Real Estate ISA Training: the Importance of Call Review Sessions
We’ve talked a lot about real estate training in our articles and video content. That’s because like any job or skill, real estate ISA training is the key to building a successful inside sales career. Becoming a successful real estate inside sales agent comes down to mastering the ability to convince people to take meaningful action over the phone.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, “thanks for pointing out the obvious.” However, devoting substantial amounts of time towards meaningful and effective real estate sales training is not something that every real estate agent or inside sales agent does or thinks is necessary. Make no mistake, though, training is critical to any sales job or sales career.
Because being a real estate inside sales agent is a tough path to choose. You have to be in the trenches day after day, making countless phone calls, often facing unending rejections, and basically constantly fighting an uphill battle with people who don’t want to talk to you. But without ISAs continually converting on their calls and bringing in new leads, real estate teams and real estate companies can’t survive.
What Is a Real Estate Inside Sales Agent?
Before we dive into training specifics, what even is a real estate inside sales agent? Put simply, they are the backbone of any successful real estate business. The vast majority of real estate transactions begin on the phone. This means that all the effort and skill that goes into nailing listing appointments, finding properties for buyers, and actually selling homes is all for nothing if you don’t have effective people successfully setting up appointments over the phone.
This is why real estate inside sales agents are so critical. They allow your agents to do what they do best, and allow you to grow your business without constantly being in the trenches yourself every day. ISAs are sales professionals whose job it is to reach out to leads, introduce them to your company’s brand and the value you offer to clients, and, finally, to set appointments for your real estate agents. They are the front line of your real estate company and it is their responsibility to keep a steady flow of new business coming in through the door.
Real Estate ISA Training Is Crucial
Whether you’re a real estate inside sales agent or a real estate team leader, you have to set aside time for training. Real estate training isn’t just about how to sell houses, specifically—in fact, the majority of it is sales training. Your agents and ISAs need to train in lead generation, lead conversion, how to talk on the phone, caller objection handling, closing techniques, and the list goes on.
Inside sales agents are critical to the healthy growth and success of your real estate business. And the most important part of an ISA role is being able to convert leads and close on their phone calls. This incorporates objection handling, closing techniques, and lead conversion.
Real Estate Training: Call Reviews
In a previous article of ours we mentioned real estate role play training techniques. Role playing is invaluable when it comes to sales training and mastering having productive conversations over the phone. It allows ISAs to practice closing techniques, objection handling, and all the other sales components they are taught, but also allows other people in the group to learn from mistakes that their colleagues make. Just like pilots use flight simulators, so should inside sales agents use role play groups.
Call reviews are another hugely valuable training tool to take advantage of for yourself or for your team. It’s one thing to learn sales and conversations techniques, but it’s a whole other thing to have real conversations on the phone, and it’s a whole other thing to listen to those actual conversations after you’ve had them.
Call reviews allow agents and ISAs to hear how they sound, see where they lost the lead, recognize the different objections that the lead brought up, etc. Reviewing your calls compliments role playing because you’re able to go over whether you are properly implementing the lessons you learned during the role play sessions.
Critical to successful call reviews is a coach or team leader who knows what they are doing. They need to have the experience to guide the review session, point out the errors that the agent or ISA is making on the call, and suggest ways to improve. Listening to your own calls by yourself has some value (allowing you to hear yourself make mistakes you already know are mistakes), but listening with an experienced coach allows you to identify mistakes that you didn’t even know were mistakes.
Conclusion: Don’t Skimp on Call Reviews
Real estate training call reviews allow both the ISA or agent and coach or team leader to gauge how they are doing. Hearing yourself make mistakes on your calls can be a rude awakening and reminder that improvement is necessary. And having a coach means that you will receive tangible, applicable advice about your calling techniques in real time.
This is why call reviews are such an integral part of our coaching programs at Smart Inside Sales. Along with role plays, reviewing the actual calls of agents and ISAs forms the backbone of our highly successful training techniques.