We Are Selling with Lee Woodward
We Are Selling is a weekly podcast about real estate, business and tackling life's challenges. Hosted by renowned real estate industry coach, Lee Woodward, learn from experts in their field and maximise your life.
We Are Selling with Lee Woodward
159 - The Power of Systems in Real Estate
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I'd like you to please rewrite your approach to real estate sales systems with insights from Matt Condit. We explore the essential systems and strategies that can lead to success in today’s market.
• Importance of technological integration in real estate
• Lead generation through practical communication tools
• Creating an inclusive hub for team collaboration
• Enhancing client relationships through personalised outreach
• The role of leadership in implementing new systems
• Best practices for using AI in real estate operations
Hosted by Lee Woodward
Proudly brought to you by Lee Woodward Training Systems.
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Hello and welcome back to the podcast we Are Selling. My name's Lee Woodward, the author of the Complete Salesperson Course. Today's podcast is brought to you by our sponsor, Nexar. Nexar is a dedicated real estate platform specializing in lead generation and database management of the entire real estate company for BDMs and agents. Working as one platform to generate opportunity. Nexar seamlessly integrates into your business systems, allowing you to have an extended solution. Let's get started with this week's episode solution. Let's get started with this week's episode, and joining me today is Matt Condit from WA the Professionals Matt, welcome to the program. Thanks, Lee, Happy to be here Now, matt.
Speaker 1:You're here for a very big reason You're speaking at the Complete Leader 2025 due to your excellent implementation of systems. When we look at the system world, there is so many things to investigate, so many things to sort out, too many options, and that's where I think your interview is going to be very powerful for many of our leaders out there today who think where do you even start? And I'm going to lead you into some of these implementations and if you can share with us what it was like bringing all that together. And the first one that's been on everyone's radar is the outsourcing. How do you get international team members working for you? And you chose to go with the StaffLink system. Take us into that. What was the implementation like?
Speaker 2:Good thing about StaffLink is they're going to come in and they've got all the basic systems. They've got you know, show you how to set up air table, how to bring on the VAs. They've got a good source of VAs because there's some serious caliber differences. But it's also one that I think everyone needs to be very clear on there needs to be management and administration, management ownership from the business, because everything needs to be set up your way. It's not a matter of we're changing the way we do business and how the procedures we want and what the legislation differences are.
Speaker 2:State to state. This is all about making sure that we can get step one. We can get everything done digitally, get completely game room to analog, everyone can work remotely, then bringing on the virtual assistants and also bringing in the automation side. So there's a lot of human hours that go into the building of it, both from my meetings that I have with my admin team and the admin team with the StaffLink team to build it all out, not one where you just say, yeah, yeah, go build it and we'll sort it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a lot more to it than people think, and this is where hands-on leadership like yourself, matt, has been important. So StaffLink's one of many suppliers. We've had some great success with our principals going down the StaffLink avenue and one of those big reasons was what you installed yourself, which is the hub, and the hub is well, take us into it. What is the hub to you and what's it brought to the business?
Speaker 2:So the hub's the all-in-one. So this is the office homepage and everything is there. So all of the forms listing forms, sales forms, offers, the whole bit, the full staff list, the full supplier list, our key register, all of our training videos, we record looms by the dozen of loom videos of how to do every part of the job, whether that's for the administrators, the property managers, the sales team, our entire tech stack is there. So it's everything all in one and it's all updated. So if anyone goes there they know that's the latest form.
Speaker 2:We used to have all the problems that I'm assuming a lot of offices have. You know, if you don't have this type of thing sorted, which is you've got people save outdated documents down to their personal computer which is different from what's on the server when that gets updated, the tech stack I mean we used to have, you know, just embarrassing, we'd have reps start with us and they'd say, oh, you know, you should really get Price Finder. I said, oh, we got it, we just hadn't told them that we'd gotten Price Finder. So all of those types of things all get fixed. That everything's there.
Speaker 2:And the Loom videos especially are fantastic, because I can just have two to 10 minute videos, every single topic there is. If anybody asks about something I don't have a video for it, I go aha and I make a little note and that's my next video. But then when people ask me things, I'd say, hey, great, go watch the video and then come back to me with questions. Half the time they don't come back to me and they're happy because they can get the content right when they want it. So if they want to watch it at Friday night, they can watch it Friday night. They're not waiting until a training session that I run once a fortnight.
