Above, from left, RISMedia Founder & CEO John Featherston; Donny Samson, CEO, Samson Properties, Keller Williams Capital Properties President Kymber Lovett-Menkiti; Christina Pappas, president, The Keyes Company and Illustrated Properties; and Jason Carrier, president, CENTURY 21 New Millennium.
While in nearby meeting rooms real estate leaders debated an array of issues looming large over residential real estate, from changes to the REALTOR Code of Ethics to the future of the no-commingling rule, in room 207AB at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, four top brokers got granular about the business at hand: helping agents gain a competitive edge in a rapidly evolving real estate market.
During RISMedia’s annual Power Broker Forum, held on June 3 during the REALTORS® Legislative Meetings in Washington, D.C., executives from some of the industry’s most successful brokerage firms talked about important market shifts currently underway, and what agents must do to rise to the occasion and make deals happen.
Co-moderated by RISMedia Founder & CEO John Featherston and Keller Williams Capital Properties President Kymber Lovett-Menkiti, panelists included: Jason Carrier, president, CENTURY 21 New Millennium; Christina Pappas, president, The Keyes Company and Illustrated Properties; and Donny Samson, CEO, Samson Properties.
More than 500 were in attendance for the Forum, titled “Out in Front: Gaining a Competitive Edge on Real Estate’s New Playing Field.” Featherston kicked things off by reflecting on how far the industry has come, reminding the crowd of the many challenges they’ve navigated, from the dot-com bust to the Great Recession, the pandemic to the commission lawsuits.
“We have survived an onslaught on our industry,” he said, referring to the lawsuits in particular. “We have to build back confidence with our customers and our clients, because without your assistance, they won’t be able to achieve the American Dream of homeownership—they can’t do it without us.”
In a shifting market, information is everything
During Featherston’s introductory remarks, he pointed out that one of the biggest themes of the past several RISMedia events has been the ongoing inventory shortage. But this year, things are starting to look different. For the first time in many years, housing inventory is ticking up.
Referencing her Washington, D.C.-based firm, Lovett-Menkiti said, “We are literally above five months of inventory, a number we’ve not seen in the District in over a decade.” Pappas, meanwhile, reported more than two years of condo inventory in Miami.
The changes in inventory levels necessitate that agents be armed with information and data in order to accurately communicate market conditions to sellers. And that starts at the top, said Lovett-Menkiti.
“Consumers are asking, ‘what’s going on?’ Our agents are asking, ‘what’s going on?’ And so how do we (as brokers) make sure we’re getting the information, the data, the market analysis, and giving that information back in a meaningful way to our agents, to the clients that we serve? It’s certainly a moment where information is powerful (along with) our ability to frame that information.”
Lovett-Menkiti and the panelists agreed that as inventory levels rise, the need to work with agents on listing strategies is essential, especially given the fact that many of today’s agents have only experienced a market where homes sold hand over fist.
“We are definitely in a transitional time as far as servicing sellers,” agreed Carrier, whose firm had just completed a series of listing workshops. “The days of 48 hours, the sign goes up and there’s a contract, have come and gone. The days of not having to call your seller and tell them how many hits they had on their website or what was going on at the open house—those are gone. We need to dust off our sales skills. So we’re out there working with all our top agents, and agents that are learning the business, and saying, ‘silence is deadly.’ It is about overcommunicating; the minute we stop that communication is when they question our value.”
According to Carrier, there are ultimately three reasons why a seller hires an agent: trust, care and knowledge—and right now, he explained, the knowledge component is more important than ever as sellers must be educated that the market is shifting toward buyers.
“Marketability will help separate your listing from someone else’s,” he said. “Is it priced right? Has it been staged? Does it have a home warranty? Those are the things that we really need to get in the weeds on to make sure our listings are showcasing better than the competition.”
Doubling down on training and collaboration
The common advice for agents to “go back to basics” is all well and good—but what if they never had those basic skills in the first place, asked Featherston.
According to Pappas—whose firm turns 100 later this year—it’s not about going back to basic skills, but building the foundation in the first place, especially for newer agents who have yet to experience a buyer’s market.
“The average (agent) has been in this business for less than 10 years and has no idea how to sell or market, or what marketability means, because they lived through the best years of our lives,” she said.
The Keyes Company’s answer to that is to double down on training and provide agents with the knowledge and tools they need to navigate the shifting market, Pappas explained. The firm developed an MBA (Making Business Attainable) program—a five-week boot camp for agents—and also offers a variety of resources, such as a seller’s guide with a checklist of tasks to get homeowners ready to list, partnerships with home stagers and firms like Matterport, and an in-house photography company.
“It’s really about ensuring that the house is in tip-top shape,” said Pappas, who stressed that agents need to “diagnose” a seller’s property and recommend the right fixes. “Our (agents) often get nervous about saying, ‘we should paint this wall.’ We should not be nervous. The doctor doesn’t walk in nervous to tell you, ‘you broke your arm and we have to put in a cast to fix it.’
