11 Dec Outsourcing and streamlining the process

There have been some big advancements in outsourcing.  Smart business owners and agents are using this to ensure they are able to grow their income.

Topic – Top 5 Prop Tech developments of 2018

Mentor – Kylie Davis

• We have lots of menial tasks
• The mistakes we make
• Be specific in how you brief staff

Property Management Matters with Tara Bradbury – Getting your ‘online’ presence in line with what you do ‘offline’

Transcript:

Kevin:   Back with us once again, Kylie Davis. And Kylie is talking to us this week about the five proptech developments she saw during 2018. Kylie is from RealContent.Guru. Use the link to talk further to Kylie and her team.

Kevin:    Outsourcing and streamlining the process is what we’re going to talk about today. We’re using outsourcing. We use Beepo of course, and we talk to them all the time. But outsourcing is just becoming massive in our industry Kylie, isn’t it?

Kylie:   It sure is, and I think that’s because as an industry, we have a lot of … Like the more technology, makes life a lot easier. the more it expects us to get done in a day. And so outsourcing is a great way for us to affordably scale our businesses, and get more work done at a higher standard.

Kevin:   This is the sort of stuff that can be automated. There’ve been a lot of discussions about outsourcing, how limited it is because some of the people you use, don’t have a good grasp of English language. But there are so many other things that can be done at the backend that don’t require for that to happen Kylie.

Kylie:   Yeah, I think, well, they posed one of them and we’ve also cloud stuff. The ones that are the really good ones, are those that have the structures in place, that make explaining what you want and the level of delivery that you require, really easy and make that something that can be explained quite quickly. And they’ve got the tools in place to help you monitor and measure it.

Kevin:   And those tools have made a huge difference to how we do outsourcing. My personal experience with it has been, that you know the mistakes we’ve made, mistakes that we made. It wasn’t with outsourcing because our induction wasn’t good enough, and the tools that we use. I think you and I have talked about Trello, is one of the ones that we use quite a lot.

Kylie:   Yeah, yeah. Slack, there’s that one that’s good, that’s useful as well. Look, I think 99% of the mistakes, especially that Australians make, when they’re outsourcing, is they forget how colloquial we are in our language. And how often unclear we can be when we’re asking for something to be done. I know that I’m completely terrible at it.

Kylie:   Nathan and I have a Beepo employee who does a lot of animation and design. He’s super duper clever, but most of the time it’s because I’ve asked for something in a very strange way. So I suppose what we’re seeing though is, in the real estate industry in particular, these developments, of these systems that sit over the top of the outsourcers, that make sure that that communication is really clear. And that the delivery, you know, frameworks around it are really well understood. And that job descriptions are very structured and that it really minimises that error. And gets people working and productive as quickly as possible for your business.

Kevin:   Yeah, I think too, making sure when you do outsource, that the company you’re going with has some really good disciplines in place for their people, how they train them. I know it’s a … I say again, the mistakes we made was that we didn’t do enough training. We didn’t have our disciplines documented enough. And it was typical. You hinted at it there. But Aussies, we’re really good at just saying, we’ll do this and we assume that people know what we’re talking about and how to do it. But it’s not quite that simple.

Kylie:   No, no, it’s not at all. It is just actually really hard to simplify your language, or to structure it in a way. So I think that’s why those companies that have got those platforms in place, that take into account the way that you have to brief, and the way that you need to ask the work. I think the companies that don’t have those structures in place, are ones that you want to be careful with as well, because it means that there’s staff in the other country are maybe not being looked after the way that they need to be. So there’s a level of comfort in knowing that everything’s above board and being done well, when you’re using some of the bigger outsourcesr.

Kylie:   And also, I think that there’s a group of them now that are starting to really specialise in the kind of services that real estate agents want. And there’s something I’ll throw out, to be a little bit controversial, is that those businesses that struggle, those real estate businesses that struggle with outsourcing are often the same businesses that struggle with their own staff. And so, some of the issues around that are usually tied back to leadership and clarity around leadership and how you treat your team more than issues with outsourcing.

Kevin:   Well said. And there’s a bit of a sting in that comment. And if it stung you, well, you probably deserved it. Hey Kylie, good talking to you. We’re going to catch up tomorrow. We’ll talk about marketing and social media. Because we’re talking about the top tech developments of 2018, with our guest Kylie Davis, who you can see, and she’ll be joining us at Inman, at the end of January. Your chance to come with us as well. Have a look for the button right on the top of the home page at RE Uncut.

Kevin:   An exclusive invitation to join us in New York City for the Inman Connect New York City conference, for 2019. There’s a brochure, if you click on that link, that’ll tell you all about it. We’ll look after your flights, your accommodation, getting you in, interviewing you, and you’ll even get a year’s subscription to Coicio. There you go, all that, so just click on link. Kylie, we’ll talk again tomorrow morning. Thank you for your time.

Kylie:   Thanks so much Kevin. Talk soon.