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
From Lone Wolf to a 480-Sale Machine: How Rash Dhanjal Built a High-Performance, Values-Driven Sales Business in WA
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We unpack how Team Rash grew from eight deals to a 430+ rolling average in a tight WA market by building a team, training conversations, and using transparent timed sale processes. We share the live-number system, the tech stack, and the mindset that turns scarcity into focus.
• why a corporate-trained leader chose The Agency model
• moving from lone-wolf to co-listing team structure
• live rolling numbers vs quarterly thinking
• lead gen as a layered system, not a silver bullet
• proving value with documented social proof
• timed sale and digital offer transparency
• hiring for hunger and values, training for conversations
• simple operations with a shared database
• fast implementation of tech and processes
• plans for statewide growth and thoughtful use of AI
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Hello and welcome back to the podcast We Are Selling. This week we are going over to WA. The agency WA has taken significant market share as a business for grown-ups, where a brand of leading agents are now dominating the Western Australian real estate space. And one of those teams is Team Rash. If you want the cash, you're going to need Team Rash. He joins me now. Rash, welcome aboard. Thank you, Lee. Thanks for the invite. So excited to do this story. Uh this year I've been working with the group via Zoom, and I think I'm there in a couple of weeks' time live. But take us into your story. Before real estate, what did you do?
SPEAKER_01:Lee, I uh worked at Foxtel. I had a long uh career selling and did uh retail sales, uh, a little bit of door-to-door as well, and then ended up becoming uh uh the state manager in West Australia, uh, pretty much running the sales business out here.
SPEAKER_00:How interesting. And we're about to get into your story, the way you've set up your team, but you've sort of replicated that from instead of owning the big business like a traditional principle, you're at street level with the team running a sales business. Choosing to do that through the agency obviously worked for your model. What did you do after Foxtel?
SPEAKER_01:Straight after Foxtel, uh, one of my goals at Foxtel was like if you know, if I was made redundant and uh which which is what happened, I wanted to get into real estate and I was passionate about real estate and I and I felt like uh it'd be a good fit for me. Um I got a bit jaded after the corporate stuff as well. So I just wanted to go back to selling and uh I had good management skills, but I think along the way I wanted to go and retest my competencies in sales. So I became a sales rep basically, started from the ground up, and I was fortunate to have a great business like the agency take me on board uh at a time where you know there wasn't a lot of jobs out there, and uh yeah, grew it from there, Lee.
SPEAKER_00:And the agency model is different.
SPEAKER_01:Why was it such a good fit for you? I had done my market research on on the agencies that I'd want to work, and because I'd come from a corporate background, I felt that they were a better uh suit for me, um, especially with a corporate structure. And just looking at the remuneration model, it looked like something I would have built uh based on how the incentive plans were, the cross-selling through other parts of the business, um, the incentive programs, all seemed uh like you know something that we would have come up uh at Foxtel with trying to sell multiple products, not only listing and selling homes, but also referring into the mortgage business as well and property management. So it just sort of resonated with the way my brain worked uh in how sales business was supposed to be run. So yeah, I think that was one, and then the branding, the corporate structure made it seem uh a lot more organized. And I didn't want to end up in a neighborhood sort of business, which is nothing wrong with that, but I just felt maybe it was a better fit for me. So it was my first choice uh out of what was happening here about seven plus years ago.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's worked out perfectly. You've won so many awards and brought so much to the table for other agents, but let's just go into that. In your sales business, you're the lead agent, you're on the ground, you're selling on the weekends, and then you recruit non-real estate people to come into your team, you're doing the training and guiding, and they co-list the properties with you. Take us into what you've done there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so um I initially started my career and realized that uh, you know, it's a lone wolf business, and I don't operate well on my own. Within my first year, I realized that it just won't will not, this is not going to work for me. And just knowing myself, I like to lead and work with people. Uh, I also didn't mind being part of a team as well at the time because I just wanted to have people around me. So I after my first year, uh, struggled a lot, only did eight uh listings and sold eight properties. I ended up uh taking on two uh agents uh to train, coach, and uh develop underneath me. Uh and I think that's where uh a lot of my business changed from there. It just meant that uh I was responsible for more than just me and and took a lot of risks in taking on people when you know even financially it didn't make sense. But I wanted to invest back in my vision uh to grow a team. So um from there we've now seven agents um in in multiple territories in West Australia and Perth, especially, and looking to uh you know bring good people on board so we can train and develop them and build like um uh you know really good team culture as well.
