Why Professional Training Has Never Been More Important For Estate and Letting Agents
As tough market conditions continue to place pressure on business owners to tighten their budgets, one of the first areas to suffer is often staff training and development.
However, research shows that having a qualified and knowledgeable workforce is a powerful tool in helping businesses to not only survive hard financial times, but to grow their market share.
Increasing business through knowledge
Investing in professional training for estate and letting agents is important at any time, but even more so in the current economic climate. As one of the industries to be hit hardest by the economy’s downturn, retaining a talented and highly skilled work force is essential for two reasons – to ensure your business remains competitive and that it is ready for when the upturn comes.
As leading providers of estate agent and letting agent training, we continually see the strong positive effect knowledge and skills development can have on the health of a business, including increased productivity. Relevant, professional on-the-job training quite simply helps agents become better and more efficient at doing their jobs. This in turn increases productivity and profit growth.
In particular, by using training to target fundamental areas of your work, such as the quality of your instruction process, you can narrow down and eliminate any weaknesses to improve your employees’ performance at key appointments, and in turn win more business.
There are a range of measures that estate and letting agents can use to create more instructions, from setting up market appraisal appointments correctly, to using proven ‘closing’ techniques. These are just some of the areas covered in our intensive one-day Market Appraisal Masterclass.
Standing out from the crowd
The Council of Mortgage Lenders’ (CML) forecast predicts there will be around 825,0001 residential property transactions in 2012, which is a significant reduction on the 1.6 million transactions carried out in 2007.
At a time when the number of transactions is at its lowest level, standing out from your competitors to gain those all important instructions has never been more crucial.
Investment in appropriate training and development can not only help to enhance your staffs’ existing skills but ensure that each member of your team delivers a consistent, high quality service every time – making your service memorable for all the right reasons.
Also, by having certification on display at your premises and on your company literature you demonstrate that your agency is committed to best practice, reassuring clients that they will receive a professional client-focused service.
Motivated and dynamic workforce
Of course training and development isn’t just about providing your team with the skills for their role, but is also about showing your commitment to developing and improving your staff.
By continuing to invest in individual staff training opportunities, you show employees that they are valued members of your team. This not only helps to increase morale in the company, but it also makes it easier to retain well-trained staff and attract new employees to your business.
Investing in training during a recession may seem counter-intuitive, but it is critical to ensure the long-term productivity, profit growth and wellbeing of your business. We have created a range of intensive one-day courses and tailored training programmes to help develop the skills of new and established estate and letting agencies. These include a Market Appraisal Masterclass on how to gain more instructions and a Bringing in the Business course on ways to generate more positive leads.
To learn more contact us on 01722 414 300 or visit https://www.propertyagencytraining.com
Sources:
1 – Council of Mortgage Lenders’ forecast statistics 2012 http://www.cml.org.uk/cml/publications/forecast
