When you realise that a phone is designed to make calls, not receive them.
Credit where it’s due: thanks Ray White Kardinya .
The great difference
It’s the time of year where goals are set and dreams of ambition and success consume people.
Normally these goals are set around number of sales, number of listings; the all important pay packet. What if this year your goals were set around community involvement, customer care and adding real value to the people who own homes in your community?
Now, wouldn’t that be a year of great difference?
The real price
Every owner will take less than what you know.
Every owner will take less than what they know.
Are you building platforms that allow the owner to reveal these prices to you, and to themselves?
The great myth
When did our industry start to believe that stock is the most important thing in the real estate business?
If that is really the case, then why do we let so many genuine leads go through to the keeper?
Stock is not the most important commodity in a real estate business, stock that you can sell is the most important commodity. And the two are vastly different.
You don’t list great stock, you create great stock.
Good Day coffee
There’s a coffee shop I go to on the Gold Coast. For all intents and purposes it shouldn’t work; it faces away from the beach, it’s on a busy highway, and it’s in a rather stand alone location. Yet it’s always packed.
The question is – why? It’s because it does the things that matter extraordinarily well. The coffee is excellent, the vibe and energy of the staff are amazing.
The business is obviously focussed on being successful, as all businesses are and should be. But the real focus is on the experience; the attention to detail in the little things.
As markets across Australia begin to change, this attention to detail in real estate is now more vital than ever before.
The quality of your presentations, the detail in your follow up, the willingness to create platforms to have meaningful discussions with owners – it’s not one factor, but a combination of everything that will allow your business to thrive and survive when all things around you suggest that you shouldn’t.
Just like my coffee shop, if you get the detail right, every day is a good day.
No such thing as a slump
So often, I get phone calls that go like this:
Agent: Macca, I’m in a slump. Can you help me?
Macca: Make 250 phone calls a week for the next four weeks then ring me back.
Six weeks on I call the agent.
Macca: Hello Agent, you haven’t called me back like I asked.
Agent: Sorry, Macca, I’ve been too busy.
There’s no such thing as a slump. Just lack of focus and hard work.
Control
Remember, the market is a cycle – it moves and it changes. You have no more effect on the way the cycle ebbs and flows as you do of controlling the ocean tide.
You didn’t cause the property boom and nor will you be the cause of any softening or correction.
What you can do is attach yourself to process and structure that enables your vendors to reach a premium price no matter what stage of the cycle we’re in.
Take the lead
Recent research has shown me that most real estate offices generate enough leads through enough channels to light up a small country town.
The future of our industry is not about generating more leads, it’s about adopting a better understanding of lead nurturing and conversion.
The sins of our past
As an industry, are the sins of our past starting to catch up with us?
As I’ve seen the emergence of companies such as Rate My Agent and Open Agent, I realised these portals have been created to fill a need. As an industry we need to ask ourselves, what is that need?
Was it the need of consumers to feel comfort around their selection of their real estate agent?
Or is it the fact that there was an identification that most property owners in Australia don’t really have a meaningful relationship with a real estate agent?
Perhaps this growing trend has been fuelled by an opportunity created by an industry that isn’t as customer-centric as it should be.
Detail
Energy and hype in the market is such a wonderful thing. It creates momentum, it provides cash flow to further develop and in many ways can only ever be seen as a great thing.
But so often through these times – as we enjoy this part of the cycle – businesses lose shape and detail becomes less important. Adherences to processes and structures seem a waste of time.
Let’s look at other industries, no matter how busy QANTAS gets, their detail to safety remains intact. No matter how busy a 5 star restaurant gets, its detail to what’s presented on the plate remains intact.
As we hurtle through a seemingly wonderful market, does the detail still remain important in your business?
McLeod and clear 