Realogy in recent weeks has made strategic changes to their online learning platform to help agents “rule the recovery.” It’s a shift, leaders from the company told Inman, that was made possible by the company’s own investment in the platform.
Bonnie Sue Lovelace | Photo credit: Realogy
“With all of the new challenges that our agents and brokers are facing out in the field, we at Realogy strategically altered our training strategy to focus on creating training tailored to these uncertain times,” Bonnie Sue Lovelace, the senior director of learning solutions told Inman.
The first part of the pivot was a shift to on-demand and virtual course delivery. That includes all relevant COVID-19 guidance and new content relevant to daily market conditions.
On The Learning Platform — Realogy’s official name for the virtual education platform — all brands have their own “university page,” with all training available. There are companywide pieces of training, brand-specific training and even hyper-local pieces of training created by brokerages for their agents.
The second pivot was the creation of “just in time” content to help adapt to the specific ways the market is changing.
“Right now, we really have to re-imagine the way our agents are going to provide safe value,” Lovelace said. “We have to bolster those skills and give them the confidence to rule the recovery.”
That includes the production of shorter, topical and to the point modules, where the company is constantly pulling feedback and concerns.
“We don’t do this TED-style type conversation where we talk to them,” Lovelace said. “Our training is very much focused on actions.”
An example of that is the company’s recent lead generation challenge, a piece of training that provides agents with concrete reasons and ways to connect daily with their sphere of influence. The 30-day challenges include brand-specific leaderboards, so agents can gamify the learning.
The theory being, that it takes about 100 days from getting a lead to getting a sale, so when the market returns, they’ll be in a position to, “rule the recovery.”
Lovelace explained that Realogy’s size and breadth is an advantage when creating training programs because the company reaches across different markets and regions. Right now, the impact COVID-19 has had on markets has been varied.
“[Realogy’s breadth] is a huge benefit because we do get to see how different regions are performing and we tailor that training per region,” Lovelace said.
Many of the changes to the company’s education platform have been taking place over the past two years, with the most recent launch of the overhauled platform in September 2019.
Bethany Auclair | Photo credit: Realogy
The updated platform, according to Bethany Auclair, Realogy’s senior director of brand product development, was designed in a really flexible way, which has allowed the company to pivot quickly and meet the changing needs of agents.
The focus on increasing collaboration among agents and the hyperlocal focus has been just one reason it’s become so powerful as a tool for agents at this time, according to Auclair.
“We were able to [deploy the changes] really quickly without any work,” Auclair said. “That’s just the way the platform was built.”
“It was almost like it was ready for this in a way.”
