Agents On The Edge - with Mark Burgess

We explore why agents feel overwhelmed despite more tech, and map a practical path to higher revenue per employee with an AI operating system that orchestrates work instead of adding noise. Mark Burgess shares a vivid look at a near‑future agency day where humans lead and AI handles orchestration.

• the always‑on burden and shrinking margins
• why hires, more tools, and harder work fail
• revenue per employee as the north star
• architecture over effort as the lever for profit
• the case for a central operating system not a CRM
• context as the key to useful AI
• documenting processes and training to unlock AI
• a day‑in‑the‑life of a next‑gen agency
• reclaiming evenings while lifting follow‑through
• practical steps to avoid AI tool sprawl

Hosted by Lee Woodward Training Systems

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_03 0:02

Hello and welcome back to the podcast We Are Selling. My name's Lee Woodward, your coach and host, and the author of the Complete Salesperson Course. Today we're going to have a look at what's happening internationally as we cross to the UK. We're going to be speaking to Mark Burgess, the CEO of Iceberg Digital Marketing and Everything Technology Agency. He joins me now. Mark, welcome to the program. Thanks very much. Thanks for having me. Mark, you've been studying and focusing on this industry for over 30 years and an original estate agent. Take us into your background.

From Low Tech To Always On

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Yeah, so as you say, I've got a background in uh real estate, uh, been around that industry for like we'll say about 30 years, but for the past 20 years I've been an entrepreneur building up various different businesses. I've built seven-figure businesses, eight-figure businesses. I've written two best-selling books around marketing, sales, and data, how that stuff really works. Um, I've had a TV show on Sky teaching entrepreneurs that sort of stuff, and been fidget on Forbes. So I'm hoping that I can give some sort of useful advice to your guys today. Everything we do in the UK with Iceberg Digital is based around growth for agents using innovation and learning. So hopefully there'll be some golden nuggets in there for for your guys today.

SPEAKER_03 1:23

Mark, without doubt, there is golden nuggets in today's talk as you explain the challenge of the burnout of real estate agents and the future of real estate. And to do that, you and I were chatting through LinkedIn and you got me to review something you were doing that I absolutely love. So if it's okay with you, I want to cross to you live on stage, doing part of a talk that I think is just so important to the future of real estate. Let's cross to you there as you take us through the challenge and the solution.

