Craig Strong Mentorship Program Drives Six Closings and High Agent Retention

The benefits to the Mentees are is that they are receiving hands-on first-class training by seasoned agents who are giving them actual field experience. They're benefiting by someone's actual successful experience. There is so much hard work behind it. There's so much preparation, there's so much organizing. There's so much self-organizing that goes to those who are really, really successful. This is a very emotional process. It's a very emotional thing to sell your property or to do anything really list your property, go look at it's very emotional and they will make emotional decisions. So you've got to know how to speak to them in order to have them clearly understand and have them feel as though they're being heard. And so hopefully we are teaching them how to listen hard and show some tactical empathy to the client that they are serving and it is a service. And also with an eye to keeping them as a client that they will continue to refer you business in the future. The Strong Mentorship Program is especially good for a newer agent because they come in knowing nothing. The best thing it does is that it really sort of focuses their expectations where they should be. If you work really hard at this, you will be successful. We have a great success record. Currently we had three agents who started in January. Of those three agents, two of them are basically finished with the Program. One of them that we just closed was extremely hard because the property was in foreclosure. And so the agent, with the Mentor, was able to list the property, get the foreclosure date, the date for auction extended by the bank, who had lost patience with the seller. They knew how to market it. They threw money at beautiful photography and they got an offer over asking, and it closed today. And they got it done! The seller even offered to give a testimonial because they were so thrilled because they walked away with money instead of walking away with nothing. And so everybody was a winner, The Mentee was a winner, the Mentor was a winner. would have been difficult for even a seasoned agent. It could have fallen apart at any minute. What surprises me most about the Craig Strong Mentorship Program is that I knew that the Mentees would profit. I thought the Mentor would also profit. But what I didn't give a thought to was how much the branch how much it would profit. It's profiting by the fact that we have new agents who are getting trained. And also what I'm realizing now is that what we have done, really is that we are, in effect, team building. They want to continue stay here. They want to stay with the branch. They want to stay with Compass. They want to stay in the Program. They the Mentor to keep them on her team. And so it looks like a very long term relationship. So what could be better? You have loyal team members who are trained, and it's just healthy all around. The real estate business as a whole is not known for being good at that. I've managed for many years. I've managed this branch for 13 years, and I can't recall when there was such a great infusion of energy as we have today because of this Program. Total listings taken since January is five. Total number of closings is six. But those, given that the Program started just in January, those are outstanding statistics. I'm proud of them. I'm proud of all they've accomplished. But I don't think we would been a different, different outcome had Craig not put it together from his own experience. Susan Jacobs I am the Branch Manager for Sherman Oaks and Toluca Lake.