If you want to annihilate the enemy, who better to pick than a military man? Century 21 Real Estate Corporation's new vice president of training George Selix and his team have their crosshairs fixed on several targets - training costs, time management, and accreditations. And while he's at it, he's going to take some aim at bureaucracy, too.

Selix, a retired US Air force Lieutenant Colonel, specializes designing and implementing training systems, as well as leveraging technology and learning theory to improve learning outcomes. His long-range Web-based training plan for new and experienced agents is like planning a war from beginning to end. The war is on agent apathy and unprofessionalism. There will be acceptable losses, such as agents who aren't interested in professional development or improving performance. But there's also a lot of ground to be gained in knowledge and professionalism. Selix's goal is to create a training center so superior that most coursework will ultimately culminate in college credit hours, state-mandated continuing educational credit, and other accreditations for agent students.

But first he has a few obstacles to overcome.

Military personnel have been encouraged to stay and excel in the armed forces primarily because they can serve without sacrificing higher educational opportunities. Distance learning facilitated by the Internet is a staple of military bases all over the world, so that servicemen can get associate, undergraduate and postgraduate degrees during their tours. Why can't the same benefits be offered to real estate agents? Further, reasons Selix, why can't the results of online courses be measured against performance? And why can't what works for servicemen work for geography and time-bound Realtors?

Selix has brought together key leaders in training to address those questions and create one of the most comprehensive libraries available online. For a little less than what agents would pay for any online e-learning subscription, Selix has leveraged the size and bargaining power of Century 21 to cut better deals and get more content with such online training leaders as real estate-focused Entreport, The Harvard Business School, and Harcourt's NetG, the largest purveyor of corporate productivity training, among others.

Century 21's new learning infrastructure is called The Century 21 Learning System (CLS.) It will offer a combination of live instruction, Internet-accessed instruction, and asynchronous instruction including books, tapes, and videos. Agents will be able to learn applications such as Microsoft Word, as well as real estate specific information such as how to e-list homes by trainer Terri Murphy and serve Internet Empowered Consumers™ by Michael Russer. The emphasis, as well as the cost-savings to the franchise, brokers and agents, will on using technology to learn. New material which has never been presented online before is also currently in development.

Providing content isn't the only hurdle. Selix also understands that the reason many agents don't take advantage of online training is availability, quality issues, and the fact that they prefer face-to-face interaction, but much of that can be addressed by the types of instruction which CLS plans to debut at the March convention in Las Vegas. But a more compelling reason is that agents don't have the time to spend time on training that isn't going to result in an accreditation or knock a required CE course out of the way.

Currently, few online courses are approved for credit in the real estate industry, and for that, Selix blames the bureaucracy of the current system. If servicemen can get advanced degrees through distance learning, why can't Realtors get required courses done the same way? CSL courses are being designed to meet ARELLO standards to improve their chances of being accepted by state regulators as appropriately monitored material to satisfy CE requirements and one day, licensing requirements. He hopes that one day the distance barrier will be broken completely, allowing agents to use their time and travel money more productively.

"There is a lot of opportunity cost as well as other expenses involved in training," says a frustrated Selix. "for the brokers as well as the agents. Distance learning addresses that problem with good instruction at low cost when people need it."

Selix's zeal is all the more interesting because real estate training is an expensive hot potato. Agents, brokers, and associations and franchises toss responsibility for professional development back and forth. Sometimes the agent pays, sometimes not. Some companies take responsibility and some don't. But everyone loses when agents fail to meet professional standards.

Selix has no intention of taking the band-aid approach to training employed by others, he says. "We're taking 100 percent responsibility because that is the key to being successful and that is what we need to bring to the real estate vertical."

It's not like he has new money to throw at this, or that he expects results overnight. Selix knows he's in for a long, hard campaign. What makes it worth it?

A clue might be found in projected revenues for the online learning sector. According to the Industry Standard, analysts predict the online education market, which ranges from corporate learning to university degree programs, will grow from $9.4 billion today to $53.3 billion in 2003; $4 billion of this will go to edu-commerce companies. While only a fraction applies to the real estate industry, the numbers clearly indicate that somebody's leaving a lot of money on the table by not facilitating online learning.

Maybe Selix was the first to figure that out. Run those revenues through the franchise, and save agents and brokers money at the same time. Everybody wins.

Sounds like Selix has a winning battle plan.