My son Josh didn’t even consider coming into the business until he was about to receive his degree. He decided to give it a fair shot, deciding to make it permanent after several months of seeing things from ‘behind the curtain’. (sorry)
You’ve seen various industries and specific companies provide training in what they called a mentoring program. Some have been proven successes, others not. I can’t speak to other industries, but real estate seems to drop the ball when it comes to training newcomers.
Though I’ve owned my own company for the majority of my career, there were several years when I worked for a large corporation. In a nutshell their ‘mentor’ program consisted of intense training, mainly to ensure that new agents kept the company out of court. Most of them had no real grasp of what to do or what it actually took to secure clients and do real business. My goal was not to emulate that model.
The Brown and Brown once-in-a-lifetime mentor program is set up like this:
- Every time a new potential client comes in for a first meeting Josh sits in. He also sits in on all subsequent meetings with that client, including entering escrow and any closings.
- Communication with clients is king. Better to err on the side of too much than not enough. This means calling with nothing to report. “Hey, how about those Chargers!?”
- Whenever possible, time permitting, we sit down with some coffee and go over whatever he needs to talk about. Sometimes it’s what I feel a need to revisit. In any case it’s a time Josh can receive one on one attention on a particular subject until he’s satisfied.
- He’s required to handle all matters in a sale/exchange beginning from the point of signed contract. This gives him a fundamental understanding of the nuts and bolts of the business.
- While handling the above mentioned post-contract matters, he interacts with all related services, clients, and makes sure all required forms are signed. Dealing with clients gives him an understanding from their viewpoint, and gets him used to interacting with investors in the heat of battle so to speak.
- Since I do business in other states, he often goes with me on visits, so he can see how different brokers and agents behave, meet lenders, and inspectors. This also allows him to measure himself and his progress.
I adhere to the principles taught in the book, The New Conceptual Selling, which outlines how to understand what clients really are thinking. The reason I prefer their approach is because it totally gets away from any deception, coercion, or the silly 1950′s million different closes approach. My policy is to educate my clients as much as they’d like, show them what I think is the best plan for their stated goals, answer the questions they don’t know to ask, and let them proceed or not of their own free will. I firmly believe if you show someone how to acquire what they really desire to have, they don’t have to be sold, or closed.
He’s been undergoing this process now for almost two years. I have now determined that he is ready to begin dealing with his own clients, developing plans, and executing sales and exchanges. He has an investor in mind, and has spoken to him several times.
Next: Is Josh able to convert his first prospect into his first client?
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