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Business owners, sales, managers, and agents alike must concentrate on success before growing in size, an industry executive has advised.
The network manager NSW/ACT at Raine & Horne, Travis Wentriro, has argued that property professionals will enjoy more valuable results by concentrating their efforts on getting better at their roles before they go bigger.
He said: “Traditionally in business, once you become better, your customers will demand that you get bigger.”
According to him, the younger and more entrepreneurial principals who are now finding success in business may be champion sales agents or property managers in their own right, “but their primary desire is successful business ownership.
He’s highlighted four ways in which new and leading principals are becoming more entrepreneurial and strategic in their operations – and subsequently, finding success.
Here are the network manager’s observations:
- They work on the business, not just in it
In 2021, the successful real estate principals are those who are taking more time to work on the business than work in the business, Mr Wentriro stated, advising that business owners should take their lead from the Googles and the Atlassians of the world.
“Those working on the business are building an asset and are looking at what the best organisations are doing, whether it’s Atlassian, McDonald’s, Google or the local fish shop,” he stated.
From his perspective, “the leading principals have stopped thinking like a real estate practitioner and are making decisions based on the overall customer experience. Like how Uber, which has transformed car riding services, younger principals are disrupting the real estate customer experience”.
- They use social platforms to engage with communities
“Even five years ago, agents and owners were using letterbox drops or pages and pages of newspaper advertising to engage with their communities,” Mr Wentriro recalled.
Now, it’s all changed, with social media and digital marketing platforms all capable of “enabling agents and principals to engage with more real estate consumers faster and smarter”.
“The digital and social tools and resources available to the savvy agents and owners today gives them the breathing space to be better before they consider getting bigger.”
From the network manager’s perspective, “using digital technology allows savvy agents and principals to gain broader traction and the perception of more significant business scale”.
“Once the community is engaged successfully, appraisal, listings, sales, and market share will quickly catch up and add up.”
- They build an attraction business for recruitment reasons
The new breed of principals is recognising that employee empowerment “is a truly cost-effective way to promote their business”.
According to Mr Wentriro, “the old days of the office hierarchy are gone, and owners are getting staff involved and engaged in many aspects of a business such as building culture and recruitment”.
He indicated that, in turn, with the help of empowered and engaged teams, an office can become an attraction business for recruitment because people want to work there.
“The better offices work this way, and then by default they get bigger because more people want to work there, they get more listings and more market share.”
- They look for new income streams
Successful agents and principals alike are currently looking at new revenue streams to support traditional sales and property management activities.
“This could be as simple as running sales conferences for their local small business communities,” Mr Wentriro stated.
“Let’s face it, who better to teach subject matter experts, such as builders, plumbers and even graphic designers, how to attract more leads to their SME than real estate agents who know a thing or two about landing a lead and closing a sale.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Grace Ormsby
Grace is a journalist across Momentum property and investment brands. Grace joined Momentum Media in 2018, bringing with her a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Communication (Journalism) from the University of Newcastle. She’s passionate about delivering easy to digest information and content relevant to her key audiences and stakeholders.
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