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Starting from scratch, Building a pipeline

Week 5: Our Transform Masters 2017 Supersix learn some of the finer points about building a rent roll with Tara Bradbury

Transform Masters 2017 is brought to you with thanks to our sponsors Property Tree, realestate.com.au and Real+

In this preview of her next Transform Masters Coaching session, BDM Academy Director Tara Bradbury talks about rent roll growth; how she would build a pipeline of contacts if she was starting from scratch, how to best leverage social media, how to handle an investor who wants to “make a deal,” (which they all do!) and what are the warning signs you might not want to take on a listing.

 

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hi, my name is Tara Bradbury, and I’m the director of the BDM Academy. I’m very excited to be involved in the Transform program. The first thing that comes to mind for me, is always around the structure of the property, and safety, and attitude. You’ve got to take that time to protect your team, and as a person who has been a full-time BDM, I was focused on being a gun and signing as many properties as possible, and in the beginning, I didn’t really pay attention to that, and then we were taking on clients and properties that were creating trouble for the team, and also for the business as well.

So, if you have someone that is challenging you and making it really difficult for you, even just to sign them and get them across line, what experience is the property manager going to have after that? It’s not only just going to be what you’ve experienced, it’s actually going to multiply and become worse for that type of personality.

I think it’s really important to remember that if you’re wanting to have an impact, and get results, and get people to recognise you and know what you’re doing, you need to put yourself out there. So, introducing yourself to all the business contacts that absolutely are surrounding where your business is. If you’ve got the ability within your state to be able to purchase data, that’s another great way. It would obviously give you phone contacts, and postal details, and email addresses that you can start communicating, connecting with direct investors within your marketplace as well.

Set yourself a budget on what you anticipate you’re going to spend each month, especially if you’re a startup. Or while we’re talking about people that are starting from scratch, this is probably a really good topic for those that are in the midst of signing new business, but they’re wanting to actually just reboost it again, and get those numbers higher, you need to then take a step back and look at it and go, “Okay, well how often am I prospecting? How often am I in front of people?” And if you’re not spending at least 80% of your time out of the office, or on the phone, then you’re not fulfilling the role of a BDM, in my mind. You need to be a heavy communicator.

With the social media side, you need to be consistent, but you need to be relevant at the same time. It’s no good just kind of putting up stuff, willy-nilly, and throwing bits and pieces out that aren’t relevant to who you are, and the image that you’re trying to project. We’ve got lots of options now, with your Facebook Live, some people choose to record it first themself, which I think that’s a great idea if you’re not someone that’s comfortable with talking off the cusp. But when it comes to the social media advertising and marketing, there’s a lot of repetition that feels like it’s getting slammed in your face, and that can be, sometimes, very confronting.

So, try to make sure that you’re consistent, and that you’re there, and that people can see you, but don’t do it to a point where it’s just constant slamming of, “This is who we are, and this is what we do, and this is why you should choose us.” As much as you can, try and provide valuable content. You might decide to do a 12-month series of investor tips that are going to help people that are within your marketplace. That kind of stuff that you can share shows that you’re providing value, and then people will connect with you to ask questions about that.

The fun question on fee negotiation. The first thing I have to say is that you need to go in, knowing that every single investor that you’re going to approach, will want to strike a deal. Say you’re a business that’s charging 7%, and then a lot of your competitors in your marketplace might be charging 6% or even 5% sometimes, you’ve got to make sure that you know the key areas that are relevant to your business, and why they should choose you as well.

So, the most important question I would suggest to ask in the beginning, is when selecting an agent to manage your most valuable asset, what is most important to you? Every time I asked that question, I never once had anyone come back to me and say, “Fees.” So then when it comes to the point later on, which a lot of us like to try and leave the fee discussion toward the end of the listing conversation, is when they bring that up, you can say, “I get the feeling that you’re not quite looking at me as though 7%’s what you want to be paying, so let’s have a talk about that, and let’s go back to where we started, what was most important to you.” That’s when, then you go back to that point and you talk about, if it’s about communication, then you bring up the things that you’re doing in your business that are relevant to that communication, and what price that comes at.

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