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CONTRIBUTORS
Mark McLeod: Is marketing just an illusion?
Whenever I’m asked to comment on marketing in the real estate industry I always start with this quote. “The problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
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Real Estate News
Mark McLeod: What to do when things don’t go as planned
It is unlikely to expect or assume that a long-term career in real estate is not going to be faced with challenges and its ups and downs.
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Elite Agent
Mark McLeod: Is your shop open for business?
Everyone in our industry is always looking for an edge.
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CONTRIBUTORS
Choice-driven success: How what you choose now impacts your future
Recently, I have been talking a lot about how better performing agents make better choices.
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CONTRIBUTORS
Mark McLeod: Make sure you’re open for business
The State of Origin night in Queensland is big, and the famous Caxton Hotel knows it.
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CONTRIBUTORS
Mark McLeod: Why volume, not GCI, is the important KPI right now
Real estate moves through phases. Each phase, even the boom, provides challenges for some, but in the current phase it often provides challenges for many.
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OPINION
The power of positive energy: Mark McLeod
I firmly believe that if you don’t feel really excited about your chances of selling a home, it will be hard to find someone who is really excited about buying it. While visiting many offices across our network and sitting down to discuss stock management, the first thing I look for is how agents are reacting to their stock. If…
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BEST PRACTICE
Control your attitude and your process
Look out the window. It will either be a clear, sunny day or wet and dreary. If it’s sunny, that’s a fact. If it’s raining, that’s a fact. You can’t change it. It’s just weather, and it’s not good or bad. When you are stuck in traffic, you might think, ‘How dare all these other people leave at the same…
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BEST PRACTICE
Mark McLeod: Great challenges create great opportunities
Mark McLeod explains what you can do to ensure you come out on top of the latest market cycle.
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CONTRIBUTORS
Mark McLeod: Three things tech should provide your business
Every year there seems to be an ongoing discussion about the role technology plays in our industry.
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LEADERSHIP
Mark McLeod: Embrace your ambitions
A new year is the perfect time to get back on track in your life and business career. Here, Mark McLeod reveals five key tips to keep you focused on the habits needed to reach your goals.
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CONTRIBUTORS
Mark McLeod: Six essential beliefs for good leadership
Ray White Chief Executive of Growth, Mark McLeod outlines the six beliefs that make for great leadership
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Elite Agent
What real estate can learn from McDonald’s
There’s no doubt technology is important, and I believe in what it can provide us with now and in the future. However, real estate, at its very core, is a relationship business. I often ask many people I work with to make a list of all the contacts they have a relationship with that they have never spoken to. When…
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CONTRIBUTORS
Mark McLeod: How to earn $900,000 a year within five years
They say real estate is a numbers game, and knowing how to crunch them can see you come out on top. Mark McLeod explains the 'compounding effect' and how understanding it can help your business.
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Elite Agent
Your money lives in your pipeline
Agents often tout the strength of their pipeline, but as Mark McLeod explains, it can reveal a lot more than just which properties may come on the market next – it can highlight the structural strengths and weaknesses in your whole business.
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LEADERSHIP
The buck stops with the boss
Every day I receive an email from Seth Godin and I highly recommend you subscribe to him too. One particular piece that he wrote recently resonated with me. The piece was titled Systems, Design and The Front Line. In this blog, Seth talked about how when things are not going well, the buck stops with the boss. “If you experience…
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Elite Agent
Who are your customers?
