Daniel Spencer will be speaking at Prop20 in March and April. To register for this event visit proprea.com.au.
What is your background?
I had a large real estate agency in Hobart when I was in my early 20s but have since sold that. Now we have a business that predominantly does three things: we do presentations as we’re doing for Prop20, we also do a lot of consulting work, and I do a lot of one-on-one coaching.
I got into real estate at the age of 18 and very quickly decided this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Then I got into ownership at the age of 19. That was in Melbourne, and I moved to Hobart after that.
When you build a large agency, the industry tends to want to know how you did it. So I started going out on the speaking circuit in about 2004/2005.
What’s your area of speciality?
The customer journey, sales technique and sales process. Everything that’s got to do with how the customer experiences the business, from the time that a lead comes in, to the time that the product’s delivered. We excel in that, and we help businesses build that process.
What will you be speaking on at Prop20?
Vendor paid advertising and landlord paid advertising. That concept is all about getting a landlord or a vendor that’s wanting to either sell or lease their home to pay for marketing upfront.
There can be some confusion in the industry, as some people say “well I get the owner to pay for it”. The problem is that payment usually happens on settlement or at the completion and delivery of the product. What often happens with agencies is they have cash flow issues.
What I’m going to be delivering on is how you obtain that money upfront. That’s going to be through discussing, not just the strategy, but also the techniques an agent would use to ask for it and the tools we recommend to support them in that conversation.
The first part of the challenge is the mindset of the business owner. The next aspect is the strategy behind it. Then we go into dialogue, so what an agent is saying and asking. Then the last bit is looking at the tools to support that conversation.
What marketing trends are you noticing at the moment?
I think if we look at realestate.com.au, they’re an aggregator site, meaning that all of the listings for every single agency is in one place. I think the consumer just wants to look in one place. If you look at all marketing means, whether it’s a signboard, a print ad or a magazine, everything pushes on to online now, to this aggregated world.
If you think about most people, buyer behaviour is: “I see a signboard and before I waste my time and inspect the property or before I ring the agent, I’m going to Google the address and find the property information to see whether it’s worth me taking that next step.”Â
Therefore, what goes online is critical. Video is critical in engaging the consumer, beautiful photography is critical, floor plans are crucial, the right type of information pitched at the right type of buyer in the market’s critical. The language and the text is vital, and these little one-percenters that we’re talking about really morph into a big overall impact.
If you have one per cent here, there and everywhere, and you’ve got four or five different one-percenters, you’re adding five per cent of extra value to the overall sale price.