The Real Problem: Human Capacity

Chasing The Wrong Levers

Revenue Per Employee Explained

Architecture Beats Effort

Why A CRM Isn’t Enough

The Case For An AI Operating System

Context Over Tools

SPEAKER_02 1:58

So when I started this job in a state agency, there was not really much technology. When the phone rang, you spoke to people, or they walked in the office and you spoke to them. And you wrote things down on an applicant card on a property file, and that was about it, really. At some point the day finished, you shut the office and you went home. And the job stayed there. And that was pretty much how the whole thing worked. If we fast forward through the fax machines turning into email and applicant cards to CRM, newspapers to property portals, landlines to mobile phones, privacy to social media, every single wave of that come with the same promise that it would make life easier. It will save you time. And in a way, some of that stuff did make life easier and save you time. It also made more work. Paper didn't completely disappear when computers arrived. CRMs meant keeping notes on more applicants than I used to have just in my uh precious little applicant box. The portals suddenly meant more photos and floor plans and videos than what we used to have to do when there was just newspapers. Social media has multiplied all the marketing work, and email and mobile phones have just blurred the lines between where the end of the working day is. So each layer did make life easier, but also created extra work. And we've built ourselves an industry now where speed is just mandatory. Responsiveness is just assumed by people, and availability is just an expectation. So along with all of that, the profits got smaller. So is it really easier with all this tech than it was before? Most of the stress in a state agency doesn't come from difficult clients, it comes from the capacity to finish the work and the always-on expectation. And this is where the story really starts because once you see that, you can see that the the real problem that we're dealing with today can't be solved with a CRM. It doesn't matter how many tools you try to bolt onto it. That might sound a bit weird uh for me to say, being a prop tech person. The overload on human capacity is literally at breaking point. Currently, we're hoping that our teams have got a perfect memory, make instant responses, do flawless follow-ups, complete every single task. It's just not normal for human beings. Here's what I see when I walk into most estate agencies. I see good people, genuinely good people, finishing the day feeling like they failed. Not because they didn't work hard, but because their work isn't finishable. There's no order to their work. That's not a performance problem. It's a structural problem. The way estate agency works is broken. It's no longer sustainable. The technology's there, but the manpower to use it isn't. And I'm not just pointing the finger at other companies here. We're culprits of this too. We build incredible tools, tools that lots of people in this room actually asked for, and then they don't get used. Why does that happen? I've asked that question more than anybody. And the truth is that the capacity has already been exceeded. And when capacity is exceeded, our industry reaches for the same three levers. The first one is let's hire more people. And yes, capacity increases. Obviously, you've just hired more new person. But margins shrink. You didn't fix the problem, you just diluted it. The second lever is, well, let's get another dashboard, another piece of software. Maybe we can get an AI that does it. And now your staff aren't just doing the job, they're managing the fucking tools that are supposed to be helping them do the job. And the third lever is let's just push people harder, longer hours, more pressure, higher expectations. And that's where the burnout starts and the mistakes start to creep in. Yes, you can split the roles up in your business. You could make departments whereby this department just does sales progression, this department just does prospecting. I've seen it all before. Like I've worked with hundreds, maybe even thousands of agents. It can be done, but the margins are just not big enough in a state agency to do that. You can't hire enough people. You can hire more people to do the job. You can get a new bit of software that looks really cool. You can shout at the team, but none of that will solve the root problem that we're talking about. And that's why the real fight in this industry is not around turnover or market share. That's that will just send you round and round in circles. It's not getting a new CRM. The real fight is revenue per employee. And you work out your revenue per employee by taking your turnover and dividing it by the number of staff that work full-time inside the business. So, as an example, you turn over 500,000, you've got seven staff, you've got a revenue per employee of around about 71,000. It's so important because revenue per employee tells you how much value one person can create from the sort of salaries that you have to pay people. It's not an instant idea as to how profitable the business is, but it's it's a very, very good, clear indicator as to how difficult it is in your business to turn effort into profit. So if you're thinking to yourself, well, probably on average we have to pay people 40 grand, 50 grand, and your revenue per employee is 71, they're not a great deal left over