At what point does someone become our customer? While there is not too much travel going on right now, let’ssay you go online and book a flight with Qantas, you proceed tocheck-in and head to the lounge before boarding the plane. When do you think Qantas believes you become their customer? If the experience at…
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Elite Agent
Slow and steady steps to success
News cycles are often easy to predict. There will always be fireworks on New Year’s Eve, mothers having lunch on Mother’s Day, children having their photograph with Santa at Christmas, the Boxing Day test match and the grand finals to provide foreseeable news cycles. As the decade rolls over and we head into 2020, it’s…
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SELLING + MARKETING PROPERTY
Push past the plateau
A logical path often leads to an illogical outcome. What does that mean? Let me explain. Our rich industry data shows a high percentage of agents will plateau in their fourth or fifth year in the industry. This is where the illogical outcomes start. Logically, a business that has been in the market a while should be growing. You would…
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BEST PRACTICE
Accepting responsibility
A famous Winston Churchill quote says you must never waste a good crisis. For many, the past 12 months in real estate terms have been a crisis. Much of the pressure may have been successfully navigated post-election, but have agents learnt from the situation, or will they face similar malaise when another crisis hits? And it will hit. Over the…
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BEST PRACTICE
The gift of real estate
I recently spent time with some second and third year agents who have all been doing relatively well in the industry. I asked them to come to the whiteboard and map out the ideal real estate business. Save for a few minor details they could write down what it would take for them to become a $500,000-plus earner. With all…
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Elite Agent
Always be educating: Mark McLeod
Stock management and vendor education are, for many, among the most challenging tasks as a real estate agent. Following one of the deepest and longest sustained growth periods, many agents haven’t developed the skills or understanding needed in this section of the real estate process. This area can be difficult, daunting and, in many cases for the uninitiated and unprepared,…
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Elite Agent
First service: Mark McLeod
I often wonder why professional tennis players don’t get the first serve in more often. Maybe the fact they have a second chance has something to do with it. Or, as I recently saw on social media, why don’t the cars in The Fast and the Furious stop for fuel? These are amusing observations. One observation that is not amusing…
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Elite Agent
Begin with the end in mind: Mark McLeod
Through the strong part of the cycle, it was a fairly easy task to look forward and feel energised and excited about what was inevitably about to happen: solid numbers through opens, bucketloads of enquiry, plenty of offers. Vendors not always but often had their expectations on price exceeded. The world of real estate seemed relatively simple and you know…
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BEST PRACTICE
Focus on the opportunities: Mark McLeod
Talking to a team of agents on the Gold Coast recently, I asked them to picture a football team who has been playing on a dry surface for the last few years when all of a sudden they have a wet, rain-affected pitch to play on. If the players don’t adapt their game, they will lose. In that game, there will…
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BEST PRACTICE
Why you need to be tech enabled: Mark McLeod
I recently attended the Inman Conference in San Francisco and witnessed the ongoing debate over disruption and technology in our industry. Let’s start the discussion by asking what technology enables us to do. From our perspective it’s designed to get our people to talk to more people, at the right time. But despite technological advances, human connection still needs to…
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LEADERSHIP
How to create the right leadership atmosphere for your team
I visited a different gym a number of months ago; the weights were all over the place, nothing was put away and there was little or no respect for the equipment. As I walked out it became quite easy for me to act in the same fashion as every other member. The environment was setting the tone. Conversely, the gym…
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SELLING + MARKETING PROPERTY
Creating the future – Mark McLeod
I don’t know whether you have ever tried to write a song, but when I was younger and tried I couldn’t help just regurgitating a tune that already existed. Many people have been asked what the real estate office of the future may look like. It’s quite a challenge to answer, as the most difficult part is to separate yourself…
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SELLING + MARKETING PROPERTY
Why would my business grow this year? Mark McLeod
Over the last few years, the market has provided the growth impetus even for the most average of agents. Now things have changed. A great self-reflection question to ask yourself is, ‘Why would my business grow this year?’ There are, in my view, two types of businesses. Some are devoid of structure and process, and are linked to the ebbs and flows of the market; others…
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Elite Agent
Taking Stock – Mark McLeod
As markets across the country start to take a different form, every real estate agency will need to turn its focus to stock management. Many believe that days on market and clearance rates are what the market serves up to them, but when offices don’t have solid stock management structures the market provides a great scapegoat for why performance is…
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LEADERSHIP
Unforced Errors: Mark McLeod
When it comes to the major sporting contests, it’s usually not the sophisticated plays that win championships, but rather the players who make the least mistakes.
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CUSTOMER SERVICE
Consistently Inconsistent: Mark McLeod
I like to compare real estate to golf, as the ball itself remains motionless on impact. You would think that it would make it easier, but no. As technology comes more into play, sometimes getting back to the raw essence of how this industry operates in its purest and simplest form can help an agent perform. The one thing that…
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LEADERSHIP
What’s Your Workflow?
Let’s say, for argument’s sake, someone started writing $1 million GCI in their first or second year. Logic would tell you the suburb or suburbs they work in didn’t start producing an extra $1 million of GCI because agent X started working in the area. So who did they take it from? In simple terms, they were able to take…
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Elite Agent
Spot the Disrupter: Mark McLeod
It’s only when we understand and acknowledge where the pain points really are for our customers that will we have any opportunity to meet disrupters head on, says Mark McLeod. There is an image I saw recently of Fifth Avenue, New York, in 1900. The photo shows a busy street, full of horses and carts. The caption reads, “Spot the…
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Elite Agent
The Ecosystem of Experiences
The evolution of our industry is clearly about putting the customer, and the experience of the customer, at the centre of our universe. But that’s not all it will take to future-proof your business, says Mark McLeod. A s I have said and written many times, the question remains: who is our customer? Most agents believe their customer is their…
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