Winning the "moments" that matter

Ray White Chief Strategy Officer Mark McLeod opened proceedings by telling the packed room at the ICC that "winning the moments matters more than ever." 

Drawing on three decades in real estate, Mark said success in the industry was rarely built on single "heroic" moments, it was built on hundreds of small, important tasks executed consistently, week after week.

"It's the hundreds of little moments along the way, the conversations you didn't avoid, the follow-ups you made. This is where the results are won," Mark said. 

"We will pull apart every moment of the sales process and put it back together. Listen for the moment that applies to you, the door you need to walk through. When your moment comes, will you seize it? You have one shot. The work starts right here,  you can't win the listing, or the month, without winning the week."

To reinforce the message, every attendee was given a physical rubber ball, a tangible reminder to stay focused on the next critical conversation, decision or opportunity as it bounces their way. “Follow the habits, the processes and the moments. Our opposition simply cannot act like us,” Mark said.

Ray White’s sales conference centred on two key ideas. Use what you already have. Agents don't need to reinvent their business, the tools and data already available can be used to understand buyer behaviour and identify the right people to contact.

And ‘consistency beats heroics’. Results come from following proven habits and processes and capitalising on opportunities as they arise, even under pressure or during industry setbacks.

Day two of the conference will feature Dr Victoria Medvec from Northwestern University in Chicago, who will lead a powerful session on navigating difficult conversations, managing pressure and negotiation strategy.

Charles Touma: Winning the week, every week

Charles Touma, Ray White's number one inner south agent in NSW every year since 2007, in a session on the habits and business rhythms behind his sustained performance.

Charles' approach centres on activity over outcome. 

“I have never prioritised the transaction," he said. 

“It's about eyeballs, 10 face-to-face appointments a week. That's where the magic happens. We think the money is in the transaction, but it's in the machine that creates the transaction.”

That "machine" is built on disciplined tracking: calls drive activity, activity books buyer appointments, and every call and market appraisal is logged through Charles' own performance tracker, kept in his car. Buyers who don't convert aren't lost,  they're identified and added to the database as prospective sellers.

Local market knowledge underpins the model. 

"Paddington sets the tone for Redfern and Surry Hills," Charles said, describing years of what he called "hyper buyer work" by attending open homes across the inner west that leaves him knowing the market better than his own vendors. 

"It's all about market knowledge."

Twenty years in, Charles Touma says he's still driven to improve.

"I look at real estate in different phases, it's like building a house. You need labour, extra effort, it takes a lot to build a house. Some agents don't understand the extra effort that goes into it. I have never prioritised the transaction. For me, it’s all about eye balls, and I need 10 face to face appointments a day, that is where the magic happens.”

Luke O'Kelly: Turning prospecting into a discipline

Ray White West End Principal Luke O'Kelly followed with a session on treating prospecting not as an occasional activity but as a daily discipline, one that creates opportunity before a listing ever exists.

“We keep it simple, everyone makes 100 calls per person, per day. That's important to me. And I lead from the front. I do the appraisals, I call, I auction,” Luke said. 

“We track every appraisal in the business. 

“Our business makes 30,000 calls a month. The culture has been built around it and if you are not making calls and prospecting then I don't know what you are doing. 

“Our business’ energy is building around calls. We are an auction business, we don't waste time with private treaty sales, we are not worried about finance clauses and building and best inspections. We sell everything at 11am every Thursday at our in-room auction and we move on.”

Luke described a layered prospecting funnel built on personalisation and data quality. 

“We spent a lot of time and money cleaning out our data and building momentum by focusing on the right communication to the right seller,” he said. 

“The prospecting funnel is a layered approach. Face-to-face time is so important, for us that's open homes. We open every home twice on Saturdays to meet more people and collect data as we go.”

Calls remain the foundation, with SMS, email, social media, agent branding, billboards and letterbox drops layered on top. 

"This is very logical prospecting, not ad hoc," Luke said.

