We talked through some of the challenges for the sector when it comes to embracing innovation and as a collective, one thing was clear – cash flow is the biggest barrier to investment in new technologies and processes for agents, as they continue to battle lengthy transaction timelines and low fee margins. However, what was also agreed was that leaders must look at the bigger picture of what tech can do for the business to ensure a competitive advantage. Throughout the session we discussed how to overcome some of these barriers and the power that lies in working in collaboration with the supply chain and with people at every level of a business. We explored examples of success where leaders had driven purpose-led cultures that encouraged innovation and progress at every level – innovation not just in the context of ‘big ideas’ or new product development, but by defining innovation as anything that will improve the industry, processes, or an individual agency.
So, how can agencies, and the industry as a whole, encourage their people to become problem solvers and idea explorers to drive change from within?
For us, real people-powered innovation has always come from collaborating with our customers to get to the solution quicker.
Charlotte Jeffrey-Campbell, The Able Agent
“The biggest challenge for the industry is that there are so many. Change is constant, but there have always been challenges with innovation, integration and how the whole transaction comes together. But we can’t keep doing the same things as an industry and expect a different result,” Gary said, as we kicked off the session asking the panel to share examples of where they had seen real success in driving change in the industry through the power of people.
He continued, “For us to overcome some of the challenges, we need to look at solving problems in new ways and encouraging everyone in the industry and in our businesses to become problem solvers. Where I have seen real success over the years, it’s come from bringing a group of people together, a mix of people with different roles, motivations, genders and generations and giving them a clearly defined problem to solve. If you give them permission to be entrepreneurial with complete autonomy of the project and the outcome, a blank sheet of paper, the resources they need and the space to fail fast and learn fast it solves problems faster, in some cases, six months faster. All the answers shouldn’t be coming from a board of decision makers or one team; it should be coming from teams with diverse thinking. Rarely do teams get the opportunity to approach something completely fresh, they are usually inheriting a problem or tagging onto a project, but if we see every problem as a blank sheet of paper it makes all the difference in solving it.”
Charlotte added, “For us, real people-powered innovation has always come from collaborating with our customers to get to the solution quicker. Not just at a senior level but at different levels within an organisation to understand how the same problem might affect people in very different ways. This approach has always helped us to build and maintain relevancy, but most importantly take our learnings and develop solutions that align with our customers’ actual problems, not ones we think they have. I think this is relevant across our industry as we don’t collaborate with home buyers and sellers enough and innovation in the sector isn’t always led by what they need from us or what they’ll expect in the future, it’s led by the operational or commercial needs of agents.”
Michele agreed, adding, “I think both are right and just as important as each other. The more we can join the dots between the innovations needed for agents to succeed and improve the experience for their clients, the better the industry will perform. In other industries, consumer demand drives the adoption of innovation, but in the housing market, consumer experience is transient and infrequent so that consistent demand for change isn’t there in the same way. When consumers do transact, they aren’t happy with the process, the timescales or lack of transparency, and our research consistently shows that consumers want change and are willing to pay more for speed and security. We need the whole industry to collaborate more with the people who buy and sell properties, to understand more about the experience they want and how collective innovation across the sector can benefit them as much as agents. Innovation should bring agents a competitive advantage because their clients are either willing to pay more for a better service or they have more confidence in the agent because of what they can offer, their knowledge, choice around method of sale or better transparency and communication.”
Iain discussed the importance of culture when it comes to solving problems in the sector and why we need to harness the power of every individual in a team. “It all starts with culture. Too many organisations are permissions-led, innovation and genuine exploration of doing things bigger and better relies too much on senior hierarchy and the need for key people to be the sign off point on everything. Improvement and innovation happen when everyone at every level in the team is empowered to contribute to ideas. Going back to what we said at the start, there needs to be an understanding and acceptance that individuals won’t
get it right every time and that’s okay. The fear of failure often halts problem solving; people don’t want to put themselves forward, especially in our younger generations.”
Katy added, “That’s where communication is so important, clear communication and structure for sharing ideas. Everyone in the team, from the most junior to the most senior, needs to feel comfortable to take their ideas forward, not just the loudest in a room. They need to know what forums exist to allow them to do this and how to put themselves forward to be part of projects or teams. They need to know that if they do have an idea and they share it with someone, it will either be taken forward and explored or they will be given feedback. Nothing kills creativity and ideas faster than leaders who don’t give feedback or update on the progress of a project.”
If innovation is really in your business DNA, it’s about fostering a culture of curiosity to try new things and encouraging everyone to want to challenge the ordinary.
Michele Gettins, iamproperty
For Tim, clarity of purpose was essential to getting everyone to drive innovation. He said, “It is so important that as a business leader or project leader you can clearly define your purpose and bring simplicity so that you can get everyone behind the ‘why’. If everyone understands that striving to consistently do things better or to innovate is the company purpose, then it takes away the barriers for everyone. Keep it simple, empower everyone and if the culture is right, it takes away the fear of failure. Everyone, no matter their age or experience should be trusted to work towards the same shared goal.”
Michele added, “If innovation is really in your business DNA, it’s about fostering a culture of curiosity to try new things and encouraging everyone to want to challenge the ordinary.”
Gary agreed that structure and clear goals are essential and gave examples of where he had brought OKR’s (Objective Key Results) into businesses. He described how, by making the shared objectives innovation focused, it had made it clear that everyone had a role to play, and that everyone was expected to contribute to the business success.
We have to break down the barriers to innovation and help agents to see innovation less about necessity and more about competitive advantage.