to pay all the other costs and then live the kind of life that you were hoping to live when you started the business. So high revenue per employee doesn't come from harder working people, it comes from a better architecture in the business. So traditional estate agency using a CRM based on this model that's burning out might add another person to the mix to help with the admin and all of the things that are going on inside the company. When they do that, the revenue per employee drops by nearly 10 grand. That's for all eight people. All eight people are now 10,000 pounds less productive for your company. If we go back to the beginning of that, this is where we were, and alternatively we find a way to focus more on revenue generation tasks using technology, without increasing the headcount, we get our revenue up to 700,000, then all of a sudden, revenue per employee goes up by about 30 grand for all seven people. Like you don't need a maths degree to be able to figure out that's going to have a massive impact on your company if all seven people start bringing in an extra 30 grand. So if the problem can't be solved with more people or more effort or more commitment, and we accept that the problem is the capacity of how much a person can do, what is the solution? The best example is actually already in your pocket. It's an operating system. If you think about it, your phone doesn't work because you've got 150 apps installed on it. It works because there's an operating system underneath it all. Something that decides what gets priority, what can interrupt you, what runs in the background, what's going to stop your music, what talks to what. You don't see the operating system, you feel it. Now compare that to the way CRM software works today and the other tools that you might use. They're just disconnected tools, each one shouting for attention, each one assuming that it's the most important thing in the room. No wonder it starts to feel overwhelming. Who decides the priority? Everyone's busy, but most importantly, are the things that are getting done the most important things that should be getting done? Or are we just busy? So tools, they're either passive until a human remembers to act, or they're jumping up and down, demanding attention. An AI operating system is active, it coordinates things, it orchestrates, it decides what matters and when does it matter. So an operating system can look across all of your centralized tools and say, this one matters today, this one can wait, this one's becoming a bit of a risk, this one will make you more money. And this is the shift we're talking about. Not a new CRM, not some extra features, not a redesigned dashboard. We're talking about a different operating system for our industry. Because the bottleneck is no longer information, it's attention. This is why so many agencies feel busy but not productive. They're not short of data. They're short of the clarity on which tasks to do next and which ones are going to have the biggest impact. So an AI operating system flips the model. Instead of humans managing data, the system manages data for humans. Instead of humans monitoring everything, the system monitors and acts. A CRM tells you what happened, an operating system decides what should happen next. And that's why context matters when it comes to artificial intelligence. But not in the way that most people think. AI isn't powerful because it can answer phone calls. It's powerful if it's inside of one ecosystem so it can understand the context. Context is what humans are brilliant at until they get overloaded. So context is what comes out of the morning meeting? Where are all our sales and why are the sales there? How happy are all of our vendors or unhappy and why are they unhappy or happy? Who hasn't been paid their rent and why? Which of our old valuations is likely to convert and why? That's the context. That's the bit that humans do where they go, oh, there's this computer, just can't do that sort of stuff. An entire ecosystem can give that context to AI. So humans don't have to carry it all around inside their heads. This is important because it sounds like I'm talking about humanless estate agency, and I'm 100% not talking about humanless estate agency. This is not about replacing good people. It's about respecting human limits and empowering good people to do what they do best. So spreadsheets didn't that automatically add things up, didn't suddenly make account accountants pointless. They just allowed them to use their time better. Some accountants back then wouldn't have embraced the spreadsheets. They would have just gone, that's my job. That's what I do. I'm here to add things up. That's what I'm really good at. And they disappeared. So technology removes friction and increases capacity. The human skills of interaction, when it matters, they're still needed, probably more than ever. In this age whereby, you know, everybody's just on a phone. Those human interactions, I think people want them more than any at any other time. So when I talk about an AI operating system, I'm not talking about technology just for technology's sake. I'm talking about a system that allows one good agent to perform like five that are just using a CRM without burning out. In regards to AI, I need to break another myth. And this is this is really important. This is so important for you to take away from today, if you take nothing else away from today. This is what businesses want AI to do for them.

