You’re scrolling through Instagram or driving along a local street when you see a shiny new real estate office appear. As a brand, they’ve been in the market for five minutes yet they’re dominating the local market. How is it so? Natalie Hastings investigates.
WHO IS THIS force come to take over your home patch? Check out their incredible on-point branding! Their website and user-experience is game-changing in your market and their property management software has unprecedented client interaction that puts your own portal to shame.
You look at the website. It’s one person and an assistant. That’s it. How did they create such an amazing identity and business momentum to match? Outsourcing. That’s how.
In order to offer a full suite of professional agency services in this brave new world of ‘more’, you don’t have to be a big business. On the contrary: you can look big and continue to be little by contracting or outsourcing services to trusted professionals. This not only improves your cashflow, but it allows you to appear much larger and more influential than you actually might be or feel.
Here’s why you should consider outsourcing in your real estate agency.
CASHFLOW IS KING
It’s simply not good enough to ignore the need to up your service standards and brand prestige because you don’t have the skills to be a marketing guru or expert trust accountant yourself.
Success in management – whether as a principal or a department head – is all about recognising expertise in others and delegating appropriately to them. The benefits of outsourcing specific roles to trusted partners are many; key amongst them is not having to worry about payroll tax on their invoices or making superannuation payments.
SCALABILITY
Every real estate business goes through peaks and troughs. Outsourced talent is ideally scalable, meaning that when you’re flush with funds you can invest a little more in your social media marketing expert, graphic designer or local guerrilla print media campaign, and you can easily tighten the reins when things are a little leaner.
Importantly, you’re not dropping the ball on your business’ service delivery to clients; you might just up- or downscale depending on your budget at the time. Some functions don’t require a full-time employee, so outsourcing can be nimble and flexible.
EXPERTISE
You might be an amazing negotiator. A keen lister, a smooth problem-solver when it comes to tenant-landlord dynamics, an amazing administrator. Your time is best spent assisting clients from your skillset, rather than trying to be a website administrator, trust accountant, marketing guru and Instagram champion. Know your limitations and instead look to reputable outsourcing partners to help you appear larger than you are as a business, offering your clients superior service without having to grow your employee base substantially.
WHAT CAN YOU OUTSOURCE?
Where to start? Streamline your accounting practices with the use of a reputable outsourced trust accounting partner, who can assist your property management team to ‘get their database right’, in addition to balancing the books and facilitating all aspects of trust account management.
You probably already outsource: you just think of it as having trades such as plumbers, electricians and other property experts on call to assist your landlords. You wouldn’t make your property managers learn a trade before thinking them qualified to help your clients, would you?
You may also consider outsourcing condition reports and routine inspections – a clever way of handling big workloads in an efficient, cost-effective manner that takes care of your landlords’ assets without compromise.
There’s so many ways you can look big yet be little, so consider using others to improve your service.
