It wasn’t so long ago that I got my degree, and so I’ve noticed that people in real estate still consider me to be quite young, especially when they hear that I’ve managed a team of real estate agents, property inspectors, auctioneers and the like. The real estate industry is an old one, and as I’ve often said on this blog, not a lot of innovation happens. But being younger, people tell me that I’ve been faster to respond to the crazy changes in the world. Video auctions, social distancing when inspecting open homes, and even the tricky question of where to get bulk hand sanitizer for openings. I’ve managed to handle all this an more, and while I did break a sweat, I wouldn’t call it novel or interestingly innovative. So what then, if anything, does innovation look like in real estate companies? I’ll explore it for you here.
Company Culture
One of the huge advantages that exciting companies have is that people are really motivated to work there, and build a reputation for themselves. Think of building rockets to fly to the moon, or to cure cancer. Who wouldn’t want to join that team, and stay there? In real estate, it’s harder to build up a bond with your team, because everyone is always moving around between different developers, different companies, and different cities, to get the best deal for themselves. The commission structure is a huge motivator for agents and staff to move around to wherever they can get paid the most. So from the perspective of the entire industry, everyone stays in the game. However, from the perspective of each individual company, turnover is really high. That’s a big problem, if you want to keep good staff. You might feel that there isn’t much that you can do about this, and that it’s just part of the real estate industry, but I think we can take a leaf out of the book of big companies like Microsoft or Google, or whoever is building the rockets these days. We (as an industry) can start to do team-building exercises. Why does no-one in real estate do that? I know it’s strange (for the industry), but I can’t think of any reason why not. So let’s give it a try! I’d like to first turn our attention to those team building exercises that are shared experiences, designed to bring people together, and make everyone feel more like a team. A great example of this is guided meditations for the workplace, where someone (an expert) runs a meditation session for your team. If you feel closer to your team, you’re happier, and work more effectively together. And importantly, you’re less likely to run off to a worse organization that happens to pay better.
The practicalities of team building come into play. Trying to go on a camping retreat together interstate is hard at the best of times, but with lock-downs happening all over the place, it’s even harder. A great answer to the question of pandemic-friendly, team-building exercises, is to run in-house activities, like zoom meditation programs. They’re just like any other set of meditation programs for corporations, except they’re run by a professional over zoom, so that your workers can participate, even when they’re on the road and inspecting houses, or in between open homes.
Better training
If you were to become an apprentice at a metal fabrication shop, you would not be expected to pick up the tools for the first time, and be able to slot right in, next to an experienced worker. You’d get it wrong, it would be crazy. So if the tools for real estate (these days) are computers, iPads, and mobile phones, why should our expectation be any different? There should be solid, high-quality training for all agents. There are a couple of ways to approach this. One is to bring in experts to do training, as you would for any other job. Another is to do it in-house, with a clever app that can give everyone the information they need. The latter approach is better, because it means that you can have training resources available for everyone, and they can access them whenever they want, and in whatever order they want.
I’ve just come back from a weekend of training with my real estate team. We did two sessions, on the first day, with a team of experts. It was a lot of fun, getting everyone together, and we all learned a lot. It was a great way to get started on the right foot, getting the new recruits up to speed with the rest of us on the things we’d learned over the years. We were also able to get some advice on team building from the experts, which was great. This is a fun way to start the year.
Concluding
We have no excuse for not being as innovating and exciting as we possibly can be. As an industry, it’s important for us to make use of team building exercises like corporate meditation programs, and better training processes, like app-based training that people can complete at home. Here’s to the future of real estate, and to getting all of us excited about it!