How to Train a Successful ISA for Real Estate

Being a real estate ISA is not for the faint of heart. If you’re an inside sales agent, then you understand how difficult it can be. You have to be on the phone every day making phone call after phone call, often facing what seems and feels like and endless slew of rejections, and, many times, you’re fighting an uphill battle with people who often aren’t expecting to talk to you or flat out don’t want to talk to you.

Sounds fun, right?

What makes the stakes even higher is the fact that if ISAs for real estate aren’t continually making calls and converting leads on those calls, then their company won’t grow and won’t be successful. That’s what makes proper inside sales agent training so important and necessary.
In this article, we’ll cover the following:

• What is an ISA for real estate?
• What makes a successful real estate ISA
• Types of effective ISA training
• What to do if you don’t have time to train

Read on to make sure your inside sales agent is as effective as possible and that you make them worth your investment.

What Is an ISA for Real Estate?

As we’ve discussed at length in several of our other articles, a real estate inside sales agent is the backbone of any successful real estate business. They are sales professionals who are responsible for taking your prospects and turning them into paying clients. They handle the entire sales process and nurture your leads from start to finish. More than just appointment setters or lead scrubbers, real estate ISAs are highly trained and have the knowledge and experience to consistently bring in new business. Among other things, they receive inbound leads to convert to clients, conduct rigorous outbound prospecting to uncover new leads, qualify leads to determine if they are worth working with, and set appointments for the outside agents. They are an integral part of every real estate team and crucial to the success of outside agents and the real estate team as a whole.

Whereas an outside real estate agent handles the face to face meetings, house showings, and actually closing the deals on houses, inside agents prospect, nurture, and convert leads inside the office, hence the name.

Why Real Estate ISAs Need Training

The problem with many real estate teams is that they don’t dedicate enough time or resources towards training their in house ISAs. Often, inside sales agents are handed a script, taught some basic closing techniques and objection handling responses, and then they are told to jump in and start dialing. Because many people who become inside sales agents are persistent and tenacious by nature, they may be able to pick it up on their own or maybe they’ll be able to stick it out for a few months.

But many won’t be able to. And even for those ISAs who can start to get it on their own without a consistent or effective training program, that’s not a very efficient way to conduct business and will more than likely end up wasting time and resources.

What Areas Should You Train Your ISA in?

As a real estate business owner or real estate team leader, you are busy running and managing all aspects of the operation. But it’s your responsibility to make sure your new hires are trained adequately enough to actually start producing value for the business. Because let’s face it, the cost of a new hire that doesn’t end up working out is too high.

Even if your new ISA hire is an effective sales person already, they still need constant practice and improvement in order to hone their craft and really start driving new business. To be successful, real estate ISA training should consist of the following areas, just to name a few:

• Lead generation
• Lead conversion
• How to build rapport
• How to mirror the lead
• Caller objection handling
• Closing techniques

Objection Handling Is Key

One of the most important areas of real estate ISA training is objection handling. This is where the ISA needs to take a lead from a “no” to a “yes”. For the untrained person or under-trained ISA, an objection will often stop them in their tracks. They freeze up, aren’t sure what to say, and don’t know how to tow the line between old school forceful tactics and being walked all over or forced off the phone by the lead.

The only way to overcome the innate fear many of us have towards outright rejection and to know what to say and when to say it is to train, train, train. By practicing and hammering home the technique, ISAs can handle objections in a much more natural and conversational way. To get to the bottom of an objection, ISAs need to ask questions to get to understand why the lead is saying no, what their goals are, and what their motivation is.

Doing this effectively takes practice.

Role Playing Is a Critical Component

Role plays are an incredibly powerful tool for training real estate inside sales agents. They not only allow 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.

Real estate role playing usually takes one of two forms. The first is one on one with a coach or team leader and the ISA and the second is with two ISAs and a coach or team leader. In both formats, the coach or team leader will present a scenario or objection and one person plays the role of the ISA and one plays the role of the lead. The only real rule of role playing is that the person playing the lead should eventually say “yes” to the person playing the agent, even after throwing several objections their way. This keeps the exercise moving and gives the “agent” a win.

Check out the PowerISA Website for more information on ISA Training and How to get an ISA of your own.

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