29 Jan Sell more – speak less

Market share was one of the criteria used to select Malek Younan from Ray White, Gladstone Park in Victoria as Australasia’s top agent.

Topic – View from the top

Mentor – Malek Younan

• How to grow your marketshare
• Measure growth
• Everyone contributes

Property Management Matters with Tara Bradbury – Handover from BDM to PM always needs attention

Transcript:

Kevin:  Our guest mentor this week is Malek Younan from Ray White Gladstone Park in Victoria. He’s been named as the top agent in Australia in the top 100 residential real estate agents list that was released by SQM Research. There are different categories used to judge this award. The first of those is market share. We’re gonna work through all of them as the week unfolds. Gonna be publishing a video in the next week or so which is a full extended video with Malek. We cover how he won the award, about his marketplace, so watch out for that it’s coming up shortly. Let’s take you to the second portion of my chat with Malek.

First of all, let’s have a look at market share. Your market share around 19%, that’s what the figures show us here. That really doesn’t leave much room for the other operators in the area. Tell me about how you’ve built that up, because anything, in my view, anything around that kind of market share is almost market dominance.

Malek:   Definitely, look to be honest, we’re actually now a little bit above that. We’re into the early 20th, 23%, 24%. We could keep close eye on it. But just to give you an idea, we’ve got around probably six to seven other competitors that we’re competing with. So in order to have nearly, from our figures anyway, nearly close to a quarter, about 24% market share. It is quite large for an office to be open, trading seven months. It is massive but again, myself and Philip are very active in the area. We give back to the community and a lot of people know us. I went to the local high schools there. And that’s what’s allowed us to be a springboard in order to become one of the most enthusiastic, most energetic sales office team.

Kevin:  If I can just pick up on that point. You talk about enthusiasm, energy, drive. You come into an area like that and in a matter of only months, under a year, certainly you’ve captured about 25% of the market by your own figures there. So how much of that do you put down to that energy, that drive, that I mean obviously when you start out you don’t have a track record, or you might have done but your office doesn’t.

Malek:   Oh, of course. Not only that … you’re spot on, that’s exactly what … very good. So myself and my partner we have, like I said, 16 odd years plus experience in the same core area. But our office doesn’t. No one knows Ray White. So, we were working for another competitor beforehand, which everyone knew. We built that team up very powerfully. And now to branch out on our own, because we can just again, back ourselves up very well.

But that enthusiasm and that drive … I’ll give you an example. In our area in the last six months, we’ve broken two or three different suburb records. Now when every other agent in that area is talking about doom and gloom and media is obviously [00:03:00] that familiar day in day out. People gravitate toward us like a magnet and they actually give their biggest asset to sell Kevin, based on our clearance rate. Based on what we achieve for the vendor. Because anyone can sell homes. I’ll tell you this much, anyone can sell real estate but for what price it is different. We do get above average ranges. There’s a government website it’s called RateMyAgent. If you look into it, you can see by suburbs on price average of what sells we sell above average than any other agent.

So it’s not just SQM. It’s not just all these other things. When you put them all together, based on our attitude and our culture in our office, it’s way different to every other complacent agent I believe out there [crosstalk 00:03:50] in a big way.

Kevin:  Yeah, I wanna … I ask that question deliberately because I get a bit frustrated sometimes. And there was some media where a top line agent left an established group, we don’t need mention their name, and the criticism he made was that groups are too vanilla. And here’s a classic example of an operator like yourself, you’ve moved to a very well-established brand. It really is, the brand can take you so far but it’s up to the individual. It’s what you do with it that’s the critical thing.

Malek:   Absolutely, absolutely. Look Ray White [inaudible 00:04:27] biggest  network, it is massive, it is got one of the probably best training. I worked for two other franchises Kevin, and this one here, by far, supersedes all their training, They actually give training on how to prepare for the next two years ahead of your business which is absolutely astonishing, compared to every other agent that’s just training you about what’s happening now. Any you are right. It’s what we do within our business that makes the team, makes that brand.

You can have any operator come in. You have a great brand, but if the operators aren’t good, you got an awesome engine [inaudible 00:05:01] awesome engine. You have a bad driver on that engine mate, you’ll be going in the wrong direction.

Kevin:  Yeah, if you give it the wrong fuel it’s just not going to go. ‘Cause I’ve seen people join the Ray White group and not succeed. So it’s not the brand. It’s up to the individual.

Malek:   Oh, absolutely. You’ve got great brands out there especially if you mention Ray White. That’s why we’ve obviously partnered up with them because they are the best I believe. But if you don’t have the right operator, if you don’t have the right driver, the right culture, the right mindset, the right vision, you won’t go anywhere. And we went into a … we started a business from scratch in a matter … this correcting. It’s not going down it’s just correcting its normal real estate culture. In order to become a top 15 or 17 in the group in six seven months. You’re right, that must have something to do with it. Yeah you’re right.

Kevin:  I’m now going to come to you and ask you a question because I’m … hypothetically it is still their role play here. I’m about to open an office in an area that’s not in opposition to you whatsoever. And I wanna know what you do differently that I can do, so that I can get to the level you’re at as quickly as you do. How would you answer me that? What are you do differently that I can do?

Malek:   Do different to what every other of your competitor does. If they’re doing quarter page print, do a half-page and one-page print. If they’re doing mediocre photography, do professional photography. I’ll give you an example, with my videos there’s a couple of links in there. You know how people have the normal videos, “Hello, this is Malek Younan from Ray White etc.”. All their videos now on really selective properties, where I don’t even talk. We’re paying a whole lot of money for them and we are getting bigger … the agent doesn’t talk and we’re doing a mini movie which attracts more clients out to look at it. Which attracts more buyers to that property. Which attracts more qualified buyers. And we attract more of a crowd, more buyers, bigger end results. Just a bit of a snippet.

Drops, don’t do generic drops. Do things differently. Even my style in dress sense you’ll see is very different. People go for suits and they go for ties. Yeah, I’ll do that on my occasions of auctions, and stuff like that, but I’m different. Very relaxed sort of no socks boat shoe style, you know I change it up as well. There’s a lot of agents that do it out there as well. But just be different. Just be real. I’ll tell everyone out there it’s a people’s business. It’s not real estate business it’s people. You connect, you’ll capture everyone’s heart.

Kevin:  Yeah, and it’s important to, you mentioned earlier, about looking ahead at your business. What’s it going to be like in two years time. That enables you to be pretty sharp on the group too. Because if do something different I can guarantee that someone’s gonna copy you. So you need to know what the next level is. Which is where your planning goes.

Malek:   Oh, absolutely. And we got some certain, some very nice ideas for this year. But it’s being different. It’s being real Kevin, it’s being a human. Do to others what you want them to be doing to you. Just be honest.

And doing back to some of these figures. With clearance rates and achieving the owner’s expectations, we don’t go in there and say, “Oh, your home is worth a million”, when it’s worth 800. We don’t do that. We don’t wanna do that. We don’t buy business. We create the right amount of competition creators. Buyers can achieve that result but by being ethical and honest with all our clients. And just be real. Just talk to them like a normal human being. That’s all you need to … that’s what people want.

Kevin:  Tomorrow with Malek, we’ll have a look at the second key indicator in the judging. And that was sales numbers. Malek, back again tomorrow morning.