations here.
Drilling Down to Find Your Next Great Manager
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In my earlier post, we discussed finding that next great manager. Now, here’s more information you need to get that great leader–that person you’ll enjoy working with!
You are Not Done Describing the Job
You need to attach your performance standards for management activities (minimum expectations for that person to retain his/her job) in each of these areas.For example:
How many hours a week do you expect your manager to recruit? (lead generate)
How many lead generating calls do you expect your manager to make per week?
How many interviews do you expect your manager to hold per week?
How many hours a week do you expect your manager to interview and select?
What are the selection standards you expect from your manager (who should be hired and who should not)?
How many hours a week do you expect your manager to train?
How many hours a week do you expect your manager to coach?
Who do you expect your manager to coach?
What leadership activities do you expect of your manager?
What staff/operation activities to you expect?
What do you expect your manager to do to increase the bottom line?
Decide this in terms of:
How many recruits per month (decide on your ratio of new or experienced)
Production per month
Moving your experienced agents from ____ revenue units (sales and listings sold) to ________ revenue units by _____________ (date)
Profitability increase of __________ in _____________ months
Standards Agreement Usually Missed in the Hiring Process
This specific standards agreement is usually missing in the hiring process. It takes awhile during our coaching sessions to develop a workable standards agreement for each situation. But, without a standards agreement, you haven’t laid out exactly what the job expectations are. You have no method to coach and hold your new manager accountable. And, if you need to terminate, you should have measureable reasons to terminate.
Now, armed with your description of the ideal manager, your job description, and your standards agreement, you are ready to search for that people developing manager who will take your company to greater productivity.
How to Choose that Next Great Manager
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It’s probably the toughest thing we do–hire a manager. And, there’s little information to help us. That’s why I wrote this series of blogs.
Past Experience is a Huge Benefit
Look for a person who has been trained in another business as a trainer/coach/leader. This is really important. When I was finding and screening leadership for one of the largest franchises in the world, I found that the really magic ingredient was that the potential leader had already had some experience in the skills of management. (sometimes not in real estate).
The Second Pre-requisite to a Successful Management Hire
Now, go back and prioritize those duties–with the most important ones first. Here is what I hope your list says–in this order:Recruit
Select
Train
Coach
Lead: Challenge and inspire seasoned agents to the next career level (retention)
Manage staff
Time Frames for Important Activities
Did you add time frames to that job description? If not, go back and do it now. You don’t want a manager that pushes recruiting to the last hour in the day and then doesn’t get to it!
To get my manager’s detailed job description with hours expected, plus a time analysis you can use for all your managers, click here.
Doing all the other Stuff…..
Where does the rest of the go? I know. You have on your list: Broker questions; crisis management; floor schedules; write ads.
Guess what? You can get just about anybody to do those jobs. In fact, instead of hiring a real sales manager, if all you need is operations, hire an administrative assistant who can and will do it all (except for the broker questions, which you can field, or hire one of your good agents to field).
The All-too Common Problem: Hiring an Operations Manager
I find too many owners or general managers who needs to hire and manage a manager are settling for an a operations manager when what they desperately need is a people developing manager.
What does a people developing manager do?
Finds the right people and develops them into productive salespeople who return a profit to you
You don’t need a babysitter. You don’t need just an answer man (or woman). You don’t need merely an operations person. You shouldn’t settle for just a a crisis manager. You need someone who will focus on and drive
recruiting and productivity--to lead that office into greater profitability, not just take up space in the manager’s office!
Get my manager’s detailed job description, plus a time analysis you can use for all your managers: click here.
What didn’t I say in these blogs that you believe is important in hiring a great manager? Let me know. Watch for the next blogs for more in hiring that next great manager.
