The Same but Different

Richard Rawlings reports from the NAR Conference in New Orleans

Published in PROPERTYdrum magazine Dec 2014

We Brits often look cynically at the way estate agents work in the USA. American agents, or Realtors, go to great lengths to deliver extraordinary customer service, yet some of the initiatives employed might be regarded by some as cheesy or outdated.

I wanted to investigate whether the latest techniques and concepts used by agents over the pond might be usefully employed in the UK and I knew from previous experience that the National Association of Realtors annual conference would be the place to find out.

The NAR conference is the biggest estate agency trade show in the world although is inevitably focused on the US market. Nevertheless I spotted a handful of progressive British agents at the event. Interestingly these tend to be agents who are successful here in part due to their open-minded approach to embracing ideas they see working overseas (eg Newmans, Sarah Mains, Robinson Jackson, Martyn Gerrard as well as suppliers such as Reapit) and they continually research new approaches in order to differentiate themselves.

The four-day event, held in a 1.1 million sqft venue with over 400 exhibitors, attracts over 20,000 delegates attending seminars presented by over 200 speakers, including astronaut Capt. Mark Kelly and former US President Bill Clinton.

There is clearly an appetite for personal development and the best attended seminars were those presented by high profile trainers such as Ed Hatch, David Knox and Bruce Gardner. I was expecting some new trainers to come through the ranks with loads of new ideas and techniques. It appears not and I was surprised to discover that various aspects of the use of technology in agency are left to the providers of such technology rather than holistic agency trainers.

I asked Ed Hatch what he felt the greatest challenges and opportunities are for agents. He told me that in his view too many agents rely too heavily on technology instead of relationships. However, other speakers, such as Sara Critchfield, founder of Upworthy (one of the world’s fastest-growing SM sites) takes a more contemporary view and suggests that whilst technology and social media should actively support the development of relationships, social media in particular should be used with extreme care, good planning and always with attention-grabbing content. In this age of “likeability” thousands of agents are alienating their sphere of influence by thoughtlessly dumping irrelevant content (like houses for sale) on Twitter and wasting opportunities to promp virality with useful locally-based information. Sara suggests Clickability+Shareability+Distribution=Virality. In estate agency this usually means ensuring that you are seen to be a generous ambassador for your area and thoroughly involved and informed about local issues.

Sara suggested that Twitter and Facebook should not be seen as frontrunners in your marketing toolbox, but as drivers of web traffic and that it’s critical to ensure that engaging and ever-changing content, images of people and events as well as personal video should also feature strongly on an agent’s website if SEO is to be maximised.

Economist Pamela Ermen of Real Estate Guidance Inc developed the local ambassador theme further and suggested that agents should be able to predict housing trends by keeping informed about local employment trends (she suggests setting up Google alerts for local employers and using the information gained to demonstrate authority on instructions). Pamela also highlighted the opportunity to predict and demonstrate expertise in the market by recognizing monthly movement in “absorption ratios”. This is the proportion of sales arranged in relation to stock where anything higher than 50% is a sellers’ market and below 50% is a buyers’ market.

At the expo, personal promotion featured highly, with agents’ photos on everything from business cards to pens, for sale boards, calendars and chopping boards (yuk!) There were loads of “closing (completion) gifts” on display including boxed sets of agency-branded knives and full home maintenance services, the latter being a great way of retaining client loyalty and prompting remarkability.

Around 60% of the exhibitors were technology-focused and included businesses supplying cloud-based CRM services, highly creative direct mail digital print services (such as an app that allows you to take a picture on your smartphone and instantly convert is to a postcard delivered within 48 hours) as well as a number of suppliers of MLS services that are not (yet) wholly relevant to the UK. There was also exceptional support from lenders such as Wells Fargo, with lollipops to iPads to cars being given away.

In essence it would seem that British agents are technologically advanced, but US agents win hands down on relationships!

The event is being held in San Diego next year and I’d suggest that any British agent attending would be richly rewarded.