Most broker/owners feel that recruiting is the most important thing to focus on to grow their brokerage. While I agree that recruiting is important, setting agents up for success (and retaining them) is equally important. Many leaders will give their agents leads but provide them with no training and no clear path on how to better convert those leads. But agents want training. They crave it. In fact, according to The CE Shop, 49 percent of agents spend more than $500 a year on training and education.
Here’s how we utilized training as a core pillar to grow our brokerage more than 300 percent in the last three years.
Back in August 2012, when we were a team model, we were great at listings. But I realized we weren’t making progress with buyers. That year, we sold 461 listings and 49 buyer sides…38 of which were my sphere. That means we only converted 11 people off of 461 listings, which was sad! At that point, I realized that the agents needed consistent weekly training. Fast forward to 2013 when we sold 135 buyer sides with no additional agents or leads.
We had the same number of agents, and we sold three times the number of homes.
The key to this increase? Training.
We began weekly group training where we would discuss leads and follow-up tactics. We also talked about issues, reviewed them, then reviewed them again—always going over real-life examples. The more we did it, the more improvement we saw. By mid-2013, it was clear that it was working, so we implemented it for sellers too. By 2014, it was obvious that weekly training would be something we always provided, because it was the most effective initiative we had ever implemented.
Over time, we went from chicken scratch notes on paper to developing a full curriculum, and we began offering live training nationally every Wednesday over the web.
The feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive:
“I thought I knew everything. I’ve been a broker, so I’ve trained my agents, but it’s a different kind of training. It’s training on systems, and it’s training on sales, which is something you don’t get anywhere else.”Â
– Angela Harkins, Lamacchia Realty
“I have been through multiple training organizations in my 21 years of selling real estate and, by far, Anthony’s provides the best results.”Â
– Ashley Leigh, Linton Hall, REALTORS®
Training is the No. 1 reason we’ve been able to grow and scale at the rate we have. It has also helped with agent retention, as agents don’t want to lose their grip on being on top of industry tricks.
Here we are eight years later, still running training every single Wednesday without fail. We also added an online training center for our agents and 1,000-plus agents across North America.
This January, we will be putting on our third annual “Crush It In Real Estate” event. This virtual event will teach agents a variety of career-improving skills. For more information, go to www.crushitinre.com/2021.
Anthony Lamacchia is CEO of Lamacchia Companies and broker/owner of Lamacchia Realty. For more information, please visit www.lamacchiarealty.com.
