Above, Paul Boomsma, left with Diane Turton
Leading Real Estate Companies of the World®’s (LeadingRE) 2024 Conference Week kicked off on Weds., Feb. 27 at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas with an inspiring general session—bringing together some of the brightest minds in the business to uncover the possibilities that exist in today’s challenging environment as we celebrate the past and prepare for the future.
From new marketing techniques to new technologies and everything in between, setting yourself up for success as the future unfolds is mission-critical. Clearly articulating your value, especially to buyers, is a key piece of the puzzle that’s more important than ever before—a topic addressed throughout the event.
According to Paul Boomsma, there’s some really good consumer sentiment out there. The LeadingRE president and CEO wasted no time getting to the heart of the matter, sharing a telling consumer study statistic with the audience, which pointed to the fact that when purchasing a home, 66% of consumers actually believe that what real estate professionals are paid is appropriate, while 11% would like to pay them more.
“I often say it doesn’t take a rocket scientist, but today we have an actual rocket scientist for our keynote—and he’s a super overachiever (a reference to Ozan Varol, an award-winning law professor and best-selling author, highlighted below). But we also have a lot of overachievers in the room. Quite honestly, most of you are overachievers,” added Boomsma, as he welcomed Diane Turton—president and founder of Diane Turton, REALTORS®—to the stage.
Fostering connections every step of the way
A true industry legend, Turton has built a successful company in New Jersey—a firm celebrating its 40th anniversary next year—on one critical tenet: connections are the most important part of the real estate business.
“If you ask somebody who their lawyer is, or who their doctor is, they’ll tell you,” explained Turton. “But if you ask them who their REALTOR® is, they look at you like you’re nuts because nobody ever keeps in contact. There’s no repeat business in this industry, but my whole life is repeat business. This is a tough market, and people are getting out of it in droves because they don’t know what to do. It’s just a different market. But you have to stay in contact with people, connect with them and show them that you care. And people don’t do that.”
Always thinking outside the box and leveraging each and every opportunity to raise the bar—no matter how unconventional the idea may seem—Turton looks at every breathing person as a buyer or seller.
“It’s not the immediate connection, but rather, the future connection,” explained Turton, who questioned audience members as to why they would ever want to be added to the do not call list. “I want as many bodies as I can talk to at once. You have to go out and work every single person. Everybody here is a way to help. I don’t care who they are, as they all know someone,” she added.
For Turton, fostering connections is the name of the game—a premise she believes in so wholeheartedly that she even wrote a book about it. “Always Connecting: How I Built My Business and Navigated the Signs to Success” provides readers a glimpse into the journey that has led to where she stands today as an industry powerhouse.
Turton is also a huge proponent of giving back to the community in which she works. Whether it’s attending chamber meetings or sponsoring baseball teams, she’s fostering connections at each and every turn.
“It’s those little things that you’re doing for the community that count, because when you do for the community, they’ll do for you,” she said.
Doubling down on a simple but powerful strategy
While real estate professionals have been inundated with challenges as of late, LeadingRE’s COO Kate Reisinger next introduced Liz Moore—president of Liz Moore & Associates—who started her business shortly before the housing market crash and global recession of 2008.
Not one to be sidelined by a competitive real estate market, Moore dug deep and sought out ways to reinvent her approach to customer service—a move that paved the way for dramatic growth.
Working in Southeastern and Central Virginia, the firm is celebrating its 20th year in business. And despite the competitive environment, Moore broke down her recipe for continued success, beginning with a simple but powerful strategy.
“We’ve seen an opportunity in the upheaval in the market to double down on our training, and while that seems like a really simple thing, for us, it has been really powerful.”
Immediately following the Burnett verdict, Moore incorporated weekly coffee and contracts sessions into the mix at each of the firm’s five offices. Managers are responsible for facilitating the casual collaboration of agents, and while there’s no set agenda, 60% to 70% of the firm’s agents are taking advantage of the sessions as they find it valuable to have time set aside each week to talk about what’s happening in the market.
“We’ve been able to instill a lot of confidence with some roleplay, talking about the struggles (our agents) are facing each week,” added Moore. “And that training has proven to be really powerful as far as creating confidence within them.”
An added benefit that goes hand in hand with the extra effort toward training can be seen in attracting others to the company.
“We’ve been able to recruit pretty successfully for the past six months. So many of our competitors are virtual companies, and they’re struggling to have a sense of community and to be able to do the in-person training, so that’s where we’ve really been able to find a competitive advantage.”