Closing the session, Mark McLeod put a question to the room: "What rhythm have you created? Can I feel and see the rhythm of your business? Would your business be able to defend itself if Charles Touma or Luke O'Kelly opened up next door? This is now a worker’s market. This is the moment for everyone in this room to act and make a difference. 

Two women, two markets, one obsession with the basics

Ray White CEO of Performance and Value Thomas McGlynn sat down with two of the network's most successful agents, Karen O'Dea of Ray White Robina and Jody Fewster of Ray White Cottesloe | Mosman Park and they unpacked how each has built market-dominant businesses at opposite ends of the country, and opposite ends of the price spectrum.

Despite the contrast, Karen O'Dea runs high-volume in Robina, Jody Fewster runs high-value in Perth's western suburbs and both agreed dominance starts with the same thing: showing up.

"Being present, being consistent, and staying focused, that wasn't always the case when I first started," Jody said. "It's about clear, consistent communication and remaining visible over long periods of time."

Karyn agreed, framing it as trust built well before a listing exists. 

“It's about building trust long before owners are ready to sell," she said. 

“I put my hand up when they have real estate needs, but I look after their needs as people first.”

The scale of each operation tells its own story. Karyn leads a team of four at Robina, an operations manager, senior sales agent, and two sales associates, completing around 85 sales a year. 

“We are crystal clear on who does what and the lanes we operate in,” she said. "If I try to cross into their lane, my team pushes me back into mine.”

Jody runs a lean higher-value model out of Peppermint Grove, servicing Cottesloe, Mosman Park and Peppermint Grove with a team of four across sales, settlements and marketing. The business completes 53 to 60 sales a year at an average price of $4.8 million.

Both built their dominance on systems most competitors don't sustain.

Karyn's business runs on an 18-touch annual contact system, 12 monthly emails, four quarterly calls, a property anniversary check-in and a Christmas touchpoint, layered with what she calls the "Magic 50": four rounds of contact with the 50 neighbours surrounding every listing, from a pre-photography courtesy visit through to a just-sold follow-up.

"You have to excel at the basics, which is where most agents slip when they get busy," Ms O'Dea said.

Jody's team works to a strict two-hour response window on every call and email, splitting shifts so someone is handling executive-level communications before the office even opens. 

“We just turn up every single day, work the phones, and execute the process,” she said.

The pair's approach to visibility reflects their markets. In Robina, Karyn's business gives away more than 8,000 Easter eggs annually and hand-delivers Christmas puddings to local residents, 2,764 last year, up from 300 when she started, at an annual cost of around $21,000. 

"People will literally call me asking when their pudding is arriving," she said.

Matt Lancashire: winning the listing 

Ray White Collective Luxury principal Matt Lancashire operates at the very top of the prestige market in Brisbane, where trust, confidence and detail matter enormously. 

His ability to win high-value listings comes from preparation, positioning and a clear understanding of what vendors need to feel before they make a decision. 

Matt Lancashire shared his listing presentation from start to finish. This was a session not to be missed by all agents.

He broke down his listing presentation formula that is built, he says, on the belief that preparation is what separates agents who win listings from agents who win them on their own terms.

"Preparation is the biggest thing if you want to win at the table,  winning on your terms," Matt said.

That preparation starts well before the pitch. Every call-out follows the same discipline: build rapport, ask the questions that actually matter, why they're selling, what attracted them to the property, what they'd like to achieve from the sale,  and identify a price expectation before ever walking through the door. Matt also confirms upfront that both decision-makers will be at the meeting, hand-delivers pre-listing documents, and reconfirms the appointment on the day by text, call or email.

"Is it just you making decisions?" is a question he asks every time. "Armed with the price before you go" is non-negotiable.

Matt treats a soft "no" with scepticism. 

“Just because a property owner tells you over the phone that they are not currently selling, they might not necessarily mean that it is their true intention,” he said. 

“Often this is an opportunity for them to assess your expertise and approach. People are always looking for a proactive agent.”

