EP188 Travis Willams: Using data to drive relationships

This episode of the Elevate podcast is brought to you by Connect Now

Intro to Travis Williams #

Travis Williams is the founder and CEO of Box+Dice – an Australian company which has pioneered cloud-based real estate technology over the past two decades to become one of the country’s leading CRM and transaction platforms.

A highly successful agent in his own right, Travis entered the industry as part of a family business, and has translated this personal insight into a CRM built for agents, by an agent.

In this episode: #

• The importance of metrics
• How Box+Dice came to be
• Lessons learned from a start-up
• Travis’ real estate career
• The peaks and troughs of real estate
• How to come back from a setback
• Agents are ‘Market Makers’
• Communication skills, the power of silence, and why agents shouldn’t block the offer
• The biggest CRM mistakes agents make
• The value of a database in off-market sales
• Where technology will take the industry
• What’s next for Box+Dice
  

Visibility of metrics #

• Since it started a couple of decades ago, Box+Dice has identified a common thread to successful brands.
• They are all focused on getting a single source of truth in their organisation so that they have one single customer record that everyone can share to provide a consistent brand experience. Many also have policies about how they use a CRM to scale their business
• As soon as COVID emerged, the use of Box+Dice increased. With business leaders having more time on their hands to use the system, Travis began receiving phone calls of thanks.
• Once they dealt with the initial shock and crisis management of the COVID landscape, business leaders began delving into the metrics that Box+Dice provided, including looking at numbers of appraisals per consultant, and the number of buyers added to the listing, which made it clear who was, and wasn’t following up.
• With information about their lost opportunities at hand, one agency director noted Box+Dice allowed them to clearly see how they could propel themselves into 2021.
• “Visibility of metrics is an amazing, empowering thing,” Travis notes.
• Meanwhile entries also increased, with team members using the quiet of COVID to tap into their database and follow-up older entries.

How Box+Dice began #

• Box+Dice was born from an industry-first perspective. In 1995, Travis was just out of uni and working at his father’s real estate agency to repay a debt.
• “I owed him $5000 and it was $500 a week,” Travis says. “I was working around the office. They were barely printing their own brochures and putting floor plans on the backs of brochures that was just starting back then.”
• After 10 weeks, Travis felt this was an industry he wanted to be part of.
• “My very first day in real estate, I had some business cards, and I said to my colleague, ‘Dave, what do I do? How do you store this stuff?
• “And he pulled out his tickler file system and was very proud of it. And so he should have been, because he was organised, but I took one look at that and thought, well, hang on a second.
• “I was a programmer in my previous life and I took one look at that, went home, got my computer literally and fired up Microsoft access. And we wrote an access database and started recording all my buyers back then.
• “That was the first version of Box+Dice.”
• Travis continued working as an agent for the next decade, and notes he was coached by the ‘very wonderful and awesome Peter Gilchrist.
• He also opened a few offices himself under the Williams brand, and connected them by a radio network.But by that time, he says his database wasn’t cutting it. Travis also went in search of other systems that he could modify, but it became too difficult.
• “So in 2005, I hired two programmers from Swinburne Uni and I paired up with them or joined them myself, and we locked ourselves in a dark room. By the end of 2005, three clients had rolled us out. 

Lessons learned from a start-up #

• Travis notes the biggest lesson he learnt running a start-up was to take your time and plan. “After two or three years, our code base was unstable and I know it’s not a generic lesson in business, but if I had taken more time and planned things better, instead of rushing in and saying yes, all the time, we would have had a better platform, better footing back then,” he says.
• “So we played catch up for a long time after that, that was quite challenging.”
• Had he known how tough it would be to navigate the start-up phase business, Travis says he also might have taken on partners in the early days. 
• “As it turns out 15 years later, I didn’t take on partners and made it through those peaks and troughs. And I’m very glad about that now, but gee, in those late 2000s, it was pretty stressful. I’m a proud guy and have a lot of awesome relationships. And I didn’t like to let people down.
• “So that took its toll definitely in those early years. I worked through the night, many times to make sure I delivered on my own promises. That was quite a challenge early on.”