SPEAKER_00:So, what was the result in the numbers once you went? And thanks for explaining that. Uh, and I think a lot of people wouldn't have understood from your personality type, you like being around people. You don't want to be the solo agent by yourself. And in that first year, you know, that's a tough year. What were the results after that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so from there, we um we went from eight to twenty deals in our second year, and we had done 24 conjunctionals, uh, which is selling other people's properties as well. Uh, and then the reason we were doing a lot of those was just to build that database. So we pivoted from you know just hunting only for listings, but also doing a lot of that buyer work initially to try and build the database and build the data uh and build those clients that are going to be clients for life. So we did a lot of uh appraisals initially for properties buyers were buying. We would do instant appraisals if after home open they went through it and would say, look, this is where the value sits. Let us know if we can help in any way, help them in the background, just building that database. So it picked from there and from from 2030 went to 80. So it grew very quickly, uh exponentially grew from there.
SPEAKER_00:That's a massive jump from eight to eighty. And this year, how will you go for this year?
SPEAKER_01:Uh but currently, uh, how I look at my businesses is a live live index number. So uh I never work in quarters. I work as in what's my rolling average as it stands? It's 430 at the moment. So that's the number of sales. And our goal this year is 480. And a lot of people in our business are hoping I crack the 500 as well. So which would be uh which would be amazing, amazing for the team as well.
SPEAKER_00:500 sales from a sales business. This is not a traditional principal real estate office setup, it's a different setup. I love rolling numbers, but just for our listener, and this is where you can see your business management skills coming out here perfectly, just explain how rolling numbers work.
SPEAKER_01:So uh rather than looking at it from a quarterly basis, you start in Jan, you end in the end of March, we always look at the live number. So from today, uh 12 months, what is that number look like? And that's the number we follow every day. If we feel like it's 430 now and it's dropping down to the 420s, we need means we've got to fill that bucket in. So we know I'll put some incentives out for the team to really work extra to get that rolling average back up, push for our finances to come through and just make sure that number is always growing upwards. Um, otherwise, you have bad quarters. Uh, we we try and avoid that. We just want to have a bad week um instead.
SPEAKER_00:So love that. So we could we can handle a bad week, but we're not prepared to accept a bad quarter. Yeah. There's so much power in what you've just said, but rolling numbers stop the R, but it's December, it's January, it's not. It's today's date. Let's roll the numbers. Where are we? And what's that number tracking at? And obviously, from the growth from eight to eighty into the 400s, and if you crack 500 this year, that's going to be a significant year in a time. And let me just share this with our listener, especially in the UK. Right now, Rash, in WA, usually there's nine or 10,000 properties on the market at any given time. As of last week, when I checked in, there was 2,700. So you've had this mass drop of listings even available in the marketplace. How have you cope with that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, again, I think it's a mindset thing. And uh, you know, this morning I had one of my team members going for an appraisal I couldn't be part of. And he said, I'm going for an appraisal. I said, No, you're going for a listing appointment. And uh he smiled at me. I said, Yeah, because we don't appraise, we're going to list properties. So I'm not interested in that uh, you know, water coolage about, oh, we don't have listings, this and that. We're not having this conversation. All we talk about is how we're going to get our next listing. Because I think listings is in between the years. Um, and a good agent and good agents and teams uh do good business, will always list properties, regardless of the market. There's 800 plus transactions a week. Uh, we just want a piece of the cake, you know. You know, if you look at that, we're only looking for we're only looking for 10 of those, uh, 10 to 12 of those a week. We don't need 800 sales, we need 12.
SPEAKER_00:So what's a good month of listing for you? Well, we've got the rolling numbers on sales, but when you look at, okay, this month, how did we go using that same thinking? What's a good month look like for Team Rash?
SPEAKER_01:50. So we we've had a few months this year where we've got to 50. And uh, you know, if we dip under the 40, then I'm concerned because we'll need to fill the gap next month. So, yeah, 50 is kind of that a good month for us. But anything between 40 and 50 will take uh based on our target.
SPEAKER_00:Let's go into lead generation. What's been working like this team is just sheer hard work, grunt, doing all the actions you need to do. But from a management level, when you're training or keeping the team moving, what's working best in lead generation for you?
SPEAKER_01:For us, it's uh uh uh it's in combination of everything. So from letter drops to social media to uh calling the neighborhood to the SMS campaign, to it's all it's all in combination. We just don't do one thing because uh you know sometimes our Google ads work better uh this month uh compared to last month. And then sometimes our mail house will deliver better results, but we we do everything in combination. We just don't do one thing. There isn't a silver bullet, it's it's all of it.