unknown 12:31

Right?

Humans Plus AI, Not Humanless

The Myth Of Magical AI

Training, Documentation, And Ecosystems

The Coming Tool Sprawl Crisis

The Split And A Stark Prediction

A Day In The Future Agency

SPEAKER_02 12:31

They would like AI to solve everything, link in with their existing software so that that's not a hassle. They want it to write the emails, do the marketing, make the phone calls. They don't even want to have to figure it out. It's AI, surely it can figure it out for itself. But it just doesn't work like that. It's because AI is not as magical as you think it is. The only thing it really understands is words and numbers. I realize I'm an AI geek and I spend 24-7 in that world and I listen to loads of about it. I mean, Haley knows that too, right? But so I realize that I live in that world and it all makes sense to me. But I want to flip this into something more relatable for so that anyone could start to understand it. And once you understand it, then it might become easier to be able to see the wood for the trees when it comes to AI. So if we go back to AI, it's just a technology that understands words and numbers. It's only a tiny step on from the way predictive text works. And you don't really find that magical anymore, predictive text, but it's still pretty magical that the phone finishes your sentences for you, it knows what word is supposed to come after the word you just typed. It's essentially the same as a school lever with an A in English with a photographic memory, and they've got access to Google, but no other skills at all. So just think about that for a minute. They didn't study anything else ever. They're perfect at English, they have a photographic memory, and they've got access to Google. Not a skills, nothing else, nothing, nothing more. What probably wouldn't work out well would be if you've got 10 people like that and just let them loose in your company. So go for it. And anything you need to know, just fucking Google it. They could have conversations from day one because they can speak English. But they would just be talking gibberish to people. But it is possible that that school lever with just an A in English and a photographic memory could become your best member of staff if you gave them detailed company training, documents on everything for their photographic memory to read. They don't have to read it once and they'd know it inside out. And access to your centralized ecosystem to read the context on everybody. They could actually be really good from day one if you did that. But the two problems that we've got with getting this to work are that one, your training is probably a bit shit. My experience of this from dealing with lots of companies over many years, not just as state agencies, is that uh you probably haven't got brilliant training and company documents around everything that happens inside your business. How your USPs work, how the jobs inside your company work, how the marketing works, how the brand works, how the sales work, how the valuations work. It's probably mostly in your head. If you're anything like a lot of the companies that I've ever worked with, which I would consider to be pretty good companies, like there's nothing wrong with what I'm saying, but if someone starts in the business and they just sort of follow you around or follow someone around for a bit, right? So that's one problem. And then that's a problem because there's nothing for this person to read and learn with their photographic memory. The second problem is that even if you get around to teaching all ten of these new people one by one, when something changed, you'd have to remember to go back to each one of them one by one and tell them all. After every conversation where something new comes up, you'd have to go, oh, don't forget, go around and tell all ten of these. So that is exactly how AI works. Because of that, there's a very, very, very big problem coming the way of all businesses, not just the state agents, right? There's a tool for this, there's a tool for that, and fucking drag this wire from over here to over there, and that'll work. It's gonna be a nightmare, right? Imagine how many great sounding AI tools are gonna come your way in the next 12 to 24 months. There's a new AI tool, right? There's an AI for calls, there's an AI for emails, there's an AI for doing your portal leads, there's an AI for valuations, there's an AI for making your fucking lunch, right? It's it's everywhere. Each one looks really clever, each one demos really well, but each one is delivered by a different company, built to their specific rules in their own way. And none of them are bad in isolation, but all of them will be a bad idea without a central operating system. And remember, the central operating system is not in any way whatsoever a CRM. Just to be clear on that. An AI operator will need managing and monitoring individually. When I say an AI operator, an AI operator is an AI that does just one of those functions, it will qualify your portal leads. That's it. That one AI operator is like the student with the A in English and a photographic memory, and they will need managing. It's gonna be impossible to manage time-wise when you've got loads of them. And then when you do have a problem that comes up, trying to find out where that problem is in all of the training documents that you have in the company that you've given to all of the 10 people and all the different bits of information that you shared is just gonna be an absolute nightmare. Uh, here's a real-world example of this problem from one of the world's leading companies in terms of using AI. They're already two or three, maybe even four years ahead of the most cutting-edge estate agents. This is going to be a huge problem in 2026 and 2027, and it will cause most businesses and agents to just give up on AI. So, this is a problem that no one in our industry is talking about yet. Because despite the fact that there seems to be AI experts popping up everywhere on panels every week, none of them understand AI. The truth is that AI without constant training and deep context is almost always worse than no AI at all. It's well documented that uh back in 2019 I said a split had begun, uh, not just in our industry, but in all businesses. Wrote about it in one of my books, um, between those companies that are building big data centralized ecosystems and those that are left on CRMs. And that gap has been quietly widening, but it's about to crack wide open. On one side, companies will keep stacking tools, CRM, more dashboards, more logins, more AI tools, more random companies, more training, more work, more people. Uh and on the other side, agents and businesses will be using a completely different architecture. And I predict that in this new world of AI, by 2029, all of the businesses on the wrong side of that divide will die. Not some of them, all of them. It's that big. Because the mess that they will accidentally create for themselves will be just too great for them to recover from. Leading to them to just give up on AI. And the distance between them and the people on the other side of the divide will just be too great for them to make up. It's just like those that got it right or wrong at the start of the internet. Once you fall behind with this sort of technology, you're just you're not catching up. It's not that new competitors won't come along, but all of the current ones that get it wrong will just die. You know, Kodak invented the first ever digital camera. They had an engineer who invented the first ever digital camera in something like 1978, and they he showed them and they went, bury that, because that will ruin what we're doing. Just get rid of that. I know for many of you, you might find this all a bit hard to get your head around. So, this change that we're talking about, or that we're going to experience, is bigger and faster, and it will happen in just a matter of a few years. And the reason it will happen in a matter of just a few years is because companies have been building towards this since I was discussing it 10 years ago. It feels like an overnight change. But many of you in this room are already experiencing it. Your businesses have transformed more than you could ever imagine. Whilst for other agents, things are going into decline. I've spoken about one centre of truth with the data for so long now. I've predicted everything that we're seeing today, and I don't feel like I'm going to suddenly be wrong. So, what does this new world look like for estate agents? One where the problem of what to action has gone away, along with the problem of staff just having too many things to handle. One where RPE in a state agency could mean that estate agents had an RPE as good as some of the best businesses in the world. How could that change be possible so fast from where we are today? I want you to forget me as Mark, the CEO of Iceberg Digital, and imagine me as my son Fraser, who's just about to turn 18, and enter the workforce. I want you to imagine he's opened an estate agency near you. I'm going to walk you through what day in his estate agency looks like. And I want you to mentally compare it with yours and just think about how this might start to play out. Fraser's driving into work, taps his phone, and he says, Morning, Azair. Before I get into work, can you just talk me through what happened yesterday?

