BEST PRACTICEElite Agent

Four missed opportunities that are costing your business

Today’s challenging market conditions are forcing agencies nationwide to cut costs, streamline their business activities and reduce budgets – effectively taking steps to ‘batten down the hatches’. Eddie Cetin explains the opportunities you might be missing if weathering the storm is your only focus.

The agencies who will come out of this cycle stronger than they entered it are those who are proactively and critically assessing their people.

Using processes and technology, they are taking care to implement changes and future-proof their business.

Want to be amongst their number? An area you should interrogate is your underlying business systems.

It can be a daunting and complicated process for most principals to ‘lift the hood’ on this aspect of their agency.

Agents aren’t generally IT experts, and they naturally shy away from putting their tech under a microscope.

Rather than thinking of your CRM or business system as an overwhelming world of code and digital wizardry, think about the functionality it offers.

Does it give you a true single view of your customer?

Imagine the business opportunities your agents could uncover and the efficiencies your agency would gain by having your whole business in one system.

Historically, principals have relied on specialist software for their sales and property management activities.

As the industry has evolved, real estate agencies now understand that having these unnecessary silos in their business may not be the smartest way forward. What opportunities are being missed due to your client and property data being spread across multiple systems?

What opportunities are being missed due to your client and property data being spread across multiple systems?

Here are four familiar scenarios that highlight the issues a siloed approach to business data presents.

1 Missed sales opportunities

How many of your rental properties end up on the market with another agency?

Why does this happen?

How many of your sales listings could be purchased by an eager investor who is a current landlord?

2 Missed leasing opportunities

How many of your sales listings are sold to investors?

What proportion of these are you then gaining as a landlord for ongoing property management services?

3 Not tracking your ‘client for life’ metrics

Are you monitoring opportunities and setting targets for keeping clients for life?

What operational tasks should be implemented to help achieve these goals?

4 Poor client experiences

How often does your sales or property management department deliver a poor client experience that impacts your ability to list that property in the future for sale or lease?

Without a total view of your business, it can be difficult to answer these questions or put in place processes to ensure these siloing issues are addressed.

All these factors can spell significant discomfort for a business, as they are external factors broadly beyond your control.

What you can manage during these agent-making times are your internal systems, ensuring you aren’t missing opportunities under your nose.

So how do you get the total view of your business and proactively work it to deliver growth and improve efficiencies?

The answer is to bring your business platforms together – a challenge that you can’t go alone.

The benefits you will gain from your business transformation will translate to growth and efficiency gains, so it is well worth the effort in a challenging market.

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Eddie Cetin

Eddie Cetin is the APAC Managing Director of Reapit Group. The combined Agentbox and Reapit offering provides real estate agencies with one market-leading solution for Sales and Property Management. Eddie co-founded Agentbox, the Sales CRM of choice for most high performing agents around Australia. For more information, visit agentbox.com.au