The Business of Real Estate 2018 finished up yesterday on the Gold Coast with real estate professionals and leaders gathering for sessions on delivering more than customer expectations and improving the PM division of their business. Here are the top takeaways from Day Two.
Good CX needs good TX
Do you care for your team? Do you spend time connecting with them? They care more about engagement from their boss than a pay rise says Vasili Hadzellis of Core PMC. You need to get your team to be passionate about their jobs and the business so they’ll in turn deliver excellent customer experiences. Do your team recruit for you? Do they tell other people about what it’s like to work in your business? Because that’s how passionate they need to be. Work out how you can make your team feel safe, rewards, recognition etc. PMs are concerned about disruption, be it outsourcing, AI etc. You need to make sure they’re comfortable or else they won’t work as hard as they can. Find out why they get out of bed in the morning – why they come into work – why they work with you.
Set the mornings aside for opportunities, afternoons for operations
Following on from his talk yesterday Kingston Lane CEO Sharran Srivatsaa said his entire office set aside their mornings for opportunities and afternoons for operations – otherwise you can’t be sure you’re always going to dedicate time to both. Everyone also needs to stay in their own lanes and time shouldn’t be wasted worrying about what everyone else is doing. When you spend time working on your weaknesses you end up with a bunch of really strong weaknesses. Sharran also talked about recruiting and suggested shaking up the process – stop taking meetings with recruits which never go anywhere. Put a process in place and follow it. Reduce the time expenditure.
Transform your whole life
One of the hardest things he had to learn said Kingston Lane CEO Sharran Srivatsaa is that you cannot 10x just one part of your life. If your business is booming because of all the effort you’re pouring into it, something else will suffer. Transformations don’t happen in isolation. You need to show the same focus you’re showing to your business to the other aspects of your life, or else they’ll suffer.
Incentivise your team
If the BDMs in your team are just waiting for business to come to you, as they were in Philip Webb Real Estate, you need to reinvent the way you motivate them. New CEO Anthony Webb says he’s turned their BDM department around by changing the incentives – more money for new business into the company. Anthony also put a relief team in place for the PM team so the agency was no longer wasting time on temps who didn’t know the systems and didn’t bring value to the company.
Be better at more than just the administration
Kylie Davis of Real Content says 34 per cent of landlords get good service and only 21 per cent of tenants do – those figures are way lower than both buyers and sellers. Because of this, 39 per cent of landlords wouldn’t sell with the agency they use to manage their property. But 38 per cent of landlords just use the agent they bought their property through – so they’re easy money to a business. Therefore the service they receive needs to be better. So far the only areas they’re impressed with agencies in are the administration aspects, which is the work that can be outsourced. Agencies need to change their thinking about who tenants are – 70 per cent have partners or families and 40 per cent earn over $120k. Out of tenants, 62 per cent said they would never use their agency for sales, and 36 per cent even said that their experiences meant they would never use the entire brand. Kylie says these stats mean agencies need to do better – or they’re going to be doing long term damage.
Your team love it when you give them creative freedom
A lesson handed down from Tony Robbins, Kingston Lane CEO Sharran Srivatsaa recommends giving someone from your team (ideally your CX operator) $50 each month to delight someone. He starts his conversations with vendors with, “It’s our job to bring you an offer that you wanted, at a price that you wanted, for the terms that you wanted.” When it comes to building a team, Sharran says you need to look at the AAC – agent acquisition cost. Work out what they’ll bring to your company and how much you can spend to get them. And when you’re dealing with your team, everytime you hear a question a few times – record a video to answer it. Make sure your whole team has access to these videos. Don’t waste time explaining things over and over again.
Do you love what you do?
You can’t expect the customer to be more excited about what you do than you are, so if your job doesn’t excite you then your customers aren’t going to enjoy dealing with you. You need to start showing your customers that it’s not about what we want you to pay – it’s about the experience we want to deliver. Vasili Hadzellis of Core PMC says the future of property management is going to be split fee – the Jetstar model vs the Qantas model. Offices need to start working out how is their CX is different. Define it, live it, breathe it.
Is CX a KPI? If it isn’t you need to look at your Net Promoter Strategy, tenant and landlord services, social proof and reviews. 75 per cent of PMs thought returning phone call was good CX, 83 per cent thought zero rental arrears was good CX – these are expectations. Landlords already have those expectations – you need to deliver on top of that.
Click here for Day 1 highlights
