Archive for trainer
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: After Better Performance–or Just More Knowledge?
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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: Three Mistakes We Make in Starting a Course
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Here 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!
How NOT to Have an Out-of-Control Classroom!
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Here’s how not to have an out-of-control classroom!
In an earlier blog, I gave you some tips to controlling audiences. There’s no reason your class attendees should feel the class is out of control. After all, it’s up to us to keep that class interested, interesting, and moving. Here are more tips to do just that.
- Limit the general discussion. You are behind time (You did time your class and put your time frame on your outline, didn’t you?). You see 5 hands raised and you need to move on. Here’s the phrase:
We have time for 2 more questions.
2. Stop the chatty Kathys. There are a few techniques you can use that work.
Walk away from Kathy so she can’t catch your eye and/or wave her hand in your face.
Ask each person to write it down first. (stops the hand jerking into the air!)
Ask the person to tell another person, not the whole group.
Ask for feedback this way: What did you hear {your work partner} say that you really liked?
Quit teaching only from the front of the room. Be sure you can walk down the aisle, and, if you have a mike, it allows you to do so. Making eye contact and respecting the learners in all parts of the room is graceful and effective.
Handling Really Tough Situations
Sometimes, once in a great while, someone just has a meltdown. If that happens, take a short break. Take that person out of the class (never, ever address a concern in front of others, or try to rival a stand-up comedian, the sarcastic but always funny Don Rickles. You aren’t and you’ll lose). Use this dialogue when you get that person alone:
“I’m feeling badly {be sure and use the word feeling} about what’s going on in there. What can I do to make this a good learning experience for you?” Or, “We need to move ahead and can’t seem to do so. What can I do for you so we can move ahead together?”
When all else fails, personally and privately invite that person out of the class.
Who is Important?
The learning of the majority of the class is what is important. It’s up to you as training/facilitator/presenter to gain and use the skills that assure a great course experience. In my opinion, it’s not the ‘student’s fault he/she is successful at disrupting the class (most of the time!). It’s the inability of the instructor to artfully use the strategies above to defuse the situation.
Keep honing those skills, and thank you for dedicating your experience to our industry!
P. S. Don’t forget to gain 42 Innovative Presentation Methods that increase your effectiveness, click here.
Tips, Tricks, and Just Plan Great Strategies for the Real Estate Trainer
It’s harder than ever to provide effective training today. So, we need all the new strategies we can get! The Ultimate Real Estate Trainer’s Guide helps you through all types of situations, and provides dozens of ideas for you to use. See it here. 164 pages/4 audios. $129.95 plus shipping. Click here to find out more.
Does Your Course ‘Fit’ the Adult Learner?
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Does your course ‘fit’ the adult learner?
May is my designated Trainer Appreciation Month. So, I’m writing a blog series to help trainers teach and write great courses. And, I’m offering special discounts on my resources for trainers. See them here.
Most real estate courses are not written with adult learning principles in mind. So, let’s look at these truisms and write our courses to reach the adult learner effectively. This is one of the areas we address in my resource on how to write a course (click here to see it).
From writing courses for most of the major real estate franchises, and training thousands of real estate instructors, I’ve found some undeniable truisms. Here’s one:
Why Write a Course for the Adult Learner?
Benefits to teaching to these principles in your course:
- Adults aren’t bored (!)
- Adults feel important
- Adults pay attention
- Adults retain more
- Adults feel protected; low risk environment
- Adults like you better
- Easier for you to teach!
The Big Principles to Keep in Mind
Adults learn through association.
We learn what we already know. Two fellows teaching community colleges instructors how to teach shared that one with me. How insightful!
How do skilled presenters accomplish this in a course environment?
Do you relate what you’re teaching to the adult’s prior experience? Or, do you jump right into a complex theory and expect your students to keep up…..
Adults learn by doing
Life is do it yourself. Do you have your students doing an action in class? What happens in your course to assure the students are doing? How do you know they can do whatever it is you are teaching them to do? Observe it in class, of course!
Retention soars when adults do and say something at the same time. How are you using this principle in your course?
How much doing of significance do you have planned in your class?
Big principle: How we retain information is directly related to how we acquire that information.
Would you say that instructors are most concerned with short-term, or long-term student learning?
Adults learn from each other
Use teaching methods to encourage information exchange.
