As a fourth-generation real estate principal, Forsyth’s James Snodgrass drew on more than 100 years of industry knowledge when he decided to change the agency’s prospecting program.
The company, servicing Sydney’s North Shore from its fl agship offi ce in Willoughby, was started by Mr Snodgrass’s great grandfather 111 years ago. His grandfather, uncle and mother – who is his business partner – continued to lay the foundations for Mr Snodgrass, who admits real estate “was certainly in my blood from day one”.
In his bid to recession-proof the business, Mr Snodgrass implemented a multi-level company prospecting system, which relies on the individual team member’s strengths. Forsyth engaged full-time in-house telemarketers who work the database and pass leads on to the sales people to go out and convert the business, Mr Snodgrass explained.
“There’s a process it goes through from the moment a call comes in, or we generate a call, through to the sales people, back out through some other parts of the company and then onto a nurturing program,” he said.
Protecting potential leads
Not only does this system increase listings through working the numbers, but Mr Snodgrass said it also ensured any dropped balls were picked up more often. “We’re doing everything from quality control calls, to sales manager calls, to nurturing calls. We’re looking at all the different reasons why a listing is lost and working out how we can pick that up without the potential client being bombarded.”
The system, which also includes a number of other strategies, has been in place since the end of 2009. Forsyth is now acquiring around 250 leads per month in an area where this fi gure was traditionally around 40-50. These leads are on top of the numbers the sales people gain themselves, Mr Snodgrass explained. “We believe 8-12 per cent of those 250 will list and sell in the next two months, whether with us or another agent. So that’s another 16-30 properties that we get the chance of listing and selling per month,” he said.
On the buying side, Forsyth has a home fi nder system and sells many properties before they even hit the market. “We believe we can put between 22 and 28 per cent more buyers into a campaign with this system or through the preview opens than any other agency in the area.”
Recession proofing
Prompted to implement the prospecting program by a number of factors, including the industry downturn and sales people who were relying on the company for business instead of generating it themselves, Mr Snodgrass said the time came last year to rationalise the business.
“Since I took over the can 10 years ago we always envisaged that with that much growth and the normal cycle of boom and bust, there had to come a time where things would get tighter, and we started seeing that last year. We anticipated that coming so we had to make sure our business was recession proof.”
“We looked at the numbers very carefully; where the actual business was coming from and how useful it was being part of one of the major networks and realistically which advertising mediums really worked and which didn’t,” he said.
The rationalisation led to downsizing Forsyths from four offi ces to the two that were performing, and leaving a major property franchise to become independent. Next came an in-depth analysis of marketing methods to see which was the most effective.
“We felt all the time, effort and fi nances were being spent on print media. Where we spent the most amount of money was where we got the least enquiry (3-5 per cent) and where we spent the least - database and internet - we got the most.”
Back to basics
So the Forsyth team went back to the phones to boost the numbers. Anyone who didn’t produce the results found themselves out of a job. “If you hadn’t done certain numbers, or you knew you couldn’t get a certain result, you weren’t the sort of person we needed here at Forsyths,” Mr Snodgrass explained.
This meant Forsyth was left with a different style of person. Instead of waiting for business to come to them, the new team was made up of commission-only operators and contractors who knew how to run a business. “The mindset and the self belief of the people we’ve got is a whole different ball game – it’s gone from an employee mentality to an employer mentality. They know what it’s like running a business, they know what it takes to keep up business and they understand the whole process. I don’t need to explain things twice because they’ve got it.”
“I remember Mark McLeod [CEO Business Growth for Ray White] saying to me years ago, ‘James, I’ve spent all my career trying to turn sales people into cold callers and I think they’re two different animals. A professional cold caller, or a lead generator, is a person gifted in those skills and they can often do it 10 times better than any sales person. They’re not complicated by the sales process, or by real estate, so they look at it differently.’ That was a very big infl uence,” he said.
Having a motivated team of telemarketers creating the leads left the sales staff free to close the deal. “We’ve now got our real estate sales people presenting, dealing with hot leads, dealing with hot buyers – all the stuff they love doing and the stuff that brings in money. They’re happier, we’re happier and there’s not that inter-offi ce struggle that you see in so many offices about prospecting, about lead generation and about trying to wear 15 different hats,” Mr Snodgrass said, explaining the Forsyth system was similar to Effective Business Units (EBUs) introduced by The Real Estate Academy, but on a larger scale.
Working to set up a platform that would attract the right kind of person to build the company’s success has made Mr Snodgrass’s recession-proofi ng system a triumph. “We haven’t even had the impact of the second and third stage yet, so we’re waiting to see what happens there and we’re really excited about that.”
Now Forsyth is looking for “champion” presenters and auction campaign runners to complete the fi nal pieces of the prospecting system puzzle.