What's Popular in Training Today

Different times call for a different training emphasis. Although prelicensing classes will never go away, brokerages and real estate schools are scaling back their offerings to prospective practitioners because fewer people are entering the industry.

“No one’s pulling in the prelicensing business anymore,” says Ruth Fennell of Lakeshore Properties in Gallatin, Tenn. Fennell hosts classes for brokers under the Accredited Buyer Representative (ABR®) and Seniors Real Estate Specialist (SRER) programs, among others, and teaches sales techniques and brokerage management. Here’s what’s hot in training today:

• Proactive marketing. The difference between proactive and regular marketing is outreach. In a proactive open house, for example, a sales associate goes to apartment buildings where the monthly rent is similar to what the mortgage payment would be on the featured house and invites those renters to come to the open house.
• Back to basics. Sales volume was so high during the housing boom that many newer practitioners could make money before they received a good grounding in the basics, but those days are gone. Today, “relationships, resiliency, and routine are what people are going to need to stay in this business for the long haul,” says Wayne Paprocki, a real estate instructor in Northbrook, Ill.
• Marketing metrics. Practitioners can no longer spend money on marketing without having a clear picture of the results they’re getting, and that’s not something many practitioners have learned to do. “If you held an open house, did anyone show up?” asks Fennell. “If you put an ad on a Web site, did you get any hits? Associates have to be taught to think of marketing as an investment, not as an expense, and you can only do that if you know how to measure your results.”
• Niche areas. Working with seniors is a big area now, given today’s demographics. Same with Gen Xers. Other growing niches are foreclosures and short sales, although these aren’t for everybody. “If you spread yourself too thin, you won’t be good at anything,” says Fennell.
• Risk management. With home prices down, flat, or not rising as rapidly in some markets, many customers stand to lose money and that means a higher risk of lawsuits. “Risk reduction is new to our curriculum,” says trainer Diane Flannigan, “because, when strong appreciation isn’t smoothing things over, people are more apt to sue.”