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
164 - Inside the Jar: Revealing the Invisible Value in Property Marketing
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Step inside the innovative world of the Novaks – Mark and Lisa – as they reveal their groundbreaking approaches to commercial and residential real estate success in this captivating episode.
Mark Novak unveils eye-opening insights into commercial real estate trends, particularly highlighting a little-known opportunity most Australians are missing: leveraging superannuation for property investment. With Australia's super pool valued at an astounding $3.5 trillion – exceeding the entire ASX – Mark explains how this represents the second-largest retirement fund globally and the highest per capita. As he puts it, "Our super's the second biggest pot of gold in the world." For agents and investors alike, understanding this untapped potential creates remarkable opportunities in the commercial space.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Lisa Novak shares her revolutionary seven-step selling framework that completely inverts traditional property marketing approaches. Rather than immediately listing properties on major portals, Lisa demonstrates how her team creates immediate momentum through authentic video content showcasing a property's "invisible value" – those elements impossible to capture in standard photography. This pre-market strategy combines social media promotion, strategic text messages, targeted phone calls, and voice recordings to create buyer urgency before properties ever reach mainstream listings. "It's not Lisa Novak's opinion anymore, it's the market's opinion," she explains when discussing how this approach provides vendors with concrete price feedback.
Whether you're a seasoned agent looking to revolutionize your marketing approach or a property owner wanting better results, this episode delivers actionable strategies from two industry innovators who consistently outperform traditional methods. Take this opportunity to peek behind the curtain at what truly successful agencies are doing differently and discover how you might apply these frameworks to your own property journey. Ready to transform your understanding of modern real estate selling?
Hosted by Lee Woodward
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Elevate your real estate business with Nexr – the strategic partner that helps you overcome challenges in securing more listings, building better teams, and achieving faster growth. With over 20 years of experience in developing Tier 1 agencies, Nexr provides bespoke solutions tailored to your unique needs. Ready to redefine the future of your business? Visit nexr.com.au today.
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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. Welcome back to the podcast we Are Selling and firstly, thank you everyone for all your wonderful feedback on our speakers, who share their knowledge each week. Today our program lands in DY, new South Wales, and we're going live in-house with the Novacs, lisa and Mark Novak of Novak Properties. Mark is going to discuss what's going on in commercial real estate and then Lisa is going to take us into her selling plan for selling property as it hits the market in the leakage to the marketplace before going to the portals. So let's get started with Mr Mark Novak. Mark, welcome to the program. Hi Mark.
Speaker 2:Commercial real estate what's happening in 15 seconds Offices level, industrial level People are loving the small tenanted commercial assets to whack in their super.
Speaker 1:What happened with COVID removing everyone from the workplace? These big, massive office floors, will we ever see them full?
Speaker 2:again. You know what. In some areas of Australia they're actually performing well. In some areas they're not performing well. Where people have become a little bit snobs is if they can't have a experience when it comes to an office, they'd rather stay at home. So these new generation offices are providing a really positive experience, whether it's with food and beverage, whether it's with fun, whether it's that Google style fun office we're starting to see everywhere now. Wework was a great example of the start of that evolution.
Speaker 1:Mark, we've just seen some incredible marketing that you've done for these self-storage warehouses. You've got the big Bellrose one where the new Bunnings is going in, yes, but bringing the video, the sausage sizzle in, how's that campaign gone Strong?
Speaker 2:Strong. Strong. That was interesting because there was agents on it for a long period of time where there was no action. And then we came along and I think we delivered 90 exchanges in a bit over nine months. There was the traditional marketing, which we had to do and we did do. But then we underpinned it with a lot of other activities, and some of them not orthodox, like a sausage sizzle we thought was good because it was next to the bunning, so we had a bit of tongue-in-cheek with it.