How do you assure students are exchanging information? Are you using various alternative delivery methods (not lecture) to assure students are learning not only from you, but from one another?
Adults learn through repetition
Use several approaches to the same concept/process. Does your course offer review and repetition to assure students are really learning?
Adults learn through rapid recall
What rapid recall methods have you seen used in the classroom? Do you do this so you ‘tie up’ each section before you move on?
Adults seek to satisfy individual needs
Experience levels vary greatly. How would an instructor find out each student’s individual experience levels prior to getting into the classroom?When I’m teaching Instructor Development Workshop, I provide each attendee a ‘pre-conference survey’ at registration, so I can see the needs and level of learning of that person. Even the words used give me some powerful hints about each attendee’s priorities and beliefs!
Adults learn practical information.
They want information and skills to directly apply to their lives–right away.
How have you seen instructors assure that the information is not only applicable, but that the student applies the information to their challenges, while in the classroom? Are you assuring that each of your attendee translates the course information/skills into action plans?
Go back to the course your teaching or writing and see if you are adequately addressing how adults learn. Doing so is one of the attributes of a real course, not just an ‘information overload!
Expert Guidance to Write that Great Course–at a $30 discount this Month!
If you’re serious about writing that great course, this is the resource for you. Step by step, Carla Cross, who has written courses for Re/Max, Better Homes and Gardens, Keller Williams Realty, GMAC, Royal LePage, and CRB, shows you exactly how to create your course and your outline. And, for those Washington state instructors, she shares tips on how to get your course approved for clock hours.
This resource is digital. You will get access immediately.
May Trainer Appreciation Month bonus: Keys to a Killer Introduction
This ‘how to write a course’ includes:
2 instructional videos
Templates to use as guides for course creation
Examples of courses
2 ‘cheat sheets’ to write your course modules
Tips on how to write teaching methods right into that course, so you can sell it!
Guidance in how to get your course approved in Washington state.
With 95 pages, this resource, along with the 2 instructional videos, shows you exactly how to create a course that has substance, sizzle, and ‘sell’!
May Trainer Appreciation Month price: $99.95 with coupon create course. (Regularly $129.95. Save $30)
Click here for more information and to order. You’ll get immediate access to the 95-page resource guide and 2 instructional videos. Remember, to get your discount use the coupon code create course.
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The 5 Performance Principles I Learned from my Piano Teacher
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Here are the 5 great performance principles I learned from my piano teacher.
Why are these so important? Because, as trainers, we want to
change behavior,
not just impart information!
Big questions right now: Are you training with methods that actually change behavior, or are you just imparting information you think will help your students?
PS. If you want creative training techniques that really do change behavior, check out my unique course, Instructor Development Workshop. Or, see my distance learning version, Train the Trainer. Both qualify instructors to teach clock hour courses in Washington state.
Why Some Get Results–and Others Don’t
Recently, one of my coaching clients (an owner of a real estate company) asked me, “Why do some trainers and coaches get great results and others don’t–but seem to be working as hard?”
Great question, huh? In fact, if we trainer/coach types knew that answer, we could build our systems so that we assured great performance! So, I went back to my ‘former life’–that as a musician and piano/flute teacher, and thought, “Why do some piano teachers create great performers–and others don’t?”
Why Use Piano Teachers as the Analogy….
I use the analogy of the piano teacher, because it’s easy to hear differences in sloppy and great performance. I’m sure you’ve heard 2 people play the same piece of music. One plays it accurately and one just kind of slops through it. Or, some piano teachers’ students drop out, unmotivated to practice, while others stay motivated, challenged, and achieve high performance–even if they don’t seem to have great talent.
Five Proven Components for Great Performance
From having taken piano lessons since age six, gaining a degree in piano performance, and having taught piano at the grade, high school, and college level, I’ve had an opportunity to see the great and the not-so-great–both teachers and performers. Here are the five components I’ve discovered make the biggest difference in great performance (which is what you want to shoot for when you teach!).
1. Great piano teachers screen in and screen out.
They don’t let just anybody take lessons from them.
Trainers and coaches: What’s your ‘screen in’ process? Do you have one? Do you have a list of questions you ask? In our coaching company, we have a prescribed list of questions we ask potential clients (and we unfortunately have to turn down some). I even have a Coachability Assessment I provide potential clients. Click here to request your copy.
