A famous Winston Churchill quote says you must never waste a good crisis.
For many, the past 12 months in real estate terms have been a crisis.
Much of the pressure may have been successfully navigated post-election, but have agents learnt from the situation, or will they face similar malaise when another crisis hits?
And it will hit.
Over the past year we still saw offices and individuals achieve record sales.
But why them and not others?
There has to be a willingness to take responsibility for their business and acceptance to reshape what they do to detach from external factors.
Once this acceptance occurs, then the ability to move through change can begin.
In working through this with agents, we follow a relatively simple, but detailed and methodical, process to build a more robust business.
First, we analyse the current business down to minute details.
We break down the sales for the past two years, their origin, how long they were in contact before listing, clearance rates, days on market and method.
We gather a sound understanding of database protocols, appraisal to listing ratio and listing to presentation ratios (they are different measurements) until we have a complete, unfiltered view of the business.
Then, and only then, are we able to reshape the business. The only real currency a business has is time and how the unit uses it will determine their altitude.
Top performers don’t have extra time, they just use it more efficiently to gain maximum results. With that in mind, we review the team’s previous two weeks in 30-minute intervals to establish how effectively this rich commodity is used.
We can then identify the inefficient areas in the business.
Once that is done we can identify and reshape the activities so that growth can be established.
Then, and only then, can we reallocate time and effort across the major channels of a real estate business:
- pipeline
- database
- stock management
- after sale
- marketing community
- customer satisfaction.
Then we reallocate hours to detailed tasks across all of these divisions using the formula of real estate as a guide, volume, consistency and quality.
There are many detailed steps I cannot fit into this article, but the key takeaway is growth is not magic.
It is not confined to the super talented and it is not market or demographic-specific.
It is just methodical, organised workflows without a script or dialogue in sight.
My advice to you all is to hasten slowly.
