Editorial
Front Page - Friday, November 20, 2009
Famed real estate trainer David Knox puts training materials online
Samara Litvack
Like many association libraries across the country, the Chattanooga Association of Realtors has a wide selection of instructional books, workbooks, CDs and videos available to its members. Among the many authors and instructors that have contributed to this library is David Knox, international keynote speaker and top sales trainer, whose books and instructional videos are among the most widely used and recognized in the industry.
After becoming a Realtor in 1972, Knox was made training director of Burnet Gagner company in Minneapolis. Four years later, when the company became Burnet Realty, owner Ralph Burnet invited Knox to fill a vacant guest instructor spot.
“I did a three-hour presentation on buyers and, in the end, they rated me the best instructor,” Knox says. “And I rated that as one of the most fun experiences I’d ever had.”
At that moment, Knox’s career shifted before his eyes.
“It felt right,” he says. “I enjoyed doing it. I enjoyed the fact that I helped them. Everything from that day forward took me down the path of training and speaking.”
Knox says the combination of his left brain ability to write and construct outlines and his right brain ability to have fun and speak to an audience allowed him to be prepared and feel comfortable in his new role.
“I never knew public speaking was supposed to be scary, so I just went ahead and did it,” he says.
A few years later, Knox taught his first Certified Residential Specialist course in Albany, N.Y. – and bombed miserably. He’d never spoken to an audience of that magnitude and had come to the engagement ill prepared.
“That really became another milestone in my life, to improve dramatically and develop content and presentation styles,” he says. “It took me two or three years to master that.”
As a result, he was made senior instructor. And, when Merrill Lynch purchased the company in the early 80s, he moved to Stanford, Conn., to become Merrill Lynch Realty’s national training director. In that role, he helped 33 companies develop their training programs. Any time a new company was purchased, he stepped in to lay the groundwork.
“I was happy to do it,” he says. “I couldn’t wait to get up in front of new companies and welcome them to the fold.”
Knox enjoyed his position with Merrill Lynch Realty until the company withdrew from the industry in June 1987. At that point, he began his own company, David Knox Productions, specializing in topics of real estate training, with specific emphasis on listing and selling skills, negotiating skills and overcoming objections.
Step one, he says, was establishing himself through a circuit of speaking engagements and seminars. He did 80 to 120 a year, depending on the year, and quickly made a name for himself.
Step two was the educational training, which evolved at the rate of technology from audiocassette to compact disc to online MP3s. But the one thing that really boosted the success of his company, Knox says, was the creation of his first consumer video, which Realtors bought and then loaned to their sellers, called “Pricing Your Home to Sell.”
That video was released in 1989 and became a standard prelisting video for Realtors across the country. Since then, David Knox Productions has released five more videos, all related to buyers and sellers, including “Preparing Your Home to Sell,” “Selling ‘By Owner,’” “Expired Listing,” “Eight Steps to Buying a Home: and “Selecting Your Real Estate Agent.”
Then, in 2004, Knox set out on a new venture. He began gathering footage in a sort of reality TV format, videotaping actual real estate transactions – from the listing, to the offer presentation, to the closing – and creating a brand called “Real Estate Live.”
“I either was physically on the shoot, where I could watch it, or I was the one who edited them,” he says. “I could watch the videos of real transactions, non-scripted, not rehearsed. So I actually saw more listing presentations often than the people in my audience, kind of like a flight attendant flies more than anybody.”
Knox says gathering the footage and editing tape for “Real Estate Live” reignited his passion for the business. By watching what was going on in the industry, he realized what topics he should focus on in his lectures, what skills most Realtors lacked and what questions buyers and sellers seemed to have most often.
The first 10 “Real Estate Live” installments have been released on DVD and recently, Knox has made all of his training materials available online.
“Everything we do is now going to be online on a monthly membership,” he says. “From this point forward, I’m really focusing only on members. I’m really going to focus on those agents who are serious about growing and learning and people who want to join me in a very tight membership.
“I don’t want to reach everybody. I want to reach those people who are willing to learn and grow.”
And while Knox’s focus is now mostly on developing his online video library, found at www.realestatetrainingbydavidknox.com, he says speaking will always be one of his passions.
“After doing this for 20, 30 years, there are always people in there that know me, know my seminars and they’ll sit down in the front row with their big, smiley faces, glad to be there, and it just makes my day,” he says. “I love it when they come back and tell me something we’ve done together has helped them in their career.”
And although the current economy has decreased the number of speaking engagement Knox has each year, his passion for it has not waivered.
“My favorite moment in my day is when they say, ‘Please give a warm welcome to David Knox,’” he says. “For me, that’s the quintessential moment that I look forward to in any given year.”
To learn more about Knox and David Knox Productions, visit www.davidknox.com.
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