Speaker 1:And just for our listener, matt Loom, is the platform that you're allowed to do these video explainers for any part of the platform and system that you're using. The sales hub is where everything's held in one place. One login lets you into all the software. The software is all in icons and this is where your requests, your forms, are being held. So if I'm a professional salesperson working for your company, I can just request what I need. I follow the bouncing ball. The overseas team is then sending that back complete, which gives you that stickability of a salesperson not only working in a correct sequence, but also it'd be very hard for me to leave this company once I'm embedded in the whole platform of what you've built. That's the plan. Yes, take us into lead generation. What have you been able to build there? That's allowing the next and the next lot of salespeople come through to actually leverage off your work as a leader with what you put in place for the sales team.
Speaker 2:Main thing. It's all about working the database. Obviously, new reps need to get new contacts, but we can start them off with orphan database. But it's all about the contacts. So the basic one is some sort of email newsletter. So we use ActivePipe, but it's very important that it's not just the generic version of it. We're all on mailing lists where someone just buys one of these newsletters and they just get sent the same thing week after week.
Speaker 2:So we do content. So it's articles, videos, I write the blurb, promotions, sales reports for all the suburbs that we work in. So all of that's taken care of. The reps don't have to touch that at all. Real care for both the price updates and the appraisals. To me the price update is still the absolute best database contact there can be One. It's a better, it's not. You don't just send out 500 and they're all exactly the same. They're custom built. So it takes a bit of time to do them, but it's the best piece of content you can get as far as personalized the client can receive. Get as far as personalized the client can receive. You then can see who opened them so you can follow up all of them if you want, or just the ones that have opened it for that time period. Also for the appraisals. So digital appraisals these days are an absolute must. And again, same thing you can see when people open it.
Speaker 2:Rita's been one of the best ones for potential seller contacts, aside from the price updates, because then you can just do all of your just listed, just sold, fits in all the content. Just do all of your just listed, just sold, fits in all the content. Easy to text people out, which is a lot of people's preferred form of communication these days. And then the big one is it sifts through all the low quality data. So we're like most people. We have loads of buyer inquiry that we've picked up over the years that never purchased through us and gets forgotten. So all of those buyers the system will go through. If they've just recently come through our properties, they'll ask if they bought and try and get the address. It will sift through data from a year or five years ago working out if they bought a property and try and get the address. So that's the type of data that no one's ever going to go through. And we would have thousands and thousands. The system just works its way through. It's also a really good one for managing the pipeline. It's got a timeline where you know frequency of communication builds as the time gets closer, so that works that. So Rita and Realtor work really well together for that.
Speaker 2:And then also CoreLogic's got a couple of good tools out Plezzle and their customer engagement tools. So Plezzle's for social media you can do. Just listed some. You know agency branding just solds that type of thing. The thing I like most about it is it syncs with your database, so it takes the database, finds them on Facebook and markets to those specific people. And then the CET tool is just a great one where we put on everything. A letterbox drop doesn't go out now without a QR code that takes you back to the find out what your property is worth. They get a report. Qr code that takes you back to the find out what your property is worth. They get a report, we get their data type of tool.
Speaker 1:Matt, that is an amazing implementation. And just for our listener who thinks I've got so much to do, where do you start? What sort of timeframe did you allow yourself to get through these projects that you're nominating as part of your personal leadership stack of what you're doing? What was the timeframe to get that right?
Speaker 2:So active part. We had the newsletter running for ages. We then got Rita and Realtor were kind of around the same time and that was kicked off with COVID Realtor. We worked out we had to go digital. Rita, I saw the. I think I was stuck at home on lockdown and watched a webinar and saw that looks clever. And then once we bring it in, it's generally it's a few months, usually implementation kind of when you bring a new one on, obviously not you know, full time for that few months. But as far as working everything out, working out the kinks, how do we want it to be, making sure it's got our feel for like a mortgage belt of WA, you know type of type of market. And then the CoreLogic Plezzle and CET is cool tool. That was in the last probably year or so and same thing that took a few months. So take each of them and it's. You know I'd work on a few months each one and you don't do them all at once.
Speaker 1:And the rollout to the team. Any tips for our leaders who are, and we're all going to be, in this constant? What's next? How do you do it? But what's your style of getting it rolled out through the team? So?
