INMAN NEW YORK TAKEAWAYS

Another excellent Inman event passes and the outstanding learning continues.

Below are a random collection of my notes from the #icny event. 

These aren’t meant as a coherent blog post or any specific commentary on various sessions at Inman New York. These are just my notes and some of my pondering through and post the conference.

If you’d like to chat deeper about any of them, then hit me up. I’m always happy to expand on my thoughts.

 Also, if you need someone to present at a sales meeting, conference, zone or strategy meeting, Bah Mitzvah, or you want some personal coaching relating to any of these notes, ideas or to be challenged by my views on the world, then lets make a time to chat! You can book a time to chat with me here, or, If you’re old fashioned, hit me up on +61417630962 

“They said it”  

Notable quotes from Inman 2019

There’ll be 4 types of business when it all settles;

1.DIY model (FSBO’s, Purple Bricks etc)

2.We do everything for you (Franchises)  

Robert Reffkin – Compass

3.Seller/owner (Indies)

4. Boutique 

Then it’s a game of who can get the consumers attention – Robert Reffkin – Compass

On the topic of the bazillions of dollars that several franchises are ‘investing’ in technology. My thoughts are: ‘Their spend on all of this needs to be really focussed on being Agent friendly, otherwise the bazillions that will be invested will be wasted. Q: Will the corporate talk be matched by the Agent take up? – Peter Brewer

‘People don’t want to be sold to, but they do like going shopping with friends’ – Ryan Serhant  (This quote from Ryan really resonated with me. I’ve said you you can smell a salesperson from 100 paces for 20 years. The new consumer is much wiser)

Identify your weakness – Fix them. Find your strength – Maximise it. 

if you do not allow people to fail you’re going to stunt creativity – Heather Ostrom    

What to say – When to say it – How to say it. How do you want the client to feel. – Get your messaging right. Practice-Practice-Practice. – Jeff Lobb and Alyssa Hellman

 On running his business like a Fortune 500 Company Ryan Serhant – Million Dollar Agent said:

“You have to have discipline and structure to your day. That’s the only way you can manage goals.”

Ryan focusses his day on 3 things: “finder, keeper, doer.”

“The finder hour is finding new business, the keeper hour is figuring out how I’m going to spend my money, and the doer time is spent actually doing all the work,” 

Creating ‘Visual’ Thumb-stopping content is where it’s at. – Jeff Lobb

Sight, sound, motion drives the emotion. (Speaking of video) – Google panelist  (YES!)

‘Leads created from great content are so much better’.

“Relationships are built with small interactions over time’  – Katie Lance  

‘“Consumer expectations around their experiences with technology and convenience are being elevated collectively across their lives. Real Estate  can (must) learn from those experiences. “ – Jeff Turner  

Agents and Brokers need to reimagine the consumer experience, including beyond the transaction. It is a long held National Association of REALTORS? stat that 88% of our clients say they will use us again right after a completed sale, yet only 12% actually do. What if the next repeat client uses technology instead of you? This is happening. OpenDoor, Zillow Instant Offers and more are here and they are automating the transaction. So what can we do beyond the transaction to create real estate clients for life?  – Mike McAra

“How do you deal with changes and shifts in your life whether it is in work or personal life. In whom do you trust when your world crashes? Are you the type of person someone will call when their world goes under?” – Billy Ekofo 

I don’t believe your brand will make you more money. I believe YOU will make you more money. – Robert Reffkin – Compass

If you have a public company, you can’t exaggerate. And in this industry, there’s a lot of exaggeration. ~ Ryan Schneider – Ryan Scheider  (I’m still chuckling at this slam dunk of Compass)

Brad Inman’s opening Address:

You are in the right place, in the right time, in the right seat – Brad Inman 

Brad Inman says; ‘The Supernova is hitting real estate’

“A star is exploding as we speak”

“The old ways of doing business are over”

“We are on a new path of exciting changes and opportunity”

“Be good not greedy ? Be market intelligent “

“Change is upon us ? Face it and embrace it ? Join the movement of change”

Emerging Tech Notes

Google Real Estate: Google is looking more deeply at real estate industry again. They’d abandoned a previous attempt at Google Real Estate in around 2010. They’re enhancing their suite of real estate industry products in the USA. These will likely follow quickly in Australia/NZ. Enhancing your Google My Business profile is critical for Australian Real Estate Agents.

Alexa Flash briefings. Not really new as such, but being adopted more. The ability to ‘push’ marketing or information messages to people who have registered to receive your information via the Amazon Alexa they have in their homes.

Google search. Google adding ‘audio content to search results’. This will give more weight to podcasts.