Speaker 2:There was some psychology that went behind that. As an example, that one example we noticed that on social media people are quite episodic. Or when it comes to Netflix or whatever, people are episodic. They like a rhythm. That rhythm's not quarterly or monthly, it's sort of weekly, and people are used to a weekly, Saturday rhythm with property. So when we introduced the barbecue, we did it on a Saturday for that reason and we did it weekly for that reason. So every conversation we had during the week with these buyers we would have a hard stop and say come and see us at the Sausage Sizzle on site. Now, there was nothing to see on site in terms of a finished product, but people were like, yeah, cool, we'll come. So it worked and there was a lot of sort of things that went behind. It wasn't just a real commercial ad that pumped it, it was a lot of these things in combination plus the social, plus this, plus that.
Speaker 1:Now Mark Novak's, very well known for residential and property management in the wonderful area of DUI where we are today, center of the universe, center of the universe. What you've done in commercial is quite remarkable and no offense to the commercial space, but I often speak about you of there is a modern marketing method you can do in commercial. What do you think you've brought different to the table that's allowed the cut through?
Speaker 2:Look a lot of. It was just mirroring what residential did. Bit of a boring answer, but when we first came into the marketplace, believe it or not, the standard was nowhere near what residential standard was. It was almost left behind and acceptable. So it was acceptable not to do open houses on commercial. It was acceptable not to do floor plans on commercial. It was acceptable to have one photo, which was not a good photo, on commercial and we looked at it and thought how can you be selling a unit for $500,000 as a one-bedder? It gets all of this love and attention in residential but then in commercial you can have an office for $500,000 and the two campaigns are polar opposite, but same asset value, different marketing, strange.
Speaker 1:Now you had a very big, successful sale last year that you sort of kept under wraps in freshwater. Tell us what happened then.
Speaker 2:Look, that was, I guess, contacts, some it's. I guess. I sort of joke around sometimes and say it's the deal that took 31 years. But sometimes you know, you have those clients around you and it's opportune where you know they had an asset there. That client in Freshwater unsold on the market for four months. They came to us in six months and what was it? On the market for Same price, which was? It was mid to high 20s at the time.
Speaker 2:And then we came along and said actually, you know, look, I was personally a big, big fan of Freshwater and understood the value proposition more than the national agent that was representing them. And then I had a strong relationship with a client, or there was trust there and with that client I could actually explain to them those value propositions better than anyone else could. There was the trust there better than anyone else had, and I was like I know this is going to make money, so smart guy. But he was happily, followed me into it and was like, yep, I can see what you're saying and he purchased it. So the passion of selling comes through here.
Speaker 1:Your original little shop was right there in that area. So the little real estate business that became the big Novaks today, that was right there, in that same heart of the little village.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that was part of it. When I was talking to the purchaser understanding that area, being from that you know, operating in that area, it was just like you. Just it's an absolute goldmine and also relating to that party, because they were not from the Northern Beaches. But I, you know, I could explain in the area where they were, in the eastern suburbs what the similar you know I was. I aligned it with Bronte. Now I'm like this is your Bronte in the Northern Beaches, like really, I'm like yeah, and then he explained it, pieced it together and yeah, that's where it originally came from and that all helps, mark final question for you what's next in commercial real estate selling for you?
Speaker 1:What are you passionate about?
Speaker 2:I think, finding people to put their money with super seems to be lucrative for sellers, for buyers, for agents. Not a lot of people know that our Australian super is pond is bigger than the ASX. So there's $3.5 trillion in super that we've been contributing since 1992, but nobody has taught these people that have this money in their super what they can do with it. So whether it's an accountant or a financial planner or at a barbecue conversation, it's pretty foreign to people because that money they've had in their super, which represents a lot of money in Australia there's 10 trillion of property. There's about 2.8 trillion of debt.
Speaker 2:Super's big. Our super's the second biggest pot of gold in the world and per capita we're number one in the world with the amount we've contributed to our super and that's just cranked up to 12%. So compounding that, that's a lot of money in the next 10 to 20 years if you look at what it's done in the last 30 years. So I think next for us with commercial is helping people find the right asset for them in commercial, residential as well, and then helping them sort of interfacing with their accountants and solicitors and financial planners to make those investments happen. People used to do that with their own money. In the 60s and 70s They'd call it an investment property and I think that pulled right up a little bit through. The people didn't have that free cash because that was going towards their super. So now they've got this little pot of gold and they can do something with it.