Speaker 2:main thing is collaborative. So my job first is so I think from a manager's point of view, one of my main jobs is to research the tech. So all the things that we use, I probably looked at you know five or 10 times more things that we don't use. Then, once I find one that I like, I check with my management team, get the at least the initial approval that yeah, if the team's on board we can do it. Then I take it to the team and I do my pitch, I show it to them, see what they think, see if they're on board.
Speaker 2:So we've had things where I thought was a good idea. The team didn't want to do it, we didn't. Most of the time, if I like it, they're going to like it. But then, as far as the rollout, it's collaborative. So whether you take the design of a appraisal on pitch or the automation script for something on Rita, it's all designed in a combination of the sales meetings, reps, feedback meetings, reps, feedback. They're telling me all the time hey, what about this? This didn't work, this just happened, and so it's what we build is better than anything I could build on my own, but very much. It is not a dictator approach, it's a collaborative approach.
Speaker 1:And for your sales agents now, what's on their to-do list and to-don't list? Like if I was to join the company tomorrow, what's the expected behavior of what I'd have to do to run my living week processing what do I do? What do I not need to do due to the systems that have been put in place? So, as far as what?
Speaker 2:they need to do.
Speaker 2:It's all about the usual as far as prospecting list, negotiate, sell. The point of all the systems that we've got is just to make the prospecting side easier, allow them to use leverage, just make the whole system easier. Because the simple fact of the matter is most sales reps that I've met are really good with warm clients and people that want to talk to them, and they're just not great at sitting down and calling, just calling for two hours straight, whereas if we can do something like read-in, we can sift 30 people down to the three that want to chat to them that day, or five. They're more than happy to talk to those people and spend more time with lower number, higher quality conversations. So they they like that.
Speaker 2:And then, as far as admin, we're always trying to think of what we can take off of them and get the onshore and offshore team to do or you know automations for also, and so we take off as much as we can, but only to the point where it's not going to cause problems. You know like the reps still need to write their own ads or oversee their own ads, even if they're using chat, gpt, that type of thing. So there's certain things we need to take off that we as much as we can, but making sure they're still doing the important items.
Speaker 1:And take us into that. Ai is just flooding our marketplace. What's been your experience with it and what are you using in AI?
Speaker 2:Well, the reader system would be AI the main one so far, because this is one where I'm still very new at and unsure of. We're using it for the ads, like in the CRM, we use Vault. It's got the, you know, write the ad, you click the button and it writes the ad for you. I think that's not a bad start, but I think it's then got to be toned down dramatically because it does come across. You know, being an American myself is very kind of cheesy American the AI script sometimes, but really that's about it. That's still one we're looking into as far as how to implement more.
Speaker 1:With all this system implementation that you've done on a leadership level, you've still got your own real estate career running at the same time. What's been the transition for you? Are you still selling as much real estate as you did as a director selling real estate, or how are you spending your time now?
Speaker 2:So, yes, I still sell, but I've just expanded the team. So I ran with one buyer's agent and one administrator for years and now that I've gotten more into management I've just expanded the team so I've got two reps that do the majority of the buyer work and administration and a virtual assistant. So it's just gotten me doing so. I primarily just do the appraisal and listing appointments and negotiate offers, none of the rest of it. So it's still a bit of a schizophrenic dual role, but it's more management heavy now and less sales heavy.
Speaker 1:And it's interesting I keep mentioning this term to a lot of leaders that you've got to be your own mechanic, whereas I think leadership a few years ago people would say, oh, we'll get Robin to sort that out, and we'll get this person to sort that out. It was very distant, and then that person moves and leaves, whereas you do understand the systems at a fundamental level yourself. The fact you're even doing the video explainers and training of the videos is a classic example, because if you can't explain it, you don't understand it. What tips would you got for our leaders out there with that part of the role versus I'll get someone to do it?
Speaker 2:I think I'll get someone to do it can apply, Like there's certain things that I will have admin team members or other team members do. So okay, you do the video on it, but at the end of the day, I still know how it all works. I might not be able to do the steps, I might have to have someone show me on some of the items, but I still know here's what we're supposed to happen some of the items, but I still know here's what we're supposed to happen. Here's the steps, and I'll get a lot of input from the team. But yeah, I don't think it's one you can outsource to, because, if we think of to me, in leadership, we've got the two roles as far as having the experience and kind of the vision and being able to help them when they've got a problem with the contract or what their you know one year and five year plan should be or that type of thing.