Google. Extracting data from what it sees in pictures and adding that. Eg: Just like face recognition, it will identify and ‘tag’ photos when it sees things like taps, or granite benches, or furniture and will actually add that data to the phots description.

360, VR, and AR. Again, none of this is actually ‘new’, but it is being much better refined, and simplified. Expect high adoption of 360 and VR in 2019/20 as products become simpler to use and as consumer demand for rises dramatically. (Eg: People should not be subjected to lining up in queues of 30 people to view open homes in a 20 minute time window on a Saturday morning. We have the tech to simplify the customer experience. Lets use it)

ChatBots and Messenger. Chatbots: Super simple to implement basic functions. Eg: try the ‘G’Day Button in the bottom right hand corner of your screen now. By using these ‘real time response’ mechanisms we start to address the issue of poor communication inside this industry)

Facebook Messenger: Yet another great example of providing Clients a simple, real time way to communicate with you.

The volume of messages being generated using FB messenger is off the charts and will continue to grow at a rapid rate. It’s also being used quite successfully in ‘lead gen’ in some FB ads campaigns as ‘one click’ rather than trying to drive consumers through a range of loops.

ai (Artificial Intelligence) 

There are reams of notes to be included here on ai. This section will be updated.

 Social Media

The awesome Marki Lemons-Ryal and the wonderful Katie Lance shared their best social tips

Build you company profile and lead gen activities across several platforms

Social media has always been about engaging, not just broadcasting. Listen and engage with intent. People are sharing social queues, but are you listening?

No more excuses about why your market ‘is different’ and ‘people don’t watch videos in your market. It’s crap, you know it. JFDI Get cracking on video before its too late.

There’s no shortage of content you can create. Just make it interesting and relevant. Hint: It’s not about you.

Build a content strategy and content calendar and be consistent.

Investigate and trial using ‘messenger’ as the target for some of your FB ads/Boosted posts. FB Messenger is becoming very popular for providing the real time response that consumers are expecting.

As always, Katie Lance gave an exceptional presentation. She really knows how to simplify her topic. This time it was around how to attract your dream client using the art of storytelling. ‘Leads created from great content are so much better’. 

A good story has a beginning, middle and end. It can be long form or short form. Katie’s session was value packed, as always. Too many gems to share here.   You’ll find her slides here:See her present if you can

 

My Top 10

1. co·op·e·ti·tion:

collaboration between business competitors, in the hope of mutually beneficial results. (More of this please) 

2. In the context of attracting a new customer, what are you doing to generate ‘the last click’. Google say that the customer may be doing up to 10 searches to refine their needs before they make the ‘The last click’ (to you)

What are you doing by way of curating content to ‘own those’ searches in video, text, and photos.

3. Plugging ai into a business won’t automagically solve a businesses problems. The business and people in it need to be ‘robot ready’.

Your people need to be attitudinally ready from top to bottom, and be prepared culturally and personally to change you ways of business. Ultimately a bot or ai can only take you so far. A motivated client-focused business team has to actually give a shit about serving the customer. And that’s always been the industries problem. That said, getaire.com.au has seriously proven its worth to customers who have embraced the enormous opportunities. . Check out their impressive case studies. Huge kudos to Sarah Bell for her Main stage appearance and for sharing her unrivalled wisdom in this space. 

Also check out jane.ai for some really cool automation! There’s soooo much happening in this space.  More to come for TPB clients.   

Aussie Sarah Bell nailed her session on ai.

4. To be effective going forward, a salesperson needs to have all of their tech on one interactive dashboard where each ‘piece’ talks to each other. Having 30 logins to 30 different bits of tech is over.The ‘brands’ are all in a fight to build their own ecosystems to better enable their teams. (And Teams is where the future of this business is)

Huge US Trend: Franchises are creating tech to better enable their Agents. (Implementation and the sheer volume of choice will be what slows this down)

Q. Why don’t Aussie Agents use the tech they’re being given already?.. Might it be crap? Maybe Agents don’t see the value in it? Maybe our industry are slow adopters)

5. Brands are fighting for relevance to a new breed of Agent, and companies like Compass claim they are less focussed on pumping up their BRAND, and more focussed on serving their agents with the best tools to enable higher productivity.  (No doubt that many ‘brands’ are late to the party and struggling for Agent/Agency relevance as the portals are providing the bulk of enquiry and services)

6. Businesses need to get super active in owning voice search in their geographical area, or area of business. Alex, Google Home, Siri, have changed consumer search behaviour, but most businesses seo strategy still only fuels text based search.  

You’ll either do something effective to address that yourself, or you’ll become a customer of someone else who did. 

You'll find the rest of my Inman #icny notes at this link