Earlier last month I presented to a group of real estate professionals from all around Australia. It is what I learned from the other speakers and the workshop that I would like to talk about today.
I identified three key learnings about the property industry which I would like to share with you.
1. Attracting Young & Emerging Talent
I was amazed to learn that most of the delegates were struggling to attract and employ young talent, especially when you consider how financially successful top performing real estate professionals are. It appears that the principal barrier to selecting young talent is that the industry as a whole does not advertise the profession in a way that makes millennials and next gen’ers take notice. They are not structuring their job advertisements to answer the one fundamental question this group of young Australians want an answer to: “What’s in it for me?”. Yes they talk about the potential earnings and the potential lifestyle, but they don’t talk about what attributes proven high performers have, they don’t talk about the critical success attributes required to be a future successful real estate salesperson, they don’t focus on the alignment of heart, mind and soul.
The Ray White Group are certainly leading in this area of truly understanding what attributes are required to be a highly successful real estate professional. Over the last couple of years they have assessed all of the high performers in their network and from these results have developed High Performance Role Benchmarks. The resultant ability of being able to measure “fit” to these benchmarks has enabled them to not only improve the quality of candidates that apply for roles, but also ensure that they only select new employees that have a high potential of being outstanding performers.
2. There is a big difference between Elite Real Estate Salespeople and others
The presentation by Ash Weston (Ray White Frankston) was an absolute eye-opener for me, and I think also for many of his peers in the room. Ash is like a machine, unbelievably driven to succeed and organises his days (all seven of them each week) to the second. Literally back-to-back work commitments with social and me time also in the diary. Ash exemplifies what it takes to be not only one of Australia’s most successful property professionals but also to be in the top 3% of global real estate professionals. He is not even 40 years old and has already sold more than 800 properties!! So, for all those aspiring property professionals, if you want to be the best then buckle up and commit because you are going to need every ounce of energy you have available.
3. Being a fantastic Real Estate Salesperson does not necessarily make you a fantastic business owner
It should be no surprise that individuals who are great salespeople can struggle with the requirements of running a successful business. The reality is that the critical success attributes of top salespeople are usually very different to the success attributes of top sales managers and business owners. The refreshing aspect to this dilemma is how many of the delegates recognised this challenge and were actively seeking advice and support to assist them to maximise sales potential and run a very efficient business.
If you would like to learn more about how to improve candidate attraction and selection processes, don’t hesitate to call the Peoplogica office and speak to one of our team members.
Written by Mark Purbrick