As for her best advice for those looking to excel in 2024?
“The one thing I have said more than anything else this year is ‘never quit on a bad day.’”
Setting yourself up to succeed
“Hearing stories like these are so important because it provides you with inspiration to overcome your own challenges and gain new perspectives. We like to think we control our own destiny, but we are well aware that many times we’re faced with challenges that are outside our control,” said LeadingRE Chief Legal Officer and Executive Vice President of Industry and Learning Jessica Edgerton as she introduced Macdonald Real Estate Group President Jonathon Cooper.
With a successful luxury practice out of Vancouver, the company is no stranger to the challenges presented by inventory, affordability and even lawsuits—which extend across the board.
But they’ve also faced some really unique challenges with the 20% foreign buyer tax back in 2016—a roadblock that stopped nearly half their revenue—and the recently extended foreign buyer ban.
“While we can debate whether it’s a good policy or a bad policy, any property purchased in British Columbia is now subject to a 20% tax if you’re not a permanent resident or Canadian citizen,” explained Cooper.
“The other issue was that it was retroactive, so if we did a deal two weeks ago and the contract was signed and the deposit was paid, but it doesn’t close for a week and the tax comes in today, my price just went up 20%,” he added.
While this presented a real challenge, Cooper did what any true professional would do and took a step back before implementing an action plan.
“Instead of relying on third parties, we had an emergency meeting at our head office, and we talked to our own trusted advisor, our lawyers, and read the legislation itself. From there, we tried to get the information into the hands of our real estate agency as fast as possible, relaying the top three or four things their buyers and sellers might need to know (as far as) how this impacts them and where they might need to refer out for more technical legal or accounting advice.”
As the future unfolds, so too will the challenges associated with conducting business in the residential real estate industry.
To that end, Cooper offers the following universal lesson real estate professionals must keep in mind as legislative (and other) challenges arise.
“You can only control what you can control. You have to sanctify the present moment and focus on that. Stay calm, don’t rely on third parties, and find out for yourself. Make sure you understand it, then make sure your agents understand it because their clients are going to be asking them.”
With so many changes occurring in the residential real estate industry at the moment, Cooper encouraged attendees to double down on their training in order to tee up success in the future.
“If you’re willing to take this seriously and put in the time and grow your sphere of influence, while I can’t guarantee that you’ll be successful, I can guarantee that you’ll give yourself every chance of succeeding.”
Adaptation, determination and success
“We’ve heard some incredible stories of adaptation, of determination and success, and I’m sure there are countless other similar stories represented in this room,” said Edgerton. “As leaders of the real estate industry, you’re always looking ahead to the next hurdle or turn, and looking into the future may seem daunting. But as we look back, history is defined by those who dare to think differently and are recognized as being ahead of their time.
“Let’s think about people like Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie and Rosa Parks—all human beings who dared to challenge traditional thinking and change the world as we knew it. Now, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to be able to look at a challenge and reimagine a creative situation, but just to be safe, we brought one in anyway. An informal rocket scientist turned award-winning law professor, turned No. 1 best-selling author, Ozan Varol certainly knows what it takes to think differently.”
One of the world’s foremost experts in creativity, innovation and forward thinking, Varol helps organizations ignite creativity and become extraordinary.
Varol took to the stage to provide actionable insights to take and land your own “moonshots,” to reimagine the status quo, to futureproof your businesses from rapidly changing trends and technologies and create an extraordinary advantage to shape the future of the industry.
“When we think about the future, we normally engage in forecasting, and forecasting usually looks like taking a look at what we did last year, then copying and pasting that with some modifications to figure out what this year or next year look like,” said Varol. “While forecasting is a fine exercise, it comes with a significant problem, which is that it begins with your present reality. It begins with this status quo and takes all of our outdated assumptions embedded into our present reality and then projects them out into the future, so what we did yesterday restricts our vision of what we could do tomorrow.
“Backcasting flips the script though. Backcasting says ‘we don’t care what we did last year. Instead of beginning with a status quo, we’re going to begin in the future with an ideal reality and then we’re going to work backward from the future to determine exactly how that moonshot can be obtained,’” he explained, noting that backcasting isn’t just for rocket scientists.
“You can do this in your own businesses, and your personal life as well,” concluded Varol, underscoring the importance of thinking differently in order to get you where you want to be.
