Help your agents use more than the free ink pens.
Attending a real estate convention can be invigorating! Agents are motivated by outstanding speakers, make valuable personal connections, and fill their toolboxes with the latest and greatest resources. However, returning to the office, opening the toolbox, and applying these new ideas can be challenging. As the broker or manager, how can you help your agents capitalize on their convention investment? Here are three easy ideas to incorporate a recent convention into your sales meetings and reinforce the knowledge gained.
Pick one idea and make it happen.
If multiple agents at your office attended a real estate convention, create a comprehensive list of key takeaways at your next sales meeting. Making a list reinforces concepts learned and introduces new ideas to those who didn’t attend.
- Go around the room and have each agent share one idea learned on each turn. Write the concept on a dry-erase board or flipchart and continue around the room, sharing one idea at a time until there are no more ideas. This format keeps any one agent from dominating the conversation.
- Once all ideas are on the board, ask each agent (whether they attended the convention or not) to choose one item to explore further. Keep your agents accountable by giving them time to identify the following: What additional information do I need to make this happen? What are my 30-day, 60-day, and 90-day goals? We created this worksheet to make the process easier. If you are mentoring your agents one-on-one, their sheet can help guide how you can support their goals.
Suggest the agents take a photo of the complete list of ideas for future reference. You may also want to email the list after the meeting (this lets agents who didn’t attend the meeting see that they missed out on a valuable discussion!).
Create a sales meeting education session.
Offering agents something of value at every sales meeting is crucial – it shows that you respect their time and support their growth and development. Providing education and training is a great way to achieve these objectives. Coming up with relevant topics can be challenging, so consider an education session or workshop on a convention takeaway.
Use the group brainstorming method described above to list all the convention ideas. Have your agents vote on a topic to cover in a future education session. You may even consider asking an agent who attended the convention to present.
If no one from your office attended the convention, obtain the agenda from the event website. Have your agents read through the breakout session descriptions to choose what they want to learn more about. If you are a Spark & Logic subscriber, chances are we already have learning sprints in the video library on many of the topics. Using agent feedback to direct your meeting education is a great way to show that you listen to your agents’ needs and take action.
Treat agents to a lunch (or coffee) and learn.
Pair up an agent who attended a convention with one who didn’t. Give them a gift card to a local restaurant or coffee shop and ask the agent who attended to share what they learned over lunch or coffee. This could also be done in the office with lunch brought in during a sales meeting. The informal setting may be attractive to busy agents. In addition, encouraging one-on-one collaboration improves relationships and promotes teamwork.