Getting smarter with digital pays big dividends.

Principal Coaching Made Simple

Mentor – Barney McGrath

• Digital Synergy Crucial
• Integrate multiple suppliers
• Company Owned Data Base and Website are key
• Social is not about Ego Stats
• Invest for greater control

Transcript:

Kevin: As we promised yesterday at the end of our session with Barney McGrath, from McGrath Consulting. Links to get to Barney, of course, if you want to take it any further with the topics that we’re talking about today, maybe dig a little bit deeper, we can only give you superficial content in this show. But certainly if you want to take it further with Barney, use any one of the links that’ll take you straight to his website.

Kevin: Barney give us some insight into digital. And you touched on digital yesterday, integrating it through so that you’ve got a definite system. What are your tips on that?

Barney: Okay, so I’m going to just start with a quick observation. Most agencies I deal with today have databases that are quite extensive. Many are back five, 10, 15 years and there’s this mud pile of data that they don’t quite know what to do with. The same time that they’ve gone out and they’ve pushed their agents to the front and they’ve encouraged their agents to enter data, to nurture data, to talk to their clients.

Barney: And as a result clients are either not being loved and looked after or the relationship has been totally given over to the agent and when they leave they take the relationship with them. I think the database of the company is one of our largest assets, only second to our property management rent role. So if we start with the database in the center of our universe and say, “What do I need to do,to make far better segmentation, far more appropriate conversation and far better client nurture going forward and have the ability to have pop out at the back end of that, the best five, 10, 20, maybe 50 phone calls each agents should be making each week?

Barney: So if you step back a little, Kevin, and say, “Okay, when the database is sitting in the middle of a page, what hangs off that?” I’ve got social media, I’ve got my EDM’s, so my app bound electronic communication, I’ve got my website, I’ve got portal sites all driving communication but often not talking to each other and often not actually driving people back to the website. The website is the tunnel of our database, short of actual data entry of open homes and things.

Barney: So this takes social media as a prime example. Whole lot of people put a whole lot of posts up, “Just listed. Just sold. Aren’t I fabulous? Testimonial. Blah, blah, blah.” And they get likes and they get followers but they don’t actually drive people back to their website. And when they do, they don’t have pixels on their website that allow them to track that inquiry to allow them to capture. So having landing pages on your website that are linked to social media and linked to outbound electronic communication.

Barney: So when these people do come back to our website we actually have an offer, we capture their details, we get it into our database and we start to move forward and discuss and talk about their futures is I think one of the single biggest goals that every single real estate company should be working on.

Kevin: Yeah, with digital, I guess, I just want to get your thoughts on this too about how much we invest in that. I mean, you’ve mentioned database, you’ve mentioned EDM’s, social, websites, even the portals. We’ve got to be investing more on these to get some control over that data and how it’s actually worked, Barney.

Barney: Yeah, look, and I’m actually not even sure it’s investing more, Kevin. I see companies spending, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars but doing it in piece-meal version. You know, we’ll go and spend thirty thousand dollars in social, we’ll build a new website, we’ll do that, we’ll do that, we’ll do that. But nobody has taken an overarching view and made sure that the end result of all of it, is we get people into our database and we’re able to talk to them and communicate.

Barney: So I don’t know technically or necessarily spending more, but it’s spending it more-

Kevin: More wisely.

Barney: permissively

Kevin: Yeah, yeah.

Barney: The other thing I’d say very quickly is there’s a multiplicity of suppliers out there that are each very, very good in each area. There are very few that traverse all areas. And there are a couple out there, you know, I’m working with a young girl at the moment, Lara Scott, who’s a genius at this. And I just think it’s a real opportunity and it’s not going to be a cost end-er, it’s actually going to probably going to take the same money and spend it more smartly.

Kevin: Yeah, that’s the bottom line. Spend it wisely. Hey, Barney, good on ya’, mate. We’ll come back. I want to talk to you about branding ’cause I know you’ve got a lot to offer in that area. We’ll do that tomorrow, Barney, when we come back. Thanks for your time, mate.

Barney: Alright, Kevin. I’ll look forward to it.