Commercial real estate training is an extremely important component within an agent’s success, and yet it is amazing how little of this is oftentimes offered to agents once they join a brokerage firm. Sometimes an agent is simply given a desk and a phone, and told to begin making cold calls, and the idea seems to be that if the agent was meant to be successful, they’ll be able to figure it out on their own.

While one would think that managers would recognize the value in providing good hands-on education to their agents, these managers will oftentimes believe that this is important, but when it comes time to actually spend money on it, they’re oftentimes not interested. So as a result the agent will then be left with trying to ask questions of the manager whenever they’re not busy, or trying to ask questions of other agents within the office.

The larger national brokerage firms with offices in the major cities will oftentimes have some kind of training, but it’s not necessarily the kind that the agents will be thrilled with, and one of the reasons for this is because the education may be organized by someone who is responsible for training throughout the entire organization, including for all of the staff people, and the person in charge of doing this has oftentimes never even worked as a commercial real estate agent themselves.

In addition, something good that these national firms will oftentimes do is have a new agent work along with an established team of commercial real estate agents, having specific responsibilities on the team, and this then allows the new agent to feel that they are a part of something, instead of working completely on their own, which then allows them to learn the business by working in and contributing to an environment where they see and experience the entire process of how commercial real estate transactions are initiated, brought to fruition, and then closed.

So for someone who is brand new in the business, this can represent a very good opportunity for them, and if they end up working for a firm that doesn’t offer them this kind of a team experience, maybe they can still pair-up with a senior broker and work along with them. With this in mind, oftentimes veteran brokers are so overwhelmed with working on transactions and trying to generate even more business, that they could really use some assistance from someone working along with them. But at the same time, these same brokers don’t often take the time to go out and find someone to work along with them in this capacity, and you showing up in an office might provide the perfect opportunity for them to then hire you and partner up with you.

In addition, something to consider doing if you’re interested in teaming-up with a senior broker, or in joining an existing brokerage team, would be to send letters to every senior broker within an office, explaining who you are and what you are looking to accomplish, and then asking them if they’d be interested in having someone like you working along with them. The names of all of the brokers in a given office are normally available on the office’s website, and you’ll have the address of the office to send the letters to right there on the website, too.

But in terms of understanding who the senior brokers in the office would be, anyone with the title of Vice President or higher would normally fall into that category, and even a title like Senior Associate could possibly qualify, too. However, when you see the title of something similar to Associate next to a person’s name, this title is normally reserved for the newest agents in the company with the least amount of experience within the industry, and you ideally want to be working along with someone who has more experience than this.

Again, by utilizing this approach and sending letters to these agents, you just might catch someone’s attention who has been thinking that they’d like to have someone working along with them, but they just haven’t had the time to focus on finding someone…and you could be just what they’d want when your letter arrives.

In addition, even veteran brokers will recognize at some times that they need some additional training to take their own business to the next level, and that’s when they may choose to hire a commercial real estate coach, who will focus specifically in on the broker’s business, point out what exactly needs to be changed about the business to take the broker to the next level of production, and then provide the focus, the game plan, and the accountability to the broker to make it all happen.

This can be a great approach for brokers to embrace, because when you’ve been working as an agent for many years, you can get stuck in working the same old routine. The routine may even be working pretty good for you, but you may recognize that you’re capable of accomplishing so much more. However, the routine you’ve developed may be keeping you stuck right where you’re at right now, you’re having difficulty seeing how to break through to the next level of production, and even if you believe that you see how to do it, the phone starts ringing, you get reactive instead of being proactive, and you continually then get sucked right back into working that same old routine.

So when working with a coach, the coach will show you the path to your ideal destiny within your brokerage business, they’ll lead you down the path, and they’ll both keep you focused and hold you accountable to make sure that you arrive at your destination.

So then in putting all of this together, if you’d like to talk together about what we can do to provide outstanding training or coaching to both you or your agents, click here and contact me.