Speaker 2:I think all that's very important, but a lot of what they're wanting from leadership is, to me, is having the systems. Here's the tech, and then I'm going to get the tech set up so it's working right, and if it's not, I'm going to take responsibility, Even if I have an admin lodging a support ticket, it comes back to me and you know, and we and I'm the one that ticks it off as done and if it's not done I'm checking on it a few days going what happened with this item. So I think there definitely needs to be ownership and that leadership is not the I'm sitting in my office and I'm just having everyone do all the work and I just show up and do a speech once in a while. That's not the way it is anymore.
Speaker 1:Well, let's go into that as a topic management and leadership responsibilities. Where do you believe that is in 2025, in your world and your leadership team?
Speaker 2:I look at it kind of like it's all me. It's really it's my job that admin runs well. So when we were building out Airtable and StaffLink and everything all of the admin steps I was involved in all the checklists. If something changes, that's all me, and again, I've got lots of help to do it and so I use a lot of leverage. But it's still making sure that all of the compliance is taken care of and all of those steps are handled.
Speaker 2:And then the sales side. It is all about the bringing the tech in, having the tech run well, having the systems trying things out too. That is one of the. The bad thing about still being in sales is I can't devote a hundred percent of my time to management. The good thing is I get to try stuff out and see if this works, and we just did this. We've got an extra, you know, 0.2% on the commissions. You guys should try it, all of those types of things. So that's that works really well too, in that when I'm bringing things in, a lot of times I'll bring them to my little team and trial it out and then, great, this works. And then we roll it out to the group. But very, very much. I believe it's hands-on and doing the work is really what it's all about.
Speaker 1:That's very powerful and I do love that. And again it backs up my comment you've got to be in your own mechanic. You went through those sales checklists because you are following those checklists. But if you recruit an onboard someone, you're also the person saying this is how we sell a house around here, which is a complicated question in many real estate businesses here, which is a complicated question in many real estate businesses, and the work you've done in Airtable to get it all in one sequential sequence so listed to settled is actually I don't know how many tasks yours is, but I would imagine it's quite detailed and everyone's following that same bouncing ball. Did you have any resistance of the other agents or the reps as we call them in WA adapting to the air table way of working?
Speaker 2:Overall. No, they liked it just because it gave them a lot more flexibility. So it's just now. It's you know, I've got some reps I see every day and some reps I see once a week, once every week or two, because it makes no difference, they can just, you know, someone like to work from home. Once they're, you know, got the training wheels off, then that's fine. So not really.
Speaker 2:But one of the things that approaches I've always taken that's helped, is I always make sure to explain, not just say this is what you just do, it Cause I said so. So every time someone says, oh, why do I have to do this? I said, well, here's the story, here's the legislation, here's you know, we kind of run through the whole thing. I say, do you have any better suggestions? I'm all ears, they do Great, that's the whole thing. The team says, hey, this is an extra step, you're doubling up, perfect, good. And then we kind of take care of that. But if they don't, then it's a lot of times. It's okay, that makes sense, and none of us want to get investigated by Demir. So away we go. How many?
Speaker 1:sales agents are in the group now We'd be running at 25.
Speaker 1:25. That's a good size team that you are bringing standard systems in, whereas, matt, unfortunately in my travels I can come into a group like that and there's 25 ways of selling a house versus that. Standardization of something is the only way you get the efficiency. It's actually the efficiency hack of the whole thing that no one has to question or ask or send emails to each other saying did you do this, did you do this, and credit to you that you've been able to pull that off, but it is from hands-on leadership that you've actually done it. What's on for 2025 for Matt? What are you passionate about in this year that you'll bring to the table to improve the life of others?
Speaker 2:Uh, we're looking mainly at just continuing to uh, streamline, continue to look at new tech. Um, I'll be doing more with management and more with training, but basically it's more of a? Um fine tuning and expanding than major changes.
Speaker 1:So, technically, you've got your own tech course. You've got the complete salesperson coursework that you've done as well. You've been through super coach, so that makes you the perfect person to, on a leadership level, bring people through that onboarding process and for the onboarding process, how involved are you in that and what's the duration of time that you feel is comfortable to get someone comfortable in the business?