Speaker 1:Mark Novak absolutely fantastic information. Thank you for joining us on the program. We are selling Giddy up. Next up is Lisa Novak and we're discussing the sell of her business framework and, for those of you that have attended the Complete Salesperson course, one of the final things we look at is how do we capture, send, connect, convert, compete, list, get a property on the marketplace so we can sell it? And that business framework is where we have the assets of what the person is doing and how they're applying it to get the property sold. Let's go mid-flight in there with Lisa as we discuss sell Lisa, we've come on to sell. This is our big live up to the brochure and our first one here, quite obviously, is socials.
Speaker 3:So we're definitely not posting just static photos because you know we're just not going to get the eyeballs that we want. It's nice, I like professional photography, but you know it's so multifaceted with what we do with social media and it is so incredibly consistent. It takes time, but the rewards are endless. So there is an enormous amount of authentic raw video content that goes out to those social media channels on a regular basis and this is the magic. It's not someone else doing this for me, it is me doing this in the property, real time, showing the buyers without all the bells and whistles, and talking them through the very, very, very important selling points of a property, not pointing out the obvious things. We're standing here in a kitchen. We're not pointing out the obvious things. We're standing here in a kitchen. We're not pointing out the obvious things. We're talking to them about the things that they cannot see from two-dimensional photos.
Speaker 1:The invisible value.
Speaker 3:The invisible value, and it's short, sharp videos as well, but they're coming out to them consistently and so that property that I'm showing on my social media, that's coming to them on my social media channels, it hasn't been seen anywhere else Because, lee, even getting a property out to an email database via an email blast takes time. This is getting out to the people instantly in its raw, authentic form. I'm telling it how it is. They're getting the opportunity to see and buy it first, and I'm showing them things that they just simply cannot see on a two-dimensional floor plan or photo.
Speaker 1:And Lisa, when you're presenting to the owners. This is what you're communicating about, your instantaneous marketing, which gives us that hook. Take us into what you do with what you refer to as try calls.
Speaker 3:Try calls. Okay, this is a very important part of what we do. Again, this is getting information out to the prospective buyers very quickly, letting them know that a property is coming. It's a short, sharp text message that lands on their mobile phone. We blast that out to the database to let them know that a property is pre-market and they've got the opportunity to buy it now.
Speaker 1:Then we have our window of opportunity phone call, and this is where we're trying to land people in appointments, as the purchasing community is excited to know what's out there. But we beautifully warmed up the data here. They might've seen it on social. They've just got a text message and then, bang, thomas is on the phone. Hi, helen. Window of opportunity. This property is not on the portals yet. Can you see it? On Wednesday afternoon, and I think that's such an important moment, and the purpose of that phone call was to find out the buyer engagement level, which brings us on to our next asset, the Yabba Call.
Speaker 3:So Yabba Call also extremely effective, very important part of what we do, particularly with our pre-market properties. It's a voice record that we are sending out via a bulk or Yabba, it's a bulk voice message, Thank you. It's a bulk voice message that is going out to an enormous amount of prospective buyers. Some people react better to a phone call and other people will react better to an email and other people will react better to a SMS text. We've got to ensure that we are covering all of our bases Blended marketing.
Speaker 1:So our next one is the pre-market board. This is where our talking board begins. What do we need to know here?
Speaker 3:So we will put up a board pre-market If a vendor allows. Sometimes a vendor just simply doesn't want a board at this stage. We do include that as part of our $0 marketing strategy and it's a board that we get installed very, very quickly. It usually goes up within 24 hours of listing the property, once we've obviously got a contract of sale, and it lets the buyers know that it's a pre-market opportunity for them to be able to buy a property.