An inevitable career in real estate #

• Travis says his family always joked that if all else failed in life, he could fall back on real estate. But it has been a career he has genuinely enjoyed and been privy to from a young age.
• “When I was 12, 15, or 17-years-old, we had a second phone line into the house, which was the after-hours office number. And that was also my ‘chat with my friends’ line.
• “I was answering the phone, taking sales inquiries as a teenager. It was kind of bred into me this whole notion of the property market – the buyers, the buyer’s emotions, what they go through, because I’d spoken to them.
• “Even before that, I used to go to the office after school and play with the cat in Douglas Parade in Williamstown back in the early ‘80s. So I couldn’t avoid it, I think. It was fairly inevitable.”
• It’s also an addictive industry, he notes, where securing the listing, and getting the deal done is a rush. The challenge, he says, is finding a balance. “Obsessive people like me really get obsessed with it. It’s the most awesome industry.”

The peaks and troughs of real estate #

• Real estate is a game of peaks and troughs, and that has been particularly evident during COVID-19. Agents get listings, they sell them and then they have nothing in the pipeline.
• Box+Dice encourages agents to work on long-term relationships in order to avoid the troughs. “You can see them coming if you manage your database properly,” Travis notes.
• Those peaks and troughs aren’t just business-related, Travis continues. They are also personal.
• “There’s a new conversation evolving around depression in real estate. When you lose that listing, it’s like splitting up with your partner. Sometimes it’s such a thump. And if you have several rejections like that, it can really take its toll on you. You can really get down and people say, ‘well, get back on the horse’. It’s not that easy.”

Getting back on the horse #

• Travis explains the way to come back from a setback is to roll up your sleeves, start working and believe in yourself.
• “Box+Dice has got a role to play there because it’s got the tools to dig yourself out. It’s not just work harder, instead work smarter, he says.
• “Ring those buyers, ring those people that bought from you five years ago or bought from your company five years ago and introduce yourself.
• “Those clients that haven’t received a contact from you in X number of days, weeks, or months, contact them and just start a conversation.
• “When they receive a call from you in non-business times – in dormant times – people really appreciate it. You start your real estate community when you find the time to ring those dormant clients and build those long-term long-lasting relationships. And that’s the rewarding part of the job – when you turn up to the front door and you don’t have to introduce yourself.”
• Travis notes community building and creating connections is particularly important to agents just starting out. He says once they have that connection, the troughs aren’t as bad and the rejections aren’t as frequent.
• In addition, contacting the people that you have previously done a good job for is a great way of re-instilling self-belief.
• “My Dad used to say the best time to win a listing is when you’ve just won one. The best time to make a sale is when you’ve just signed one up,” Travis says.
• “So if you ring an old friend who’s a past client who you really got along with, the best time to make the next phone call is straight after that one and get on the roll and build it into your daily routine, so that an hour or two every day is making those phone calls.”
• Most importantly, don’t forget to ask ‘the question’:  Do you have a house to sell? Do you know anyone with a house to sell?

Agents are market makers #

• Travis believes agents are ‘market makers, with a key role to play in their community.
• “Agents are the ones that facilitate the transactions, that coach the people over the line. The transactions don’t happen without the real estate agents lubricating the event to get from A to B, for people selling and buying.”
• While you might do a course to become a real estate agent and transact property, it’s actually an awareness of psychology that agents require, along with knowledge of tax, financial planning and property investment, occasional marriage counselling, relationship counselling, and bereavement counselling.
• “So the market makers are the ones who have the skills to deal with the daily events of the customers. You’ve got to be passionate about helping people move on with their lives, whatever that means.
• “I’ve done auctions where the husband’s in the back room, the wife’s in the front room and both families are there supporting them. That’s a tense situation and you can’t be lacking in empathy skills and expect to bring about a transaction.”
• Travis continues, there are some challenging situations agents find themselves in the middle of, and they’re not necessarily covered in the topics of a two-week course.

The power of silence #

• Among the skills agents require is communication, but Travis notes that also involves knowing when not to speak.
• “Silence is the most penetrating negotiation tool,” he explains. “The use of silence is profound when negotiating a price.”
• It’s equally important to know when to put a situation forward, but then ‘shut up’.
• “So many agents forget their role and get caught in the transaction with their own banter and routine. If you’re down to the last little gap, silence is everything.
• “If you’ve got a large gap, giving the three options – accept, reject, counter-offer – then standing back and letting people talk themselves into the sale is usually the best strategy.”

