In life – and in real estate – change is the only constant. Australia has many property market dynamics, nearly all of which are changing from the slight to the seismic. The best way agents can strategise to thrive through the market’s inevitable changes is to have a plan they can implement daily – one that keeps their eyes on the work rather than the worry.
One essential focus area for your agency should be a commitment to over-servicing and over-delivering on the promises made to your clients. If you are consistently embracing change in your real estate practice, you will remain dynamic and able to respond to any situation.
Your clients – be they vendors, buyers, landlords or tenants – should lie at the heart of your service design philosophy. Amongst other things, you need to ensure your technology supports your goal to continually impress, rather than letting you down and causing embarrassing mishaps or clumsy communications.
When you have a plan to manage change, you maintain momentum and your staff are more likely to remain aligned and confident. In factoring in external elements beyond your control, you start to see market fluctuations as ideal times to look at your business with a critical eye.
What can this changing market reveal about aspects of your agency or practice you can improve? Golden days of 100 per cent auction clearance rates are fun, but they don’t provide much motivation to uncover and fix your agency for the changing seasons that lie ahead.
Aspects of business Australia’s leading agents are reviewing now include:
Data: How good is yours, and is it located in a powerful CRM everyone is using? Does your team like using your system, and can they find what they need easily?
The CRM you use needs to minimise ‘bad data’ through smart matching and the avoidance of duplicates – a database that can map the relationships between contacts and properties. Individual contacts should have one record that identifies them as a vendor, landlord or tenant to their properties.
Many CRMs fail at this fundamental rule, making your investment in technology useless.
Customer Service: How often do you keep your vendors and landlords informed of their property’s status considering the market it sits within? How do you meaningfully support your buyers and tenants?
Slower markets mean you have time to understand your customer’s critical areas of concern, offering them an incredible tailored service.
How can you help them achieve their life goals? What information do they need to help them make an informed decision about what to do next?
Give them the confidence to make life changes by offering support to move forward.
Inefficient Processes: When you look at the systems in your sales and property management departments, which areas cost you the most time, money and frustration?
As a team, walk through your customer journey for each area of your business and be honest about what is working and what could be done better.
Why not invite five recent buyers, vendors, landlords and tenants to join this process? There’s no better way to see first-hand where opportunities to delight and support during difficult life stages may lie.
Technology: Many real estate agents are overwhelmed by choice when it comes to the technological landscape.
How do you invest in the right digital solutions to make a difference in your business? How do you measure ROI?
Now is the time to identify the technology you currently use, before doing a cost/benefit analysis of each solution. Where you see an overlap, there is a good opportunity to save money and consolidate systems.
The technologies that are most important to your business, and which are simultaneously the most frustrating, are the ones to investigate further.
Learn from other market leaders and observe how they approach using technology in their business. It’s possible that you have stuck to the same outmoded system for years, as changeover can be painful.
However, when business is slower during times of market flux, you have the time and opportunity to make positive changes.
Don’t forget that your clients are an excellent source of information. They will help you steer your business through changing markets. Tap into their knowledge when redefining how you can achieve growth and efficiencies, even in the most challenging market conditions.