It's a philosophy he sums up bluntly: "There is no such thing as an appraisal, only a listing opportunity, it is imperative you come overprepared." And when it comes to pushback in the room: "There's no such thing as an objection."

Matt’s listing presentations follow a fixed structure, delivered by his associate within two hours of the initial phone call and presented in person two to three days later, supported by a $70 presentation book that he says is "a direct representation of how I will present throughout the presentation and process."

1. Rapport - a genuine walk-through: can I take notes, take your shoes off, greet both owners, ask questions as we go.
2. The market - a 15-minute conversation on what's currently happening
3. Value proposition - why buyers will be attracted to this specific home
4. Buyer profile - where the likely buyer will come from
5. Market evidence - realistic, comparable sales data
6. Method of sale and pricing 
7. Marketing strategy 
8. The close - "be prepared when they ask why we should choose you as our agent."

Matt closed with a nod to compounding effort: improving by just 1% a day, he noted, compounds to being 37.78 times better over a year.

His five final tips for agents:

1. A listing presentation isn't just about winning the business,  it's about winning it on your terms
2. It's all about knowing the information
3. You must know the seller's price before the appointment
4. Perfect preparation prevents poor performance
5. You must perfect the presentation, you must practice

Jamie Wood: how the Barossa went from private treaty to an auction stronghold

Jamie Wood has led one of the clearest shifts in auction behaviour in the network - taking a market with zero auction activity and making auction a core part of the sales strategy.

Having auctioned 100 per cent of his listings since the start of his career, and never sold by private treaty, Jamie Wood has built his business on complete belief in the process.

As the first agent to write more than $3 million in SA/NT, with 40 per cent market share across the Barossa Valley and surrounds, Jamie will share what it takes to build vendor confidence, move a team toward auction and shift the behaviour of an entire market.

Ray White Barossa Valley | Two Wells Selling Principal Jamie Wood shared how his region with almost no auction culture became one of the country's strongest auction markets, a shift he says took nearly a decade to land.

Jamie’s interest in auctions predates his first listing. 

“When we started out at real estate college, getting your licence, everything was geared towards auction stats," he said. 

“I wasn't anti-auction, I just kept asking myself, why am I the only one interested in this in the Barossa Valley?"

He was, for a time, the only agent in the region running auctions at all, starting from a brand-new office with no database and no track record. His first listing, in a market with an average sale price of around $200,000, drew open scepticism from competitors. 

"They told me how silly I was," Jamie said.

It didn't play out that way. None of his first 15 auction listings went to auction day, every one of them contracted and sold beforehand. He finished his first year with 27 to 28 sales. 

"If I was going to list it and sell it, I wanted to make sure it sold," he said.

At the time, most vendors in the region had never witnessed an auction outside of a bank repossession. Wood's approach was to build the case with the seller first, then bring buyers along afterwards, and to keep price out of the conversation early. 

“I don't ever touch on price, I just talk about the methods. By the time you've gone through that, perfect communication has done the rest,” he said.

His read on buyer resistance mirrors the philosophy other speakers at the conference echoed: "If your buyer starts with an objection, that's just a question."

The results, Jamie said, speak for themselves. The Barossa Valley now sits at 91 per cent auction market share, with Clare Valley at 93 per cent and Adelaide Hills and Two Wells running similar rates. 

“It took about eight years to change the attitude and behaviour of the whole area," he said.

“But the culture is geared towards everyone doing it that way now.”

Jamie's business has since expanded from on-site auctions to in-rooms auctions,  a shift he describes as all-or-nothing, driven from the top down. 

“Auction has always been something we've been focused on," he said.

Ray White Wilston sales agent Alistair Macmillan talked about his work with auctions over 27 years. He is one of the network’s strongest examples of what a great auction process looks like in practice.

He understands that competition is not created by chance on auction day - it is built through every buyer conversation, every vendor update and every decision made throughout the campaign.

Alistair unpacked how he creates urgency, builds confidence and gives an auction campaign its best chance of success.