2. Great piano teachers set expected standards (minimums) during the screening process–not after the lessons start!
Those standards include: Amount of practice each day, recitals attended and played in, going to lessons, etc.
Trainers and coaches: What do you expect of your clients? Make a list of at least 5 standards now–and get the ‘mutual expectations’ agreement in writing prior to letting them into your program.
3. Great piano teachers figure out the ‘competency levels’ they want their students to attain–and when they expect them. They won’t let the students perform in front of others if the student has not reached compentency levels.
Trainers and coaches: How good do you expect your students to get in that one-month training program you’ve been doing? Do you even measure skill levels? Which skill levels to you measure? How? Do you have your students practice their listing presentations until they reach the level of competency you believe the real client expects? What an eye-opener! Make a list now of 5 skills and the level of competency you want your students to attain in your training program. You’ll see your outcomes go way up just by doing this.
4. Great piano teachers get better performance because their excellent students motivate other good students to excellence.
Trainers and coaches: Have you ever gotten yourself into the situation where you felt like you were way above the other people in your group? This isn’t an ego thing–it’s just a ‘I don’t belong here’ thing. Likes attract. Good performers motivate other good performers. Excellent performers stay. Are you creating a self-motivating group–or, are you creating a situation where your good performers will leave for a team that is ‘more like them’? This goes back to those ‘screen in’ and setting competency principles. I know we all feel challenged when people don’t appear motivated. Here’s one of the secrets to fire them up!
5. Great piano teachers provide lavish praise–when deserved.
Behavior that’s rewarded is repeated.
If you have competency levels, you have a way and a reason to praise. Your students/clients know when they have reached those levels–and can expect praise, too! In fact, strong students/clients will ask you for praise. Write down the 5-10 methods you use to appreciate and praise good performance. If you can’t get to 10, figure them out.
But, what about the method? The specific coaching, the training? Yes, the method is important, but the coaching/training techniques above are much more important. I’ve heard some great performers and some poor performers all playing the same kind of music from the same method. At the same time, great methods should have some ‘built-in’ features that assure the trainer/coach is achieving these 5 principles.
Principles, System, Coaching–Putting it All Together
From talking with prominent trainers, managers, and coaches, we’ve pinpointed a need for all those training and coaching today to get the coaching they need to turn out great performers. So, each one of these 5 principles is in my initial online training program for newer agents: Up and Running in Real Estate. Check it out. Your agents will be performing better and faster with this program and principles.
Is Your Initial Training Program Getting the Results you Want?
Or, a better question: Do you know what the results are? With my online training program, Up and Running in Real Estate, you see the progress your agent is making each week. You measure the results in concrete terms. Check it out. It will save you time, and money, and give you much greater retention!
Teaching Adults Effectively: How Are You Doing It?
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Teaching adults effectively: How are you doing it?
This month, I’m writing a blog series to help trainers write great courses or take those courses and make them ‘live’. From writing courses for most of the major real estate franchises, and training thousands of real estate instructors, I’ve found some undeniable truisms. Here’s one:
So, let’s look at these truisms and write our courses to reach the adult learner effectively. This is one of the areas we address in my resource on how to write a course (click here to see it).How Adults Learn and Retain: How to Weave These Principles into your Course
Benefits to teaching to these principles in your course:
- Adults aren’t bored (!)
- Adults feel important
- Adults pay attention
- Adults retain more
- Adults feel protected; low risk environment
- Adults like you better
- Easier for you to teach!
The Big Principles to Keep in Mind
Adults learn through association:
We learn what we already knowa Two fellows teaching community colleges instructors how to teach shared that one with me. How insightful!
How do skilled presenters accomplish this in a course environment?
Do you relate what you’re teaching to the adult’s prior experience? Or, do you jump right into a complex theory and expect your students to keep up…..
Adults learn by doing
Life is truly ‘do it yourself’. Do you have your students doing an action in class? What happens in your course to assure the students are doing? How do you know they can do whatever it is you are teaching them to do? Observe it in class, of course!
Retention soars when adults do and say something at the same time. How are you using this principle in your course?
How much doing of significance do you have planned in your class?
To live by my own principle, I just increased the amount of ‘student’ teaching I have during my Instructor Development Workshop. The students loved it and showed me I can get them into action faster and more often than I thought!
Big principle: How we retain information is directly related to how we acquire that information.
Would you say that instructors are most concerned with short-term, or long-term student learning?