SPEAKER_00:Once you actually got the opportunity, you're heading in. It's very competitive over there, and we've seen some severe pressure on fees. Why are people picking team rash?
SPEAKER_01:Because we're dynamic. We uh we care, we give a crap about our sellers. Uh it's evident in the results we get. And also we people hire us to get the best price. Uh there's no question about it. We fight for our clients uh and we deliver top dollar, and it's in our results. And we don't want to sell properties for cheap because we know then that's that's not in the best interest of our clients. So that's that's the in a nutshell. You know, we everything we do is in the best interest of our sellers. Uh, we're not interested in anything outside of that.
SPEAKER_00:How do you get that across for your clientele to understand? Because lots of agents have the jargon, but not the behavior. You've obviously got the results. How are you getting that across? How are you communicating that?
SPEAKER_01:Through social proof. Uh, we show them the recent sales we've had, the recent uh bidding wars that we've been in. For example, our most recent, most successful one was a property where we had 33 buyers in, and we ended up at$190,000 above asking with 107 price adjustments. So we can demonstrate that in actual proof multiple times. We don't just say it, we show that this is an actual result. We have that proof on video. We have lots of social proof when it comes to presenting to our potential sellers that will deliver that result. And over and over, week in, week out, we're doing that. So we've got fresh data to show them that we are delivering a good result.
SPEAKER_00:The team members that are joining you now, what do you look for in a brilliant real estate? And I'll use the WA term rep, someone to represent someone in the marketplace. What are you looking for? And what's your focus on the training?
SPEAKER_01:I'm looking for uh hunger. I I like people that are hungry with good values and integrity. And I just want to see a bit of that fire in the eyes uh because that's important. It's a tough business, you know. There's you have tough days as well ahead of you, you know. So I just want to make sure that the people that are here actually have goals. They want to be good, they want to improve, they want to be part of a good business. So that's what I really look at. In terms of training, the one thing I focus about is um the sales conversation. I'm big on training the guys on not how to prospect, but actually structure a conversation in its best light from actually uh asking good quality questions, discovering, putting all those bits and pieces in there, making sure we spend time in rapport with the clients, putting our recommendations, how we objection handle things, how we isolate the objections, and then you know, ultimately ask for the business. So I work on those things. I like training sales. You know, there's a lot of sales training out there that talks about prospecting, and there's plenty of coaches we've got in our business like us and trainers that can help us with that part of the business. But I think that one-to-one training someone how to have a good quality conversation uh is paramount.
SPEAKER_00:Rash, couldn't agree more. And, you know, I've seen you at training all this year, you're very passionate about learning. Uh, didn't know you were ninja level yourself on the actual communication side of teaching people. But you're right, words are everything. The ability to have that conversation, communicate with clarity, and have the owner understand who you are and what you stand for is complex. It's not difficult, but it is complex to get that across. And I can just see why you've chosen to do what you've done and build the team members as you are. Take us into the team, it's uh quite a diverse range of ages. What are the ages from your new people coming in to some of your seniors?
SPEAKER_01:We've got three team members in their 60s that uh have been experienced reps that have come and joined us, which is really good to see. Got uh as young as, you know, our youngest team member is 19 years old. So it's very diverse from multiple cultures as well. So yeah, we're we're a good melting part of uh cultures and ages, and with different experiences, and that's what makes it uh really cool. Uh you know, we we don't all look the same, we don't all dress the same. It's it's just we're all team. That's that's what's important. We deliver good results.
SPEAKER_00:Now, as these agents co-list with yourself, that is how you've been able to one, back them up, support them. You've you've taken huge market share in these areas now. And it seems you just keep applying the same process to a new area as you go through. When that property goes live to the marketplace, do all team members work on that to get it sold, or is it left to the person who's the co-listing agent with yourself?
SPEAKER_01:It's with myself and the co-agent. And and my I have a team behind me as well that helps because we've got a lot of a big database. So we use my database to promote the listings, and the other team members are also across every listing, every off-market listing. So, yeah, if they do have buyers, they can jump in there. But yeah, if we need extra support, someone's gone away. The team members are happy to jump in and help each other work as well. So it's a very simple method of running the business. It's you know, there's plenty of support. You know, we just help each other help, yeah, give us gains sort of thing, you know. Everyone helps each other.
