Wherever you decide to hang your hat, you need to make sure that your learning style is reflected in the curriculum so you can get the best educational experience you can. Remember your enthusiasm and charisma as a new agent provides value to your brokerage, but you need to ask yourself one important question: What type of training is this brokerage providing me with?

As a new real estate agent, you are bringing a lot to the table: you have charisma, drive and motivation to start fresh in a brand new role — but when you’re wrapped up in the excitement of starting a new role, it’s easy to forget that you have a lot to learn before you’ll be able to get started. Just like graduating from high school or college, we thought we were ready to take on the world, educated with every bit of knowledge we’d need to get a job and move straight up the corporate ladder.

Unfortunately, we all know that a lot of our “classroom” education falls short once it comes to practically applying the skills.

Real estate school prepares you with a foundational knowledge of the laws, rules and regulations of our industry, but real estate agents are left without knowledge of the nuances of doing a deal from beginning to end. That’s why it’s necessary to ask what your real estate brokerage can do for you when it comes to your education of the real estate process.

The right training for you

So when you’re looking for the best brokerage to fit your needs, it is imperative to ask your interviewer one very important question: What type of training do you provide?

Most times, the answer will be: “We provide training for X days/weeks.” which is why I worded it as “what type” rather than “how much.” The length of training doesn’t necessarily equate to the type of learning that you need to feel ready to take on a client by yourself.

Your trainer should be focused on developing significant learning material; there are multiple ways to convey significance and how your learning can be designed with the end goal in mind — and the end goal in our industry is for you to efficiently find and sell homes for your clients and end up with a check in your hand!

Type of learners

What you need to identify here are the types of learning that are being provided to you, which can be generally classified as one of four types of learning styles: auditory, linguistic, spatial and kinesthetic. Ideally, they should all be incorporated into the training for a full learning experience, but you’re the one who needs to decide how you learn best.

1. Auditory learners

These people learn best with the reinforcement of sound, hearing lectures, music or their own voices to connect to the material. If you identify as an auditory learner you might be someone who loves when a trainer lets you read or repeat concepts out loud or your trainer simply goes through material with you.

For real estate purposes, this can pertain to role-playing and modeling activities where you can listen to the nuances of a client discussion or have group discussions about how you pitch exclusivity to a landlord or seller.

2. Linguistic learners

These learners connect information best by using words in both speech and writing. Speech tends to overlap with auditory learning, but writing is an important aspect as well. By writing down an apartment tour, creating templates to send to clients or completing a rental application by hand, linguistic learners can reinforce the concepts they’ve heard in a physical way so they can apply those concepts or teach their clients how to as well.

3. Spatial learners

As a spatial learner, the concepts that you learn are backed up by visual stimulation, which can include pictures, diagrams or observations. With real estate, this can mean looking at ads or listings, having a manual or handout that can be used during a presentation or observing another agent in action. That way, the learner can see the concepts at play and understand the visual cues that accompany the information they are learning.

4. Kinesthetic learners

Real estate training would probably be most difficult for a kinesthetic learner — one who thrives on hands-on experiences. Real estate, generally, is an “in the field” industry, where most of the theories that we learn in schools and agencies are not real until they actually happen with a client. These can be conveyed through mentoring programs or full-scale role playing to imitate how you would act within an actual client scenario.

Questions to ask

So, how do you learn best? Which of the above learning styles fits your needs? What do you want to see in a training program at your brokerage? Ultimately, all brokerages have their own style and methods of training that have created successful agents in their tenure.

Wherever you decide to hang your hat, you need to make sure that your learning style is reflected so you can get the best educational experience you can. Remember your enthusiasm and charisma as a new agent provides value to your brokerage, but you need to ask yourself one important question: What type of training is this brokerage providing me with?

Gina Castrorao is a rental manager and licensed real estate agent at Real New York. Connect with her on LinkedIn.