New Agent Training at CENTURY 21

Two key goals of the CREATE 21 new-agent training program are to enhance new-agent productivity and increase sales, according to Ernie Brescia, vice president of organizational learning at Century 21 Real Estate LLC in Parsippany, N.J.
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If initial results are any indication, CREATE 21 has more than achieved those goals. In a recent internal study, Brescia’s group found that CREATE 21 students earned 19 percent more in commission income, on average, than non-CREATE 21 agents, and closed 36 percent more sales transactions than their non-CREATE 21 counterparts in 2004.
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::/br::CREATE 21, which stands for Career Real Estate Agent Training & Education, traces its roots to a legacy, multi-day classroom course called 21Plus. While extremely effective in its own right, the old program nevertheless had its limitations, Brescia says. “As a live, on-site program, we had to send trainers all around the country to administer it, and so we were primarily focusing our training on major metropolitan areas where we could achieve critical mass.”
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::/br:: Meanwhile, he says, agents located in smaller, more remote markets either had to fly to a major metro area to attend training or wait until enough new agents had come on board in smaller markets for the company to warrant sending a trainer out to them. “In either case, due to lag times, many of our new agents floundered on the job for up to four months before they received any training under the old program.”
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::/br::In response, CREATE 21 was launched. The blended-learning program consists of 12 live, online modules, several self-paced e-modules, considerable broker/manager coaching and follow-up, and a number of asynchronous learning activities. The program is administered using online meeting software, which allows the company’s 14 instructors to guide students through a three-week series of virtual classes that reach more agents more quickly than was possible under the old program.
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::/br::In addition to improving course access and delivery frequency, CREATE 21 also has improved new-agent training at CENTURY 21 from an instructional standpoint, Brescia says. Whereas the old program used to take place over the course of three to four eight-hour days, for example, the new program expands that timeframe to three weeks. “Just as with the old program, there are still 24 hours of instruction, but the content is now delivered in more palatable, bite-sized chunks that last two hours per day, so agents are now more likely to not only retain what they learned but also apply it along the way.” To that end, he notes, the new program incorporates an array of opportunities–from skill-building activities to assignments and the like—for students to practice what they learn during class while on the job–and then report back to their classmates and instructor regarding the progress they make.
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What other factors contributed to CREATE 21’s success?
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• Making learners self-sufficient. Too much of sales training takes a prescriptive approach by telling learners “exactly how to say or do something,” Brescia says. Instead, CREATE 21 strives to equip learners with the skills they’ll need to navigate situations effectively on the job. “We’re not forcing people to memorize things and regurgitate them. Instead, we’re teaching them how to become better assessors of what their clients are saying and what their clients’ underlying needs or issues are.”
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• Holding agents accountable. Follow-up coaching and accountability checkpoints are key ingredients to CREATE 21’s success. Each day when an agent returns to class, for example, he or she is expected to report back on how his assignments from the prior day went. The program also includes two weeks of follow-up coaching and accountability sessions that are designed to keep learners focused on implementing what they learned in class. Other CENTURY 21 sales training programs, meanwhile, have even more rigorous accountability requirements and expectations, Brescia notes. “Many agents not only love the accountability,” Brescia says, “it also sends productivity numbers through the roof.”
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• Thinking nationally and locally. A good sales training program, particularly in real estate, must address sales training on a national, regional and local level. “Every market is different from both a legal and cultural standpoint,” Brescia says. That’s exactly why his team partners with locally owned franchises to develop localized training that complements the more nationally based CREATE 21 program. “Each new agent who participates in CREATE 21 has a break after each two-hour module. Many of them use this time to meet with a local trainer or broker-manager to review local components of the training that complement what she just learned online.”