Increased urgency for training has increased the need to get agents back into brick-and-mortar offices, at least part of the time. Lovett-Menkiti has found it effective to have specific in-office days each week so that agents can build it into their schedules. She also stressed the need to maximize an agent’s in-office time, ensuring that there’s high energy, training, purpose and structure.”
“The reality is, we need to get them back in to actually engage in the information,” she said. “We also need to empower them with tools and resources so that they can operate their businesses in the field.”
Samson also designates in-office days to focus on live training, masterminds and a Friday weekend update where he personally dives into the numbers.
“We try to do all these things to engage people back in because we do have a lot of offices,” he said. “They’re not selling homes when they’re in the office, but real estate is a lonely, lonely profession, especially when it’s not going well. And then you get down on yourself. You have to have a reason to pull them back in and get them excited about it. We can’t make you do anything. We can just try to provide the tools, the energy and the education to help teach you to get there.”
Carrier agreed, adding that in-person collaboration and training is critical for leadership teams as well.
“Our key role as leaders is to train the trainer,” he said. “We have to lead by example. How do I coach someone else if I’m not willing to lead a listing presentation and show what ‘right’ looks like? So we get our leadership together once a month and we call it a best-practice session. It’s a shift in how we’re training our agents to better prepare themselves to go out and win.”
Demonstrating your value and amplifying the experience
As the market gets more competitive for sellers, the need for agents to galvanize their value proposition and create stellar experiences for clients has become more critical than ever.
“We’ve really leaned into being the professional,” said Samson. “I think people are afraid to say the hard things. A couple of things that really helped me was I changed the word from ‘your home’ to ‘your biggest asset.’ It’s my job to make sure that I get the most money for your asset as possible. You’re going to have to give me the trust to say some hard things to you because you’ve hired me to do that. These are the things to help you market your home in the best way possible.”
According to Samson, demonstrating your value in today’s market means showing clients that you have the knowledge—about market stats, proper pricing, staging and marketing. “You want to be that all-in-one resource for people, and you’ve got to believe that you deserve the listing,” he said. “If you wouldn’t hire you, then why should they hire you?”
Samson also stressed that while agents get ramped up on listing skills, the time is ripe for buyer’s agents. “There’s a flip side of this market—the opportunity is to find the buyers out there and show what a great time it is to buy. I think preparing agents to get listings is great, but let’s train them up to be great buyer’s agents, because it’s a lot more delightful time to be a buyer’s agent than it was 2, 3, 4, 5 years ago—especially after August 17.”
When it comes to showcasing your value proposition, Carrier said it’s time to stop focusing on years of experience.
“Can we stop talking about how many years of experience we have as one of the reasons why you’re getting hired today?,” he said. “There are people that have been driving for 30 years that are horrible. Can we start talking about quantifying our value?”
Carrier advised focusing on what you are going to do to deliver results for the client—focusing on your track record, akin to what a financial advisor might do. Instead of your years of experience, therefore, talk about your average days on market and list-to-sale ratio.
“If I can prove to the seller that I’m going to sell a house quicker and I’m going to sell it as close to list price or over list price, now we’re getting into the weeds of what our value is,” he said. “Then when it comes down to asking what you’re charging, you don’t budge. You stand by your value because guess what? History repeats itself. We have a track record of proving those results.”
“Value equals consumer satisfaction,” added Featherston. Pappas agreed, but emphasized that value means different things to different people.
“Every customer believes your value is different,” she said. “And every customer wants to know what’s valuable for them. What’s important to them? Did we listen? Did we ask questions? Did we diagnose the problem? Value has a different price point for everybody when it comes to my commission and when it comes to what I’m selling.”
According to Carrier, agent value comes down to how you make clients feel—in other words, the experience you deliver.
“If you don’t watch the show ‘The Bear,’ you need to,” he said. “How can someone go and take a commodity piece of meat in one restaurant that sells for $29 and another restaurant sells it for $500? How do you equate that value? It is how they make you feel during your dinner.”
Closing gifts
Featherston closed out the Forum by asking panelists to provide a parting “pearl of wisdom” for the audience. Here are the takeaways they shared:
Donny Samson: “What you don’t change, you choose—you’re choosing to keep doing it the same way. And as we transition to this world of AI, the one thing we have is people want somebody they know and trust to be their (real estate agent). Lean into that. Lean into the people that already like, know and trust you.”
Christina Pappas: “Our job as leaders is to bring people into the future kicking and screaming…to build their competence so they have the confidence to go through the changes necessary and to bring them forward. If we partner with our agents and pour into them, they’re able to pour into their people.”
Jason Carrier: “My tidbit is the 10% factor. Is your value proposition 10% better than the competition when it comes to quantifying results? Can you actually prove that you’re going to sell a house quicker and faster than the competition? Ten percent delta on everything that we’re being evaluated on will separate us and, hopefully, allow us to win more deals.”
Kymber Lovett-Menkiti: “Community is powerful, and that which is deeply personal is universal. So as we start to train, educate and amplify what our agents are doing, make sure that we’re bringing them into a community so they’re not in it alone. The more that they can do that in their individual business and that we can do at the brokerage level, the more power for us to all navigate into the future in a most successful way.”