Tim Barnett, Credas
Charlotte said, “It’s not just the younger people in our teams we need to collaborate with to get the best results, we need to start engaging with the next generation of house buyers. As an industry there is already a
disconnect between the experience consumers expect based on other industries and what they receive when buying a home. The next generation are innovating a lot faster than our sector and so we need to move fast.”
Tim added, “There is also a lot of research that shows the next generation won’t accept antiquated systems and so we need to think further ahead to create a better experience over the next 5 years. We have to break down the barriers to innovation and help agents to see innovation less about necessity and more about competitive advantage.”
Gary explained, “The sector does innovate, it’s just slower in some areas than others. Take lettings, they are innovating faster and creating a better experience for the end user, but they can do that because they are paid up front and aren’t facing the same cash flow issues as Estate Agents. And their customer is typically younger, more digitally savvy and so they are driving some of that change.”
Iain furthered, “Cash flow is the biggest barrier to innovation; agents aren’t able to turn their pipeline around fast enough. After the must haves are taken care of, it leaves very little to explore innovative solutions. The ‘why’ must be compelling and solutions have to be accessible for agents, both financially and in the investment of time required. Agents don’t have time to review every solution, we need to make the proposition more joined up and simple and help them to make a clear link between innovation and competitive advantage.”
Tim said, “Most agents are investing in tech for their business to make operational efficiencies, but it’s tech’s ability to give agents a competitive edge that branches should be getting most excited about. They should use it to play into the experience consumers are looking for and use digitised processes and a better service offering to stand out, especially in an industry like ours. If you can offer speed and better communication and accessibility for example, you really can stand out to potential customers. Take banking as an example, consumers are switching from the high street bank to more digital offerings because they want instant access, instant communication and information at their fingertips, and this will only continue to accelerate in every sector.
Charlotte offered, “The missing link to all of this is training. Often the more senior people in the business understand the benefits of new tech or innovative solutions, and believe in the impact, but others in the business
aren’t necessarily sure or trained in how to use it to its full potential or relay the benefits message to the customer. Agents want to be trained, but they are time poor and so we need to make knowledge transfer
as accessible as possible. And not just in relation to new solutions, but in understanding customers, tech adoption, regulation, marketing and sales. The biggest barrier in adopting anything new is the same in every sector; if you aren’t sure how to use it or talk about it, you avoid it. We need to give everyone the skills to embrace innovation.”
Reflecting on agents’ key challenges, Gary said, “Cash flow and low fees might be the biggest barrier to innovation, but if agents are able to communicate the value of their services and what they can offer their customer more confidently, we know that vendors are willing to pay more for better service and we see this happening in the sector already.”
Charlotte concluded, “It comes back to training. We see agents who are adopting a more advisory approach to marketing and selling their expertise around everything from Material Information to Legal knowledge already increasing their fees and charging up front.”
Explaining where support outside of the sector needs to step in, Michele said, “The driving force to category-led change needs to come from Government, to enable the innovations in the sector to be adopted faster and to break down barriers for people-powered change. The tech is there. The sector is too competitive for collaboration or collective change to come from agents and the consumer interaction is too infrequent, therefore change needs to be enabled category wide.”
Tim added, “The tech is definitely there. Legislation needs to drive the ability to share and accept data. Why can’t we share ID checks across the supply chain? We need a single source of information that is approved! The property market is not all ‘one thing’ and there is room for innovation in different parts, even if we could tackle one bit at a time we’d make progress.”
Charlotte looked to another source of support, saying, “We are good at innovating within the sector, but there are two very different sides to it, there is the innovation at a sector and business level that we can all drive and which people and collaboration can support. And then the category legislation that requires big change. I think CRM should lead the way. If an agent’s world is focused on the CRM solution, these platforms need to drive change and best practice and allow everything to integrate within them, from training to customer service.”
Gary: “We must set the expectation that innovation is everyone’s job in the industry. And whilst collaboration isn’t always possible for agents due to competitiveness, things like this help. We need to keep talking about the issues and the solutions needed because there isn’t a silver bullet. We need to share knowledge and the lessons learned and most importantly share successes as strides are being made.”
Charlotte added, “Everyone in the sector needs to break down whichever barriers they can. My job is to make training more accessible as the more skilled and confident people are, the more they will feel empowered to embrace change and innovate. Our sector is renowned for poor leadership training, which is arguably the most important layer in the agency to drive change.”
Taking responsibility for how to lead the charge, Iain said, “Leaders need to set the example and be willing to challenge the norm in the sector. We must facilitate and praise innovation and reward purpose driven change, invest more in training and set our people up to succeed.”
Katy added, “We must facilitate innovation for everyone. Leaders need to create a culture and structure that empowers everyone to have ideas with great communication and real feedback loops.”
Tim explained, “My background was in high level sport and the military and so I have experienced time and time again the importance that values and culture bring to high performance, innovation and change. We have to create an environment where challenge is possible, to build trust that is driven by purpose and create space for high performance at every level. If we all do our part to educate and inspire everyone, big things can happen.”
Michele concluded, “It’s all our jobs to help teams succeed by giving everyone purpose. We’re passionate at iamproperty about giving everyone access to the data and insight that drives our ‘why’. Everyone at every level in a business should know what they are striving for and why change matters; give everyone a North Star and collectively we do better.”
We must facilitate and praise innovation and reward purpose driven change, invest more in training and set our people up to succeed.
Iain McKenzie, The Guild
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