With the real estate industry as competitive as it is and agents constantly on the look out for the one tactic that will make them stand above their rivals, it made sense to Real Estate Academy (REA) CEO Lee Woodward to create a learning tool to capitalise on this audience.
Already a successful trainer and coach in the industry, Mr Woodward turned his love of digging to find the best gems of information into an audio series that is about to celebrate its 10th year – Real Estate Hot Topics.
Starting as an idea while chatting with McGrath CEO John McGrath, Hot Topics soon became a plan, giving producer and host Mr Woodward the chance to, “provide concentrated learning from multiple voices,” for his eager audience. “Sometimes you go to see a seminar or a speaker and you get that one view, but Hot Topics brought the best street talent into audio and, with our editing skills, we were able to capture the gems from the best talent,” Mr Woodward explained.
“If we were to have thrown these people on stage they wouldn’t have said that, but if you interview them in this Parkinsonarmchair style it really works well,” he laughed.
Real Estate Hot Topics has been produced monthly for the past nine years, with the 10th year’s audios on their way. Considered to be the leading audio coaching program for real estate sales professionals, managers and principals, the Hot Topics program has enhanced the careers of thousands by showing how goals can be set, achieved and surpassed. In this time Mr Woodward has also watched rookie agents take flight and reach great heights with insight gained from their Hot Topics audios. Deliberately produced to be listened to in bites while driving between appointments, each Hot Topics disc covers 80 minutes of information on how the interview subject excels in one area of real estate practice, whether it’s sales, administration, prospecting or marketing.
“The audios are 80 minutes each; they’re not just half an hour or 40-minute segments. We pack a lot of information into every disc,” Mr Woodward said.
“Hot Topics has become the adult learning system for people who will not read books – and some of our best clients are actually illiterate; they can’t read or write, but they can listen to that audio and they can put it into their business. I think that was one of our biggest breakthroughs in audio learning.”
Real Estate Academy is now the largest author of real estate audio content in the world. Quite simply, no other organisation has produced as much audio material on the topic of real estate – and that content adds up to many hours of listening and learning from others who are making big things happen in their own patch. “In the beginning you want to perfect everything, and then you actually realise while listening to the audio that people aren’t perfect; they’ve got their own little way of doing it; there’s no right or wrong,” Mr Woodward said, explaining agents could pick and choose which methods would work for them to find the right fit.
“I think people in our audience really enjoy hearing someone in Darwin and then someone in Perth and then someone in Lower Hutt, New Zealand. They like that variety of talent sharing their stories with total transparency and honesty.”
Sourcing interview subjects from REA workshop participants, the industry’s top achievers and those he hears about through the real estate grapevine, Mr Woodward said this talent pool keeps the content diverse enough to appeal to all Hot Topics listeners. “Seeing people in workshops, you can actually pick out the real people, as opposed to who just wants to be famous. A lot of the talent we’ve brought to Hot Topics is unknown talent; they weren’t famous due to being number one somewhere, although we did interview all the number ones,” he explained.
“Our most favourite interviews were those that were unknown – it’s the kid in the back of nowhere doing really well with some great ideas - and that helps all the people who haven’t got that set into their groove yet.”
Once a topic for the CD has been decided, such as prospecting or sales scripts, the REA team sources interviewees who have been achieving great results in that area. Once the person’s achievements have been reviewed, a phone chat follows, covering the issues that are important to the audience. From the information he gleans in that call, Mr Woodward builds a mind map of the key elements to be discussed in the interview.
After this initial stage he will record the interview and then the recording goes to a draft edit where it is cut down to the right time - around 80 minutes of refined content. Afterwards, the audio undergoes a final edit and is then ready for consumption. Each year for the past nine, REA has produced 12 Hot Topics CDs and has also added 5-6 bonus CDs to the collection during that same time period. This adds up to 24 hours of constant audio content listening back-to-back, but each disc takes so much longer to produce. “The average Hot Topics disc take around 100 hours from beginning to end, so they’re no light project by any means,” Mr Woodward joked. “I think that’s why no competitors follow us, because it’s just too hard to copy!”
Taking all the hours of content from the past nine years and melting it down into the most salient points for the real estate industry, the Series 10 CD is aptly named Sales Mastery. “In Sales Mastery, I am talking now and then I flick to something from Philip Webb which was in Series 1 nine years ago, but it’s all part of the same message. Real Estate Sales Mastery is the grand finale - an extensively refined real estate sale process; it’s just taken 10 years to do it,” Mr Woodward explained.
The Sales Mastery series includes audio with Lee Woodward, Danny Grant, Mat Steinwede, John McGrath, Phil Harris, Chris Hanley and many other leaders in the real estate industry.
Structural Change - Prospecting, Marketing & Planning
Getting the Price Right - Vendor & Buyer Communications Program
Your Complete Selling Plan - Listing Presentations, Visuals and Winning Words
From Me to We - Building and Working in an Effective Business Unit
Working the Floor - Running Brilliant Auctions
Staying Motivated - Getting Organised through Goals, Visions and Actions
“It’s the most exciting audio project I have ever worked on,” Mr Woodward said, with the culmination of 10 years of work meaning he has produced the REA’s most comprehensive audio to date.
“I was inspired by the Australian real estate public to hear their story and so excited about bringing them all together. That accomplishment of capturing nine years of information and to then bolt that into the most powerful audio production ever done in Australia is a good feeling,” he said.
The Hot Topics Sales Mastery series contains special double CD editions covering the most important topics in the real estate industry. For more information on this series visit www.realestateacademy.com.au