realestate.com.au has announced a new and exciting format for Momentum 2019. The series will return to Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide and Perth in March.
On the line up this year is world renown motivational speaker Yossi Ghinsberg, as well as Amanda Stevens and of course Steve Carroll, realestate.com.au’s Head of Industry Relations. There will also be breakout streams for sales professionals and property managers including industry debates for both disciplines.
Fresh from his most recent trip to the US, Elite Agent caught up with Steve to give us a sneak peak at some of the ideas and concepts he will be sharing with momentum attendees.
Here are three key messages Steve says you won’t want to miss:
1. As the leader where you spend your money and where you spend most of your time tells the team what’s important
Recently, Tracey Fellows ex CEO of realestate.com.au made the move to New York to become President of Global Digital Real Estate for News Corp, and Steve says he and a group of agents he was travelling with were fortunate to catch up with her while in the city.
Steve says there were lots of pearls of wisdom from her but the one that stuck with them the most was around leadership.
“Tracey pointed out to our group that where you spend your money and where you spend most of your time tells the team what’s important and one of the key jobs that a leader has is to navigate their team through the digital world and make sure they understand it.”
2. You have only 1.3 seconds to win the right to a consumers attention for another five seconds
According to Steve, visiting Facebook New York taught him an interesting lesson for agents using the platform for personal branding or property marketing saying, “One of the things they (Facebook) said to us was, with any type of video ads you have 1.3 seconds to win the right to a consumers’ attention for another five seconds.
“Then if you nail that five seconds, you’re quite likely to keep them to the end.”
Steve says that even though you post something on social media, you don’t have the right for that post to be clicked on, you have to earn that right.
“Millennials are going to be half of the workforce across the world by 2020 and millennials have zero patience. ”
3. Your winning combination is the best of the human factor and the best of technology
Steve says one of the Inman speakers, entrepreneur Jeff Turner, gave him a lot to think about concerning the integration of humans and technology.
According to Turner, most businesses and not just real estate businesses, have at least 30% of what they do that should be automated freeing up time for human employees to tackle more proactive tasks.
“To give a non-real estate example, Peter Brewer from REIQ was in a hotel in New York and he ordered some toothpaste and it was delivered by a robot.
“Now, the interesting thing is in effect that role has been taken over from a human, but the hotel has reallocated that headcount to work elsewhere, greeting people as they walk into the hotel to speed up the check-in process,” Steve said.
These are the topics Steve says he will be expanding on, and brave real estate principals need to take a hard look at their business and what can be automated to give customers a better experience.
“They need to ask, what stuff are we doing that could be automated to free up time for us to do stuff that technology and computers can’t do?
“There are human qualities that exist that consumers are crying out for. The quality of thinking out of the box, the quality of caring, the quality of empathy, the quality of holding good values and the quality of putting your arm around somebody when they’re sad and giving them a bit of a hug.
“I’ve often said that the winning combination is the best of the human factor and the best of technology.”
Steve says leveraging technology, robots, and artificial intelligence is not scary, it’s there to free up time and this is something he will be talking more about at Momentum 2019.
One last thing Steve says he learned from Tracey Fellows from the trip is about the commitment to learning.
“Even someone like Tracey says, ‘If you think that learning finished when you finished school or you finished university, you’re kidding yourself.’
“The real estate agents and professionals that will flourish over the next five years are the ones that will allocate time to learn about technology and learn about stuff that is going to be important as we move into the next decade,” Steve said.
Registration for Momentum 2019 is free of charge for industry professionals, and space is limited.
Visit the Agent Marketing centre to register: agent.realestate.com.au/events
