Jodie Stainton: Keep, stop, start 2024

The past 12 months have been transformative for Jodie Stainton and her team.

She joined the team at Harcourts Solutions as Director of Property Management and since then has introduced strategic initiatives such as daily huddles, Client Needs Analysis at lease renewals, and comprehensive customer satisfaction surveys.

But Jodie isn’t one to rest on her laurels, and this year is zeroed in on expanding her knowledge through more reading, aiming to balance leadership responsibilities with personal growth. 

What practices have consistently yielded positive results for you and/or your team this year that you will build on next year? 

Doing daily huddles focusing on vacancies, marketing assets, feedback and new client handovers, as well as crossover work where a PM can pick up a pack or keys for a colleague.

Completing CNAs (Client Needs Analysis calls) at lease renewals has also helped us to ensure we’re looking after our clients and our whole business – that is referrals to sales and mortgage broking.

Customer satisfaction surveying is also a big part of our overall strategy to lift morale, fees and improve our service offering.

Business planning with the team is also crucial to direct and inspire our performance, and connect the team to what they do.

What’s one new thing you want to start doing to improve your PMs customer service levels in 2024? 

Customer journeys and process mapping. I think we’ve put in structures to get the most impactful moments right, but now we need to move to the nitty-gritty of the processes and refine and take our service to another level. 

From a personal leadership perspective, what new goal have you set yourself for the next 12 months? 

Read more. Over the past 12 months, with leading a new team and completing my first year in business, I’ve had alternative things to focus on. But this year I want to turn my attention back to reading more.

What’s something you want to stop doing this year?  

I’d like to finish my day earlier, so I’m looking forward to doing ‘an hour of power’, with no interruptions, to get through my calls and emails at the end of each day.

What’s your real estate prediction for 2024? 

I think it will be much more of the same. I don’t see the conditions changing too much or see any major changes.

Queensland, in particular, is still seeing population growth, so I think we’ll see continued price rises across sales and rentals.

I do think AI will start to deliver more insights to consumers looking to transact and this will benefit the stronger agencies.