More than 700 Ray White Group members from Brisbane, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast reignited their passion for real estate at a series of training sessions held in Queensland this week.
The Ignite 2019 program was designed to help salespeople and property managers navigate and adapt to current market conditions.
One of the take-home messages from keynote speaker and former Lonely Planet CTO Gus Balbontin was that the quest for improvements, no matter how successful you may be, should never end.
“Whatever service or product you are providing to your customers today, it will get better, so it’s up to you to make it better or your competitors will,” Mr Balbontin said.
“There’s a key difference between resources and resourcefulness and it’s not the strongest or the most intelligent that survives, it’s the one that’s most adaptable to change.
“The problems and challenges we face today are far more complex than they’ve ever been so you need a strong team to work on it collectively.”
The full house was then treated to two case studies that proved even in the most difficult of circumstances, success was always possible.
Ray White Canberra Sales Consultant Phyllis Tidmarsh said the pillars that underpinned a successful real estate business were the same for every agent, no matter what stage of career.
“Your ability to provide framework and structure in your business will help achieve clearance for your clients and simply, you can’t get where you want to go without hard work,” Ms Tidmarsh said.
“It’s not about coming to an event like Ignite, it’s actually about taking the learnings from here and implementing them in your own business, and that will provide confidence to your colleagues.”
Ray White North Quays Sales Consultant Ben Keevers said everyone must buy in to the learning culture to get better.
“The only currency you have as an agent is the hours you have and how you use them, I utilised my Ray White auction training to convert older stock to auction campaigns,” Mr Keevers said.
“Auction helped me dramatically reduce the number of days on market for my stock and that allowed me to build extra capacity for new campaigns.”
Ray White National Head of Property Management Emily Sim reminded the PMs at Ignite 2019 that growth was everyone’s responsibility.
“The state of play is this โ you are all working with the number one brand in Australia in terms of property management and sales,” Ms Sim told the attendees.
“If we can understand where we are then we’ll understand where we want to be in the future. Tracking business performance is the only way to improve.”
Ray White Group Managing Director Dan White said he was proud to see such impressive numbers attending the Ignite program, and that the company had proven itself in the difficult market conditions.
“We started the year with some nervousness with a lot of headlines predicting we would have a bad year, but like Ray White always does, we persevered and still had a great year,” Mr White said.
“It would have been easy to lose our heads when our customers needed us the most, but success comes from hard work, effort and decision making.
“Through the market correction, we’ve increased our market share and we’ve never been in a better spot to keep improving.”
Ray White Queensland CEO Tony Warland praised the work of the Sunshine State’s members and put a focus on the customer experience.
“The expectation of our clients is that they get an excellent service and have the best experience possible with us every time,” Mr Warland said.
“We have to understand that we’re ultimately in the customer experience business and when a client has a great experience, we need to find ways to go above and beyond that.
“We have a great collective of people that have either been with us for many years or are just starting out and I thank every one of them for their hard word during a challenging market.”
The event was well received by members across Queensland and they praised the value that both them and their teams would get out of it.
Ray White Surfers Paradise CEO Andrew Bell was one of many attendees to praise Ignite 2019.
“Days like today are fantastic. Gus was great and he set up the day well. That concept of moving out of where you are and not just taking small steps, but big steps, I really loved that,” Mr Bell said.
“I loved the case study about pipeline as I can think of a lot of girls and guys in our office who are not using pipeline and she (Ms Tidmarsh) explained it better to me than I’ve heard in 38 years at Ray White.”
Ray White Buderim Senior Property Manager Kristy Southam said: “What I’ve learned from Ignite 2019 is in the ever-changing fast industry that is real estate, if you don’t evolve, you will become obsolete.”
Ray White Alderley Sales Agent Alison Turner said: “I needed to hear about the pipeline structure as I’m in sales. Structure and process is everything. It’s been a great day.”