Real estate coaching in 2020

There’s this guy from Philadelphia, Joe, who dreamed of a career in professional football. The consummate jock in high school, the dream was dashed by a wicked knee injury.

Thankfully, he had other interests which he pursued at the Carnegie Melon University School of Drama.

The staff at Backstage.com asked Joe about his training to be an actor and whether he felt it was helpful.

Like real estate agents who poo-poo their pre-licensing classes as “useless,” Joe recalls that he reluctantly attended movement classes.

For seven weeks he was forced to spend more than three hours per day, in class, acting like the animal he was assigned. Joe was a penguin, by the way.

“I thought, ‘What the hell does this have to do with anything, and how is this going to serve me down the line?’” he told the interviewer.

That question was answered 10 years later when he, Joe Manganiello, was cast as a werewolf for HBO’s “True Blood.”

Training, at least while you’re going through it, may seem useless, until the day that everything falls into place and it pays off.

It’s the day your ranch-buying client wants the price of a listing broken down to price-per-square-foot of land, you bust out your calculator to figure it out for him and 43,560 pops easily and effortlessly into your brain.

Pre-licensing training is just the beginning. Unfortunately, too many agents see it as the end of the learning curve in the real estate industry. They are the copiers – the ones begging for scripts, templates and copies of successful agents’ marketing pieces.

They’re the ones who think offering a “complimentary home evaluation” proves their value. Sadly, they are the agents who seldom move to the upper levels of the industry – to the stratosphere of those earning the hefty, annual GCIs.

If you’ve been in the business for some time and you’re struggling, we hope that 2020 is the year that you consider that maybe you need some help and look into real estate coaching.

What can a real estate coaching do for me?

Have you ever been so focused on the daily details of your real estate business and then been awakened by an interruption, such as an article you read, a new tip passed on from another agent or just something heard in passing?

It’s that weird, Rip Van Winkle-like feeling of “Whoa, where the hell have I been?”

Just as it took strangers to fill in the blanks for Rip, so will a coach help get you get back on the road you set out on with determination, dreams and that shiny new real estate license.

If that stranger is familiar with the real estate industry, all the better. But that’s not a requirement, as you’ll learn later on.

From helping you to find more personal time in your schedule and reviewing your content to teaching you how to increase your production or think more creatively, a coach of any stripe (real estate, productivity, business, life, etc.) brings a lot to the table.

Types of Real Estate Coaching

You’ll quickly learn when you start researching coaches that your training can be delivered in several forms. It’s up to you to first determine how you learn best, what the experts call your “learning style.”

“Everyone has a mix of learning styles. Some people may find that they have a dominant style of learning, with far less use of the other styles. Others may find that they use different styles in different circumstances,” claims an unnamed writer at LearningStyles.com.

If you find yourself nodding off at lectures, you’ll want to choose another delivery mode for your coaching sessions — perhaps telephone consultations or video training.

From real estate coaching podcasts and e-courses to live workshops, seminars and webinars, there’s something for everyone’s learning style.

Figure out what qualities you want in a coach

One of the best pieces of advice we’ve read online is for agents to ask other agents about their real estate coaching experiences. While that’s a start, there’s more to the search than that. After all, you’ll be sharing business and personal stuff with whomever you choose, so a mesh of personalities is important.

You also may need to work with more than one coach until you find the right fit. And, there’s nothing wrong with that.

I spoke with Dano Sayles (at the time with Hawaii Life Real Estate) a couple of years ago and he shared with me that he’d worked with “tons of coaches” to come up with a strategic plan for his business until he finally found the right one.

The search is worth it because finding the right coach or trainer can be a game changer. Agent Debb Janes once told me how she was on the verge of leaving the business when she met her coach, whose training methods were in sync with Janes’ business philosophy and personality.

She’s still at it, successfully slinging real estate in several niches in beautiful Camas, Washington.

When you find your perfect fit, make a vow to get out of your own way. Or, as Beverly Hills agent Spencer Krull once told me, “Real estate coaching is only of value if you’re going to do what your coach tells you to do,”