Adults learn from each other
Use teaching methods to encourage information exchange.
How do you assure students are exchanging information? Are you using various alternative delivery methods (not lecture) to assure students are learning not only from you, but from one another?
Adults learn through repetition
Use several approaches to the same concept/process. Does your course offer review and repetition to assure students are really learning?
Adults learn through rapid recall
What rapid recall methods have you seen used in the classroom? Do you do this so you ‘tie up’ each section before you move on?
Adults seek to satisfy individual needs
Experience levels vary greatly. How would an instructor find out each student’s individual experience levels prior to getting into the classroom? When I’m teaching my Instructor Development Workshop, I provide each attendee a ‘pre-conference survey’ at registration, so I can see the needs and level of learning of that person. Even the words used give me some powerful hints about each attendee’s priorities and beliefs!
Adults learn practical information.
They want information and skills to directly apply to their lives–right away.
How have you seen instructors assure that the information is not only applicable, but that the student applies the information to their challenges, while in the classroom? Are you assuring that each of your attendee translates the course information/skills into action plans?
Go back to the course your teaching or writing and see if you are adequately addressing how adults learn. Doing so is one of the attributes of a real course, not just an ‘information overload!
Honestly: Are the Courses You Teach Boring? (Even to YOU?)
Come join me to put these creative, fun teaching methods into your course. Attend Beyond the Basics: Advanced Skills to Make that Course Come Alive, coming up April 23-24 (approved for 7.5 clock hours in Washington state).
We’ll be working with parts of a course you bring. We’ll put in some great methods and then practice to see how they work–a unique opportunity!
There’s no other course like this–and your chance to get some individual and small group coaching to make your teaching and your course a huge success! Click here to see the course and register.
Teaching: How to Make Those Small Groups Work Right
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Teaching: Here are 3 principles to make those small groups work right.
This month, I’m doing blogs on teaching–specifically, how to change it up and quit lecturing your way through the day. I know we have thousands of dedicated real estate instructors. But, we seem to have thousands of bored students! Why? Because most of our courses don’t have a variety of teaching methods built in. So, in this series, I’ll help you build in ‘relief’ from that awful, boring lecture and change it up to keep your audience interested and learning.
The Alternative: Divide and Conquer
In the previous blog, we explored the ‘divide and conquer’ method of teaching. One of the configurations of the ‘divide and conquer’ is the task force: Small groups of people working on a common problem. In this blog, I’ll show you a few things to do with that task force to assure it goes right. Most of these principles would also apply to dividing people into groups, too, for role play and other small groups (I’ll write a blog on this later).
Three Principles for Great Task Forces
- The task must be something the attendees can do without further information. For example: If you’re teaching Instructor Development, you’ll probably have a section on ‘how adults learn’. You can easily subdivide this topic into 3 or 4 sections. For example, you could have ‘obstacles to adult learning’. You already know that your attendees can come up with several obstacles to adult learning–they have either experienced them or observed them.
What wouldn’t work in a task force: To ask your attendees to tackle something that they need additional information or training to accomplish. For example–if I were teaching a group of would-be instructors how to facilitate a task force, I couldn’t ask them to write down all the steps to facilitate until I’d taught them the steps.
2. One task per group: If you have several groups, assign only one task per group.
What wouldn’t work in a task force exercises: Assigning all the tasks to all the groups, or assigning the same task to every group. Why? Because the first group to report will report pretty much everything the other groups have come up with–an exercise in frustration! (There is a way to do this, which I’ll discuss in a later blog).
3. Put no more than 5 people in a group, so people have a chance to interact easily with each other, and everyone gets to have input.
What wouldn’t work: Putting more than 5 people in a group. The ‘outliers’ can’t communicate and only 2-3 people will end up contributing.
When To Use a Task Force
Task forces work really well at the beginning of a session, to break up your lecture in the middle of the section, and to summarize learning at the end.
Where will you employ a task force in your teaching? Let me know!
Come join me to put these creative, fun teaching methods into your course. Attend Beyond the Basics: Advanced Skills to Make that Course Come Alive, coming up April 23-24 (approved for 7.5 clock hours in Washington state). We’ll be working with parts of a course you bring. We’ll put in some great methods and then practice to see how they work–a unique opportunity!
Going into Management: How Are You Going to Train?