Speaker 2:As far as time period, probably in about three months I'm involved. Another good thing about actually selling reps can shadow with me, so they just come out with appointments. They can come out and you can see the training and training rooms, but also see it live in lounge rooms, which is good. It's very much a I like the watch the training, do the training, do the videos and then we sit down and kind of run through questions and comments and kind of work through. So, for example, we've got the complete salesperson digital so everybody goes through that. They can go through it again if they want to, but when they start they have to go through it, and that's usually about the time where they go oh, this is where I got all your stuff from. I said, yes, this is where I got all my stuff from.
Speaker 2:Good leverage, not too many original thoughts up there, but that's really good because it's consistent.
Speaker 2:And then, same thing, we've got all of the training videos, which are really good because we took the same approach that people used to do, which is I'd run the trainings every week or two in the office and go for an hour and it would take you six or nine months to get through all the sessions. Really, by the time you break it all down, then of course people would forget things or we wouldn't get through the training session by the time they needed it, whereas when we've got the individual loom set up, they can just search. Okay, subject sale or deceased estate or whatever it happens to be. But yeah, so it's a step-by-step process they got to go through. And one of the things when we're doing our kind of anyone who's new, they get weekly meetings with me and of course, we're checking KPIs, but then we're also checking what training they've done for the week, making sure which modules they're up to if they have any questions on it. How did it work all that type of thing?
Speaker 1:Final part about that, the KPIs of a salesperson. There's been a shift out there of what people are monitoring now, how it makes the salesperson feel. What do you feel is important to monitor in the KPIs and how are you approaching that?
Speaker 2:I haven't changed that in 25 years. It's potential sellers and appraisals so same as it was when I started. So we want to know if they were out prospecting. If they're getting five appraisals a week, we're okay. Or if it's 10 potential seller contacts, so not first home buyers to come through open, but actual potential sellers. We've got an address they could transact or some sort of combination of that. But those are the main two numbers we're looking at, because past that it's hard to know who's going to list, who's not going to list, whether they're going to get it, whether they're not going to get it. There's a lot more unknowns with that. But when you see prospecting numbers as far as how many people, how many appraisals they've done, you can tell how hard they've been working. Or if they've been working really hard and it's not working, okay. What's the approach? What are you saying, what's not working? And we can kind of fine tune from there.
Speaker 1:How simplistic, how beautiful is that? Well, matt, we're very excited to have you at the Complete Leader Conference this year. At time of recording, we're quite many, many months away from that, but that's part of our preparation to everything we do as well. You're at Complete Leader 2024. What were the big things for you being in the room? Because I didn't even tell you at the end of the conference I was going to ask you to be speaking in 2025, but what is it you like about the Complete Leader?
Speaker 2:Look, I've always liked Leader Main thing, because I mean you get one or two people who are not active directors in companies, which is good and kind of breaks up because they kind of come in and fill a specific role.
Speaker 2:But for the most part I just love hearing the stories of other people who've how they've solved the problem, how they handle management, how they handle different problems.
Speaker 2:Fairly early on we all kind of figure out what the problems were and what needs to happen, what we're trying to solve. But then there's a million different ways it could be done and certain ways are going to fit different personalities and different states or different marketplaces or different types of clients. And so hearing from people who are in different areas, who are similar to me, different to me, bigger teams, smaller teams, all of that, it's really more of a. Once you're kind of established, what you're wanting is the fine tuning. What you're wanting is the oh, I do it this way, oh, that might be a little bit better than what I do, and you know. So it's just more of a of a fine tuning thing than a ripping out the kitchen sink and, you know, building a whole new, you know a whole new thing, but yeah, so mainly just that it's all primarily practitioners is what what I like most about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a great thing and that's where you're going to be able to take the stage this year and show that sequence of work that you've done and the time that it does take, because for everyone in the audience, this is a big topic what do you use, how do you install it, what options are available to you? And, matt, you're speaking from your own perspective of someone who's been through the process. It's not as if you're representing a brand or a company. It's just your own story and that's the gold of leader that leaders just share their story and people can profit from that knowledge. Right, I'm looking forward to it. We look forward to having you there and thank you for joining us today. Thanks, lee. The Complete Leader is on the 16th and 17th of October at Brighton-le-Sands in Sydney. An incredible line-up of practitioner talent ready to share their story for you to profit from their knowledge. I'm Lee Woodward. Look forward to seeing you there.