G’day, all. Can you imagine earning a fee of 3.3%? 

Our special correspondent, Simon Whale, has been attending the biggest estate agency conference in the southern hemisphere and sent us this report from Australia. 

Day 1 – AREC – Gold Coast, Australia.

The largest real estate conference in the Southern Hemisphere started with the truly unique Tom Panos hosting the show as usual.

For anyone who doesn’t know Tom, and it’s getting rarer than a Starbucks tax return that people in agency don’t, his use of tonality is unparalleled in public speaking. There’s absolutely zero chance of you dozing due to a few too many the night before, because when he’s in the room the Panos ‘Sonic Boom’ will soon clear the cobwebs.

AREC takes place over the course of two days and is in this humble (as if) attendee’s opinion the best one to date. The sheer quality and volume of speakers here from real estate and the wider world is second to none.

We’ve had a flavour of their quality with Peter Knight as usual being ahead of the trend bringing the likes of John McGrath, Dean Mackie, Phil Harris, Matty Hayson and of course regularly Josh Phegan to the Sunday Times awards. In no small part seeing the quality of these speakers led us to open up an office there and this was my fifth AREC, which will go up on LinkedIn alongside my Bronze Swimming certificate.

All of the speakers profiles can be seen here:

http://www.arecconference.com/speakers.html 
and I’ve jumped into a few that stood out for me.

Scott Harris ‘The Power of Taking Action’ @thescottharris

 8.15: Yes 8.15am and I’m here. Scott kicked off the day by challenging everyone to answer the common phrase “Rules are meant to be??” – “broken” responded the crowd dutifully. Of course we walked into his trap as he shouted back at us “NOOOOO, rules are meant to be obeyed”.

Simply put, setting your own rules but sticking to the process is the key to scaling success. Surely that’s the key to any good business, the best I’ve seen whether that’s Romans or Foxtons who seem to follow the mantra that if you can systemise something then you should. Its that sort of approach that gives you scalability.

Of course, you need to have as many good people in your business as you can, but it’s much harder to scale if you’re always looking for ‘rock stars’. One of the most fascinating meetings I’ve had in my time here was with Mark Mcleod, Growth guru at Ray White who summed this up to me and spoke eloquently about the need to create systems.

Then he flagged how the human brain was not designed for success. Since we were hard-coded to evade sabre tooth tigers, often we need to quieten the voice of doom in our brains.

Scott was also of the opinion that we should all “Have fun” – I was way ahead of him on this point as anyone in the nightclub at 4am the night before would testify. What he was talking about, though, was the need to stop carrying your past issues with you, whether they’re personal or professional.

Time is the fairest resource of all: everyone gets the same number of working days in the year, so you should use them wisely.

He finished by saying if you SMS 0447 796970 and text ‘Action’ you’ll receive some free online coaching. I think you’ll have to put +61 in front so its +61 447 796970 for anyone interested.

Matt Lancashire ‘Sharing the Secrets’ 

One of Ray White’s finest and earned over $2m in Gross Commission Income (GCI) last year and sold nearly $100m worth of income in the Brisbane market.

Ray White would be our version of Countrywide as Australia’s largest agency, albeit operating on a franchise model.

His key angle was to focus on the activities that generate money.

Matt told a rather sweet story about how he’d been inspired into agency as he’d been having trouble selling his home which he desperately needed to do as he was stranded in Paris with no money on a year out. The agent, called ‘Flo’, was having little joy and you’ll probably understand why when you hear her slogan which was: “Go with the Flo.” (One of Tampax’s least successful marketing campaigns too.)

Anyway, Matt explained how even though she’d had over 100 people through open homes, no one was interested so he persuaded her to give him the list and he rang through determined to find out why they weren’t interested. He rustled up a number of offers doing so and sold it himself, and of course that was the bug that started him off that has led him to sell some of the most elite properties in his market.

Open Homes are by far Matt’s biggest source of business: 60% of his clients have been through open homes at some stage in the past. If you look at the photo below this was around one of his sales team as a case study into the importance of seeing buyers as VIPs.

He flagged Nick in the case study who was currently sobbing in the corner of the theatre at the thought of $1.7m in fees, but really he should be complemented for working those others.

He then went on to tell another story of the importance of not letting your negativity affect your mindset, where one of his other new recruits, fresh faced and full of belief, went door knocking to see if anyone was thinking of selling.

He’d happened to target one of the most exclusive streets in their marketplace. Now no one else would have given it a second thought as it was behind gates and normally the sort of place you’d get short shrift. But this young lad wasn’t to know and he’d promised he’d give it his best shot so he knocked and sure enough with a triumph more of enthusiasm over experience he managed to secure an appraisal for Matt, which started a chain reaction, a virtuous cycle of success.

Now as normal when I show these pictures, I have to warn UK agents to breathe carefully and not get too irate at the sheer loveliness of these properties and the size of the fee. 1,2,3 . . .

Just look at some of those stats: $170k on marketing for one home!! I predict a riot … or at least an invasion of Brits to emigrate.

A 447-strong group going through the home as well. Staggering.

Almost as much as the stellar fee of $389,000, and yes, you did read it right, that is a $389,000 fee. Post Brexit that’s around £225,000 and equates to a 3.3%fee.

Hello? HELLLLOOOOO?!! Anybody there?

Just noted a spike on Qantas bookings.