Ray White ignites Sydney to navigate market

MORE than 500 Ray White NSW and ACT members filled The Ivy ballroom in Sydney today as Australasia’s most successful real estate business wrapped up it’s national training series called Ignite19 featuring powerful interviews and specialist sessions with top performers.

More than 2500 members have now attended an Ignite session across the country in the last few weeks. There was not a seat to be had in the ballroom as sales agents and property managers were encouraged to live a life beyond fear and adapt to change.

“We have actually never been in a better place as a group,” said Ray White Managing Director Dan White (pictured above).

“There is no doubt that as a network we go further together. We began 2019 as a group knowing that we have never been in better shape. We have never had more productive people and we have never had more market share than ever before, so I do have confidence in the potential of our company,” Mr White said.

“It’s easy to say that this year is going to be tough but we believe 2019 is going to be better than the last. We’ve started every year in our 117 year history this way.

“Our energy, creativity and our ideas make a massive difference to our vendors in our ability to create competition.

“It’s never been more important to create value and it’s never been more important to create competition - that is our role.

“The best thing about Ray White is that when things are difficult, we can find answers internally. You have members beside you and around you who are doing things quite remarkable, so look inside our group for support.

“We have members helping others with inspiration and we like to help our members share their stories.

“I think this is our best year ever and we are definitely going for it this year," Mr White said.

Ray White NSW Metro CEO Andrew McCulloch said his network had 10.9 per cent market share, twice as big its nearest rival. “We continue to talk about being the hunter not the hunted,” he said. “We have come together as a team to put together a strategy and there’s no doubt we have the most comprehensive offering compared to our rivals. Right now our greatest challenge is our rising stock levels but this issue has a silver lining.”

One highlights of the day was the keynote address by Gold Coast-based professional big wave surfer Mark Mathews.

The three-time Oakley Big Wave Award winner held the crowd captivated and drew their applause as he spoke of how he’d made a living achieving the unfathomable in the face of death and danger.

“Everything I speak about is always about high performance, how can you perform at a higher level than what you do already?” he said.

“Usually the biggest roadblock to that is fear. You have to go through a process of change to become better at what you’re doing and that change is inherently scary for everyone, so change is usually the biggest roadblock to performance.”

Mr Mathews told the crowd he wasn’t born fearless, and was terrified of the ocean as a young boy. “Performance is always your level of ability and level of motivation,” he explained.

“So the level of ability you have and how much motivation you have to implement that ability, and then how much motivation you have to get better at that ability – it’s always that combination. Usually the most stressful things in your life, once mastered, become the most fulfilling.”

Mathews is planning a comeback following a wipeout on the New South Wales south coast in late 2016 which almost cost him his leg and ability to surf again.

“The most important thing to dealing with fear is that you have to want it more than you fear it,” he said.

“You’ve got to want the success and fulfilling moments in life, more than you fear it.”

Ray White NSW Blue CEO Jason Andrew said Australasian network was tracking for a personal best in auctions.

“This calendar year I’d like to challenge our PB. The competition creators is our mantra. Brian White always says we are a springboard but a springboard only helps you if you jump off it otherwise you are just standing there looking pretty!”

Ray White's head of property management Emily Sim (pictured here) spoke to more than 150 property managers from across ACT and NSW.

"What type of property management business are you going to be? Client centric or high volume and low cost? You need to know this before you decide you choose your next software package," Ms Sim asked.

"On choosing your property management strategy as the industry finally evolves to provide automated property services and property managers enjoy the ability to be customer first focused.

Ray White NSW PM BDE Daniel Piredda spoke about how retention of staff was the solution to the retention of landlord clients.

"We now have the data that tells us that if your staff are leaving, your clients will follow, what is your staff retention policy?"

Melinda Fiori, head of property management at Ray White Erskineville spoke about property management being a service based industry and how your reputation is on you.

"It's not alright to ignore your clients, you need to act fast. They are your clients and it's reasonable that they want what they want," she said.

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One of the most successful auction agents in the group, Ray White Erskineville director Ercan Ersan told the members that auction campaigns were even more powerful in now in this changing market.

“Auction work, and there’s nothing worse than sweating on a bank valuation to see a deal fall over. I still get sweaty and anxious before every single auction as I am emotionally invested in every auction I conduct,” Mr Ersan said, who has an 88 per cent auction clearance rate.

“The more you do them, the better you’ll get. The more you do something, the better you get at it, it’s not rocket science but if you fail, learn to pick yourself back up," he said.

“Certain properties will always do well in any market, the auction process is a process. It’s a tool to get your owners an unconditional contract, so that’s a very powerful motivator.

“You’d be mad not to do auctions. Even when the market was booming, owner’s were still very high, so our job remains the same in any market.” Mr Ersan and his business partner created a vendor management app, so their owners can track their campaign on their phone.

“It’s a point of difference for us in our area.”

The final speaker was one of the group’s top performers, Troy Dowker of Ray White Mermaid Beach, and the fastest agent to reach Chairman’s Elite level of in Queensland in just eight months.

Mr Dowker has tripled his business in two years by changing his structural processes.

“Cleaning the data was time consuming, and we had a long term goal. By no means was this a short term goal. Then we moved to using geo-specific precincts in My Desktop (Ray White's CRM). My core area is beachside and beachfront properties in the $1M to $7M category on the southern end of the Gold Coast

“No-one else does this, so it's a point of difference and it has definitely proven fruitful with $1M in CGI. It offers real time information."

But even Mr Dowker admits that 80 per cent of what he has achieved in the last two years was "a mental state, and the power of your own belief but you can all do it”.