Don’t block the offer #

• Travis says too often agents block offers believing a seller won’t accept it. But an agent should never second-guess their client.
• “Always give them a chance to change their minds because that’s how the sale happens.”

The biggest CRM mistakes agents make #

• A CRM is a tool of the trade. You would never go and become a builder and have a cheap drill, or no drill at all.
• Travis says a CRM is a tool that should also be exploited to full advantage, and failing to do that is one of the biggest mistakes agents make.
• For example Box+Dice has an agent app that allows agents access to every person they’ve ever dealt with on their phone or tablet.
• It’s also not enough to maintain that you’re ‘old school’. “Even the oldest of the old need to be employing someone to stand next to them 24/7, because the tools of the trade are essential and the reason is the collection of the data.”
• An agent might have the skills to make the deal, but it’s not just about that isolated transaction. Instead it’s about recording all aspects of a deal, including other potential buyers, what they liked and didn’t like about the property, and then considering which properties might suit them.
• Travis also notes agents shouldn’t fall back on the web portals to understand buyer interest. While portals have an interest in driving traffic through their site, agents have an interest in making a transaction and ultimately meeting the needs of a buyer and seller.

The value of a database in off-market sales #

• Travis explains agents have the opportunity to build a rich database which facilitates on-market and particularly off-market transactions, with the latter being a great way to establish a true service point of difference
• “An off-market community is the single best vehicle for an agent to propose extra value over and above your competitors to win the listing and then make the sale.”
• To achieve this, agents should enter every single metric of information about potential buyers into their CRM, so they can retrieve the information, and instantly match it with their own off-market community.
• “One of our clients has passed a million records in their database,” he notes. 
• “That client not only has names, addresses and phone numbers. They have likes and dislikes, conversations, check ins, appraisals, ownership data, first name, last name, email, mobile, properties purchased, what they paid, what the commission was, what the deposit was, what the settlement date was, old address, new address.
• “Our client’s data is so rich because every person that works at their business is like a tentacle out there collecting information. The portals can’t compete with that. And so this off-market community, when an agent is going to list a property, is their intellectual property and it is the difference.
• “If you work for that company with a million records, you will lead in with that every day of the week to say: ‘We’ve got more buyers and we’ll help you’. That’s a very, very compelling message.

Where technology will take the real estate industry #

• Travis believes technology will enhance the personal connection. The individual will be so well-informed they will need less agents, while the threshold for entry into the real estate industry will also be higher. Those who enter the industry without proper training, and then make mistakes, won’t survive,he predicts.
• Meanwhile, he agrees the virtual tours and open for inspections that have become a mainstay during COVID look likely to stay. 
• “The virtual experience will obviously improve in five and 10 years’ time, and this virtual experience will be very efficient. COVID’s probably a good example of how the agents will be able to form a transaction without throwing five sets of people in the back of the car, and taking them around to properties.”

What’s next for Box+Dice? #

• Travis says Box+Dice has just finished 15 years of ‘madness’ and recently rolled out their new Align platform.
• “We’re just literally starting to grow,” he says. “So now we’re shifting our focus to growth and building new relationships. And with this new platform out we’ve been told, and we know, we’ve got the best platform. It truly is an operating system for the whole real estate business now.”
• As part of this growth, Box+Dice has made it easier for third party plug-ins to customise the CRM experience.
• “We really do encourage third parties to plug in. It’s quite liberating to be able to focus on our core and allow other parties to specialise for our client’s best interests.”

Last words of advice #

• Travis’ final words of advice are that agents should focus on building long-term relationships and adding value.
• “Build your knowledge about your industry and about the things I mentioned before – psychology, tax, financial planning, bereavement counselling – build those skills, because they are the things that are real around the transaction.”

Links and resources mentioned #

• Box+Dice
• Peter Gilchrist

Travis Williams on Elite Agent

• Make the right CRM switch

Connect with Travis

• LinkedIn
• Website