Whether you’re an agency principal or an employee, real estate agents have a lot in common with entrepreneurs, according to Market Buy Chief Digital Strategist John Hellaby.
You’re responsible for managing your own time, your own marketing, securing listings, customer relationships – all with the end goal of selling homes.
And like a lot of business owners, many real estate agents find themselves working on low value, albeit essential, tasks.
For agents, that might be filling out paperwork or sending contracts back and forth – necessary for sure, but also repetitive, time consuming, and seemingly never-ending.
Market Buy Chief Digital Strategist John Hellaby said they have the solution, providing an online offer management platform that aims to facilitates private property sales, saving an agent time, and streamlining their business processes.
“The greatest lesson I learnt in business is that if my hourly rate is $100 per hour, I shouldn’t do a $20 per hour task,” Mr Hellaby said.
“It’s not a $100 per hour task to send an email that can be automated, or to drive a contract around.”
By enabling buyers to submit offers that sellers can view in real time, Market Buy streamlines the negotiation process for agents, making it more transparent for all involved.
“Rather than fill out paperwork for each buyer, you can allow them to fight it out,” Mr Hellaby said.
“Add in the fact that agents traditionally would drive contracts around, crossing out a number each time there’s a change – that’s time, fuel, and energy.”
In a post-COVID world, contracts are managed via other methods, but there’s still a lot of messing around involved, not to mention the angst experienced by both buyers and sellers, while waiting for progress updates.
“Tech used well is vastly more efficient,” Mr Hellaby said.
“It’s also more profitable. Not just because it gets the job done faster, but also because you don’t have to do the grinding manual tasks.”
Under the traditional negotiation process, if an agent receives 10 offers, they’ll then need to keep 10 people informed about the status of their offer.
“That means, agents can spend more time on the dollar-productive activities, such as prospecting, marketing and generating more business,” Mr Hellaby said.
Streamlining this element of your business also means you won’t have to worry about disgruntled buyers and sellers, if you fail to meet their expectations around communication.
“Effective communication often becomes a lower priority because there’s so much else to deal with,” Mr Hellaby said.
“The sheer structure of the industry that we work in, means things may get forgotten and fall through the cracks.
“For the vast majority of people, if they’re kept informed, kept in the loop, and feel engaged in a process, even if the sale process doesn’t go their way, they’re likely to be more understanding, because they know why it ended up the way that it did.”
But perhaps the biggest advantage of streamlining your business is simply this: more sales, more successfully.
“If you can handle five sales now, there’s nothing to stop you from being able to handle 10 using Market Buy,” said Mr Hellaby.
“It’s essentially a new, easier, more efficient way to negotiate. We’re not removing negotiation, but rather changing the conversation and the environment in which the conversation takes place.
“If the agent is a brilliant marketing agent, then Market Buy allows them to change the environment around the negotiation, so they’re starting off from a stronger position.”
