After much planning, anticipation and excitement, our first ever Street MBA study tour kicked off in Adelaide on 25 July.
The good news: it was a huge success.
We were fortunate to be visiting three of the best agencies in the state: Ouwens Casserly, Harris Real Estate and Toop & Toop. Our hosts at each office were brilliant; authentic, transparent and willing to share their stories – not only the successes but also the failures and learnings, and what they did to rebound and move forward.
The tour group were a varied bunch from across Australia – business owners, sales principals, and leaders in operations and technology roles. This enabled sharing across a wide range of experiences and a united eagerness to implement ideas into their businesses to drive change, innovation and best practice.
There was so much to take from the tour, both from our host offices and the discussions and debriefs that followed. It was a challenge, but we’ve picked our top 5 takeaways:
1. Single client view with the right technology underpinning it is pretty darn important.
While we’re not all there yet, there was a clear consensus; to deliver on the expectations our clients have and to continue to meet them into the future, we need to know much more, in real time, about who we are working with and how they want to deal with us.
2. Leveraging scale and shared services.
While each office we visited had different structures, they all had a degree of some shared service/back of office support offering. This helps in two different avenues: it’s good for recruitment, as it’s an attractive structure to enable good agents and property managers to do their job on scale. Secondly, it’s good for the client, as a consistent standard from a brand and service perspective can be delivered.
3. The most successful workplaces worry about their people as much as their profit and our hosts do this exceptionally well.
Ouwens Casserly enable and encourage meaningful feedback through facilitated sessions, Harris Real Estate focuses on health and mindfulness in their business planning and weekly structures, and Toop & Toop offer their wellness centre and onsite coach to their people at no cost.
4. Business planning is rolled out at multiple levels
The overarching business plan, departments/teams and the individual. This seemed to be a consistent message, of the essential need for clear communication from the business leader in defining the direction and goals of the business. This enables their people to engage and align, while also working towards their own at an individual level.
5. Feedback is essential.
Whether it’s via NPS, surveying, social ratings or Google reviews, each business is focussing on capturing client feedback in some way and then analysing and using that data to change processes, introduce new technology or identify training needs for their people.
All in all, it was a huge couple of days and everyone was excited with what they’d learnt and the networks and connections they developed over the tour. Thank you again to our hosts and participants and a big thank you to our series sponsor Connect Now for being on the journey with us.
We can’t wait for Melbourne where we will be visiting three innovative and amazing businesses – Jellis Craig, Woodards and LongView Real Estate.
Book now at https://eliteagent.com/streetmba
