You love to train. But, you’re frustrated because you pour your heart into your training, give them advice—and they don’t do what you told them!

I Heard It—But I don’t do it….

You’re teaching a class in creating referrals. You tell the agents in your class to create a follow-up program when their listing sells or they sell a home—so they gain referrals from that transaction. Unfortunately, most agents don’t take our advice in this very important referral principle.

How do we know? According to National Association of Realtors’ surveys, the vast majority of sellers say they would work again with the person who sold them their home. But, only 12% of buyers actually do so. Why? They can’t remember the agent’s name! Why? Because the agent didn’t stay in touch. The result: Agents miss the ‘easy one’—that return and referral business they say they so badly want.

Maybe They Didn’t Really Get “Training”

We call how we teach “ training”, but, it probably isn’t.  It’s education when we just talk to a class.

What’s the difference between education and training? Training has people doing something in class. And, to plus that training impact, students do that work outside class and report back.

Here are the five reasons our “training” fails:

  1. We tell them too much.
  2. We don’t have them do anything in class.
  3. We don’t check back to see the work is done.
  4. We don’t get feedback on the action they were to do between classes.
  5. We don’t do all training as a sequence. Instead, we treat it as an event. The sad truth is that we adults only remember 10% of what we heard three days later!

How to Make your Training “Stick”

Quit talking so much! Instead, get your students doing something in class. Then, assign them an action to take outside class. Finally, bring the class back to discuss what happened when action was taken. You’ll find agents actually put your ideas to work—and they get successes (of course they will).

Surprising Skills Trainers Need

Yes, we’re all good talkers. Yes, we know our subject. Yes, we care about our students. But, we may be missing the skills to get better results from our agents—a true behavior change.

These skills include:

Ability to ‘shut up’….

Ability to choreograph a learning session—not just talk about it

Ability to use alternative delivery methods to meet each situation (stop lecturing!)

Ability to create learning sequences: class, class practice, outside class practice, follow-up sessions to cement actions and compare action results

Gaining those Skills

You’ve been in front of people for years. You’re comfortable in how you teach. But, are you expanding your skills? Creating new environments? Using new teaching methods? Do you have command of the dozens of training techniques available?

Take my survey, How Awesome are You (as a Trainer). See how many of these skills you can score high on. What have you mastered? Which skills do you need?

Opportunities to grab these skills: I teach Instructor Development Workshop to help trainers gain more effective training techniques. Next course: Oct. 16-17 in Bellevue, Wa. (It’s also an online course, Train the Trainer).