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Yesterday was busy but controlled. Across the business there were 18 new inquiries. I managed to speak to eleven of them directly. I have arranged eight viewings that are now booked for this week. I've confirmed access with six owners, and coordinated diaries with three different negotiators. Seven inquiries still need contact. I'll continue trying them today.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

Okay, that was that's like three people's jobs, all done before nine o'clock.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

Okay, what does today look like, Osaire? You've got four valuations today. The first one is at 10 a.m. at 7 the Broadwalk. I have planned the route and looked at the traffic, and you need to leave the office at 9 30 a.m. to get there five minutes early. There are six live sales approaching key milestones. I've highlighted the critical ones to Haley in the office. I've also picked up strong online engagement across four properties, including 16 Miller's Road, so I'm already reaching out to those buyers to try and generate. Viewings. I've also identified 12 properties in your area that are clearly struggling with other agents, as they are either a long time on the market or have had price reductions. So I have drafted 12 personalized WhatsApps about how we can specifically help those sellers by explaining which buyers we have that match and what we have sold nearby, and given the messages to the team to sense check and send. But so far, none have been approved or sent. Would you like me to remind the team to do this? That's working at Scow without burning anyone out. Okay, out of all of that, what needs me today? One valuation at two Highcliffe Gardens from last month has re-engaged overnight. They've read your pricing content and revisited your case studies. I recommend a short personal follow-up from you. And looking at previous engagement, this client seems to respond best to phone calls, and usually at around 3 30 p.m. Would you like me to book you out for 20 minutes at that time for you to make that call?

Live Orchestrations: Valuations And Follow‑Ups

SPEAKER_02 22:48

So that's as there looking across my whole ecosystem and just watching the data. Right? I don't even have to need to know I don't even need to know where to look in the software uh to find it, let alone uh have the time to do it. So it books me out of the time at 3.30 for me to make that call. So anyway, 9.30. Off he goes to do his valuation. And before uh he heads into his valuation, he says, uh before I go into this valuation at 7 the Broadwalk, can you tell me a bit about the owner?

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Yes, no problem. The owner is called Mark Burgess. He came into the system from a right move inquiry back in November, and he's been on a few viewings with us. He's very well informed and very confident that he already knows the answer to most questions. So I'd keep the conversation calm, structured, and let him feel like he's winning, even when he isn't.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

So I I do my vows, because that's what humans are good at. Um, and I head back to the office. I've just walked back in from my valuations. I've been out doing these three, four valuations, and historically, this is where everything starts to fall apart for me. I've got to write up the valuations, I'll catch up with what's going on in the office, I start putting out fires that other people have lit. So I can just turn to Azair, Fraser turns to Azair, and he says, uh, since I've been out of the office, what's changed?

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Quite a bit. Across the business, I've chased 23 sets of viewing feedback. Five buyers responded positively. One of them, Kelly Brown on 98 Black Horse Road, has made an offer of 490,000 pounds. So I flagged it for you to review and get involved.

SPEAKER_02 24:10

Chase 23 viewings of feedback with no person involved, and then flag the part that needs the human touch.

SPEAKER_00 24:16

Okay, what else is there? I've also taken the transcripts from the valuations you completed today and written four personalized presentations to be sent out. Each one includes pricing rationale, marketing plan, and a recap email in your tone of voice. Would you like to review them now?

SPEAKER_02 24:29

That's just giving you your evening back, right? Writing up four personalized presentations along with the follow-up emails. So 3 30 rolls around. As promised, Jose has blocked the time out of my diary. Because this is human work, again. Right? So before I make that prospecting call, before Fraser makes the prospect prospecting call, he says, uh, okay, Jose, I'm gonna make this call. Anything I need to know before I call them?

Evenings Back And Consistent Marketing

SPEAKER_00 24:52

Yes, they previously hesitated on fee. They've just read your case study about how you achieve more for sellers than other agents. So I suggest reassurance, not numbers. They are clearly buying into you, but just need to be reassured.

SPEAKER_02 25:03

Perfect. So we roll through the rest of the day, and then it gets to six o'clock. Uh just after six, Fraser gets to shut his laptop and picks up his phone and says to his air, is there anything unresolved before I go home?

SPEAKER_00 25:19

Everything important is moving. There is nothing critical you need to know currently. One thing to flag though, you haven't posted a new blog article for nine days. Consistency matters here. Last month, four valuation requests came directly from your blog pages. So I've written a new article for you to review. It's in your tone of voice, uses the SEO keywords that have historically performed best, and builds on the topics that generated the most engagement previously. If you'd find it useful, I can just take care of this for you every week.

SPEAKER_03 25:45

Well, there you have it, everyone. What an incredible look at the future of real estate. Mark, you've launched a platform. I know you've got your own clients on it, and I hope we see you out here in Australia. I'm actually coming to the UK in June. I'm speaking over there in Birmingham. Look forward to catching up with you. But Mark, thank you for joining us on We Are Selling.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

Thanks very much.