The Future of Real Estate Training?????

I personally like the classroom setting best for learning. I like the personal interaction and the instructors usually relate personal events or stories they know about that are relevant to the topic.

As far as topics for eduction...well I may be in the minority here, but I'm sick of classes about foreclosures and short sales. They are really pretty generic, especially the ones dealing with short sales. As an agent, if you don't have any experience in these areas, then you are behind the times. Generally I like eduction and take all the classes I can. I do like classes on how to grow your business. There's always some good ideas to walk away with. I think classes about title insurance and what it really is and what the exceptions and standard exemptions mean would be very valuable.

In the field coaching, with a combination of mind dynamics training. Learning by watching has been a large benefit to our teams growth. We take our team members on listing apps and introduce them as interns to the homeowners. They take notes on delivery of our services, understanding homeowners needs and desires, making clear observations on types of personalities and importance of the make-up that surrounds the subject property. Our new team members must complete 5 in-field training sessions, and 12 hours of course (in office case study and services training) before they become eligible to go out on their own. One of our team members is success coach, they must complete a 90 day mind dynamics and success principals course with our coach (which is 16 hours of class room training and a weekly coaching call session that lasts 1 hour) in addition to the in-field training. The 2 trainings take place simultaneously.

We have had some license professionals that did not complete the 90 day internship and moved on to affiliate with another broker.

This is not our broker requirement, only our team www.CooperConsultantGroup.com

This approach not only assures our team members in their confidence to help people, but helps them understand if this business is really what they want to do, with our group anyway.

Mike - You pose some throught provoking quesions and I have given them some thought.  

1.  Learning from seeing and hands on doing is by far my favorite way of learning.  I learned more in 2 days of hands of training at a "Super Star Computing" course years ago than all the webinars I have ever attended through the years combined.

2.  I believe learning to effectively leverage new technology and learning cloud computing on a large scale will increase agent efficiency and team productivity.  

Personally, I prefer a live training environment because of the ability to network and interact with people both during and outside of the training.

While webinars are certainly good for some types of training, I find for me it's too easy to get distracted by the desire to multi-task and I'm not as focused as I'd like to be.

What I hear consistently from people across the country is that it's a balance - and ideally, if they can find at least one live workshop or event a quarter to get to, that's ideal. Training in between, then, is by audio series, Webinar, and teleconference opportunities.

With limited resources, it's very important to get clear on what you need in order for your business to grow, and then find the training that fulfills that need. Don't go anywhere without a clear intention on what you hope to gain.

I still find live event training still the quickest way to absorb and learn.