“Say to them: ‘I understand you need some time to work this out. “Whether it’s a seller or buyer you’re dealing with, right now you need to recognise that they’re unsure,” he said. The seller, the buyer, the solicitor – you’re at the centre of the transaction and therefore your knowledge and your skills must be at the absolute forefront to guide people because they’re facing the unknown.”Īccording to John, now is the time to employ nurture tactics, not pressure tactics. “What value do you bring to the advice? To the transaction? As an agent, you’re being relied upon by a whole range of stakeholders. “Our biggest currency is the value we provide,” he said. Right now, we have a unique opportunity to move into the space we’ve always wanted to occupy – being a trusted advisor.” “If you don’t have the answer and can’t give them options or recommendations, you’re missing the opportunity to demonstrate your value. Importantly, they want to trust that you have the right answer. Now, when someone asks you a question, they expect you to have the answer. This is what existed in our industry for far too long. “Now, more than ever before, people are looking for connections that have meaning. “The opportunity is in connection,” he said. So how can agency leaders help their teams see the opportunity and therefore strive to thrive? According to John, it’s quite simple. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t see the opportunity and it’s incumbent on agency leaders to help them do that.” You need to identify the opportunity and work towards it. Now you have to strive in order to thrive. But those things simply can’t be done anymore. “In the past, almost as a default, the market allowed you to thrive if you did certain things. “At Cunninghams, we call it ‘strive to thrive’, because now there’s a real opportunity to move forward. “There’s a real opportunity here,” John said. We’re here to guide our clients.” Embracing opportunities As a trusted agent, we can be the person to provide that detail. “With the government making sweeping statements in the media, someone needs to provide the detail and explain the on-the-ground impact. John said the goal is to provide information to clients that they know they can trust. The aim is to ensure our clients know what’s going on and our key message is always ‘we have your back.’ We want them to know that we’re working within the government’s restrictions and are across what various changes mean for them.” “Yes, we include a lot of information in our email updates, including a video. “The landlord said that the updates gave him the reassurance that his investment property was in the best hands,” John said. John pointed to feedback he recently received from a landlord, who thanked him for Cunninghams’ weekly email updates. “What we’ve discovered over recent months is that we can help our clients make the transition from fear to action through how we communicate with them.” People start thinking ‘my whole world has disappeared!’ It’s a matter of how long that fear remains before it becomes a case of ‘OK, what am I going to do about it?’ “It’s the number one emotion that kicks in. “Whenever there’s a massive change, like we’ve had with COVID-19, the first response for many people is fear,” he said. And now, as we move down the track a bit, we’re looking at how we can make some of these things a permanent fixture in our operations going forward.” Fighting fear with trusted information “We focused on these things early and put actions into place. How did our plans for 2020 need to shift? What were our new priorities? How would we communicate differently? In what ways did the working environment of our team need to change? “It was a case of rapid adaptation and putting a survival plan in place. “As a team, we identified very early on that there was a freight train coming at us and if we didn’t adapt quickly, we’d suffer the consequences down the track,” he said. John said his team at Cunninghams were focused on being agile to respond to changes from the earliest stages of the Coronavirus pandemic. Industry leader John Cunningham gave us his view. Now, with the easing of restrictions and the hint that life is beginning to return to normal, agency leaders are asking what lies ahead. Almost every aspect of what we do has changed. It’s an understatement to say that the real estate industry has been impacted by COVID-19.
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