SPEAKER_00:Perfect. So the technique of the business is strong. What's been a success for you personally in the technology that you brought to the table that you're now using?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so at the agency, we've got uh, you know, CRM system, uh, we've got Rita, we've got ActivePipe, we're using, we're using RealTare as well, and the timed out method as well. With the bids, we're finding that's working really well. Uh, we're really driving great results through that method, and then have that social proof to go and grab extra listings from it as well. So I think if you're in you think about the seller's best interest, having uh a bit more transparency from the buyer's end, letting people bid and fight for the property uh certainly brings action into the listing, makes it exciting for sellers and us and the buyers to have more transparency. The buyers are loving it as well because they're they're actually competing and buying properties from us as well.
SPEAKER_00:So I think that's the best way to do it. This is uh music to my ears because I've been speaking about this to WA with not great results of people understanding time sale or time auction. So did you go for time sale or timed auction? Time sale. Time sale. Why do you feel the transparency and the digital offering systems had such a good response?
SPEAKER_01:I equate this to when we were stuck in COVID and we couldn't go around and we started using DocuTime. I think if you're gonna have uh a lot of listings or less listings, doesn't matter, is not a simpler way of selling. It's you communicate through the portal, uh, your team can jump on, can uh organize things. You you you know, you you there's a lot more tools that you can use and keep everyone honest. Uh the biggest issue you have with buyers when they come through a home open is they're uh they're battered. Uh there's a lot of fatigue from them as well. There's not a lot of transparency, it feels like a lot of uh shifty stuff that's going on. Oh, I didn't get this property, I could have paid that. None of that, all that, all that stuff's out of the door, basically. Yeah, it's straightforward. They can see it there, they get ranked. Uh, and in some instances, we also make the highest offer available for viewing, and uh that just helps drive that. So now we spend uh during the week our evenings closing out these campaigns. Because it's the best way to do it. Get the people through, let them register, let them involve, put their offers in and buy the properties in a more transparent method. I think it's just like an auction. It's the same thing, it's transparent and it keeps buyers happy as well in the end. If they didn't buy it, they know it's because they couldn't afford it.
SPEAKER_00:And it's perfectly in line with your values of what you believe in as a sales professional. So I'm just ecstatic that that's been executed. And actually, I picked up on that when the wonderful Stuart Cox was putting you forward for this interview, because I know you're on the Zoom we did the other day, and uh you'd reached out on a comment on there. But Stuart said, you know, when it comes to implementation, uh he's been to an event with you, sitting next to you, and by the time you're at the airport, you've already got something happening. Have you always been good with technology or just been very powerful at implementation?
SPEAKER_01:A bit of both. Uh, but yeah, I think if you leave it till the next day, it's all over because a lot of stuff can distract us. So, you know, as soon as you know, we make a decision, we'll it it could mean extra sales for us, it could mean more money for our uh agents to pay their mortgages off. It's you know, we need to make good decisions quickly uh and fail fast. If that doesn't work, let's just move on to what we were doing. So, yeah, I strongly, I strongly believe that. But I love technology. I think we're going to a time now with AI coming on board with a lot of um uh automation. There's a lot of cool stuff we can do in our business to give that buyer and seller a better experience and keep them well informed along the way, and uh do a lot of cross-selling into other parts of our business and provide more value back to our customers with a bit more than just I'm here to sell your house sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00:Rash, final question for you, and congratulations on what you built with the team, the results. Uh, there's definitely an energy inside that business, which is a different business energy to what I see in normal real estate businesses. But my question's this what's one thing you're passionate about for the future that you want to progress this team even further with?
SPEAKER_01:I think uh growing it uh statewide would be sort of what I want to do. I want to go and have team members in other parts of the state, probably regional as well, and give that back because yeah, you know, it's not like my life's complicated already, but I like challenge. Just have fun with it, you know, uh and and and see if we can uh bring some of these uh methods and values and things into the regional space as well. And yeah, just give that a try as well. And I'm really interested in looking at how AI can evolve my team um and and my business, help them become better at just those soft skills, sitting down with vendors and buyers and getting to know people and custom and their understanding their customer better, but helping um AI helped the administration part in the background with a lot of intelligence in it.
SPEAKER_00:What a brilliant answer. Well, team Rash, absolutely incredible results and such a good interview to have this go across the country, but also to our listeners overseas uh for that team-based approach of a non-traditional real estate shop and a professional sales business where you are building sales professionals, is just outstanding. You're at the perfect spot there with the agency that's so matched for what you want to do. And I want to thank you for joining us on We Are Selling. Thank you, Lee.