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So you’re thinking of going into management. One of the great actions effective managers do is to create and implement a training program that actually gets results.
This month, I’m featuring blogs regarding going into management. Why? I’ve been interviewing for that next great leader. Unfortunately, I’ve found few candidates have prepared at all for management. (Read my earlier blogs for preparation needed).
Grab your training calendar from your office (you do have a training calendar, don’t you?). Do you believe that training is getting the biggest ‘bang’ for your training buck (effort expended, talent needed, results expected)?
Maybe you’re taking part in the training program. Are you frustrated because your training isn’t getting results? Or, people just aren’t showing up? Or, worse yet, falling asleep in that factoid-heavy class?
If you have access to your office’s profit and loss statements: Maybe you have a specific problem you’ve noticed when you read your latest profit and loss statement. For instance: Perhaps your agents are giving too many commission concessions.
Training can Solve Some Challenges–and Not Others
When you go into management, you’ll see various challenges that training can solve (and some challenges training can’t solve!). Decide which challenges you can solve by providing training (like increasing listings sold) and which challenges can’t be corrected by more training (ethical issues are hard to re-train to, since people’s ethics are pretty hard-wired into them in their early years!).
Pretend now you’re in management. If you’re experiencing any of these challenges, you’ll love the tool here. I’m providing an insightful analytical tool to discover what’s right–and wrong–with your training.
Three main reasons training isn’t working:
1. It isn’t tied to the problems you want to solve in your office (agents not productive enough, commissions too low, etc.)
2. It doesn’t teach your agents to perform better–just gives information
3. It isn’t exciting enough–teacher just drones on and on…..
As I work with owners, managers and trainers internationally, I see these same three problems crop up over and over.
How to Figure Out What’s Wrong with that training Program
From working with many managers over a period of years, I’ve created an analytical tool to figure out what’s good, bad, and ugly about that training program. Use it in your office. Or, if you have the guts, use it with your manager and then create a plan to create better training–with goals for specific, measurable results.
Click here to get your analytical tool — along with tips to correct your training to make it pay off.
Managers: Do you have someone you know would be a great manager? Start working with that person now. Get them into training. Have them take a great Instructor Development Course, team train, and, finally, start training on your program.
Affiliates: Share this with the managers/trainers in the offices you call on. Use these tips, too, to streamline the training you provide.
The Complete Training Guide for Real Estate–Gain Skills and Techniques
Here’s the comprehensive training tool that will help you create great training programs, become a confident, effective trainer, and help many more people succeed in real estate! Check it out here.
Why Just Hiring More May Not Be Best for You
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Here’s why just hiring more may not be best for you. This month, I’m focusing on hiring–and termination. Why? Because they are the most important activities you can do. And, they determine the profitability and culture of your company.
Do you know how much poor hiring practices cost you? Most brokers don’t realize they are doing irreparable damage to their companies by hiring those who aren’t going to go right to work and keeping those who won’t work. Here are the 3 biggest consequences to poor selection I see.
1. Stops you from hiring great producers.
Likes attract. How can brokers hope to hire that great producer when they have more than 10% of their office as non-producers? I can see it now. Sure, I’ll come to your office. I’m a top producer, and I just love to be dragged down by those non-producers. It will be my pleasure to waste my time with them. Not.
2. Kills your recruiting message.
Do you have a training program? Do you use it to recruit? Here’s the real message: We have a training program. All our new agents go through it. We don’t get any results from the program, so it really doesn’t work. But, join us. You can’t possibly show how successful your training program makes your agents because your training program can’t possibly get results from poor people in and no actions and accountability required.
3. De-motivates your agents to provide referrals to you.
Why would one of your good agents possibly refer someone to you when your good agent doesn’t see those you hired starting right out and making money fast?
As the Market Shifts: It Won’t Cover Up an Inadequate Selection Process
In a fast market, accidental sales buoy up poor agents and make them look as though they were actually selling enough real estate to be a median agent. When the market shifts, so do the agents ‘ mirage of decent production. With that shifted market, brokers need to hire with purpose (using a stringent, professional interview process). Then, they need to put agents right to work with a proven start-up plan.
Please Tell Me What You Think
What do you think a non-productive agent costs the company? In my next blog, I’ll give you some line items that will probably double what you think a bad hire costs. Let’s see what you think first. Poor hiring practices really, really hurts brokers, both financially and emotionally.