Speaker 3:People underestimate a signboard. I love them. They are billboards and I think they. I think they're some of the cheapest form of marketing that we can actually get. They're phenomenal PMO. So a pre-market opportunity for a buyer to be able to purchase a property before it's launched out to those real estate portals. That's from the buyer perspective, from the vendor perspective, it's giving the vendor an option to be able to launch out their property to our very extensive database, to our very extensive social media channels, and giving them the opportunity to be able to sell their property pre market. And I find that this is a much more stress-free option for a vendor as well, but it's been enormously successful for the vendor.
Speaker 1:Now our seventh asset, which is very interesting, is portals, and that's usually number one for everybody else. And this is a great example of our staged marketing approach instant marketing, going to the marketplace first. And, Lisa, what a blinding flash of the obvious that people are engaging you and your team because you're prepared to sweat first and not lazily just whack it on the portals. Hence, portals is number seven. Once we've gone to the portals, we've got our reports that we can now come back to the owner with these reports and let's say we've moved on three, four weeks into the marketing campaign. Lead us onto our next big conversation, which is improving the price. Now, Lisa, if it sells, success, grand final, all good. Let's discuss when it's not sold, what's your approach when you go into the owner for improving the price?
Speaker 3:So it's important. There's been an enormous amount of conversation, lee, from when we launched the property pre-market to when we potentially have to launch the property out to plan B, to those real estate portals, and there's been an enormous amount of price discovery that's taking place and, as I've mentioned previously, agents can get the pricing wrong at times, but the market rarely does so. The market feedback that we've been able to take on board from when we've launched pre-market up to if we need to launch in plan B is very, very to if we need to launch in plan B is very, very, very important information, and so it's not Lisa Novak's opinion anymore, it's the market's opinion. Now it's very different. This is the buyers. So it's what Ian and Karen and Bob and Mark and Dave and everyone that's come through your property. We've taken on board their feedback with respect to pricing and I'm giving that to you, mr and Mrs Vendor. This is where the market is suggesting that your property is at. That is really really important information.
Speaker 1:And our last asset in sell and it's a beautiful one is called withdrawn interest and, as you know, lisa, we've got interest in the property. But Mr and Mrs Woodward were very excited about your home in week two but have just purchased one down the road for 80,000 less. They are no longer in the marketplace, they have purchased and they are withdrawn interest, but we're a great candidate for your home.
Speaker 3:That's exactly right. So, you know, making sure again that we're just giving the vendor this very critical information. And look, these days there's a lot of properties that are coming on and are selling and they're totally pre-market. You know, ordinarily we'd look on the portals, or a vendor would look onto those real estate portals and say, yeah, I saw that property that came on in the next street to mine. My property is better than that, you know. It says a vendor. But there is a lot of property that is currently transacting that is pre-market and so it's important that we are relaying that information to the vendor as to what it's selling for.
Speaker 1:How is the report sent to the vendor?
Speaker 3:Okay, so it's multifaceted. Now what I find the real estate industry has always said you've got to do this big, thorough vendor update and that's got to go out to a vendor every single week, usually on a Monday. Yes, we still do the vendor reports. But here's the thing If you are reporting the facts to your vendor regularly ie I'm speaking with my vendors, communicating with them, rather in one capacity or another, every single day, that vendor report is not that necessary. It's just not that necessary because there's been so many updates that have taken place throughout the week where we've had the open home and I've called my vendors afterwards. We've done our follow-up calls with our buyers. Literally they're done same day first round calls, next day second round calls and usually that night as well for the third round calls. We've reported that information to the vendors and we continue to report that to them regularly. They're never left wondering.
Speaker 1:Lisa Novak and Mark Novak, thank you for joining us. Well, there you have it. That's another episode of we Are Selling and today, a really good example of what's happening in-house with real estate officers and their internal training and what they're doing. I'm on the Lisa Novak assignment at the moment and we've just been right through her business a full audit, built the business framework and now continuing to grow that team as we train young talent coming in off the bench. But actually taking the time to look at Lisa's business and again that saying pops up you can't read the label from inside the jar. I think she was amazed when the framework came together and it's such a powerful coaching scenario. So thank you for joining us. I look forward to seeing you at the next Complete Salesperson course. I'm Lee Woodward. Till next week, goodbye.