When Daniel Beer first became a licensed agent, he was working with friends and family members who needed some real estate expertise — but then 2008 hit, and, as he puts it, “I faced a choice: Either get serious about really treating this like a business and creating real systems and predictable lead generation, or get out of the way and leave the industry.”
Today he’s the leader of the Beer Home Team and specializes in training agents to help them maximize their effort and provide top-of-the-line customer service. He’ll be helping others solve their problems in a live problem-solving session for teams at Inman Connect New York, January 29 through February 1 at the Marriott Marquis Times Square.
“If there’s anything I’m really good at, it’s being able to implement what other people have already implemented in other markets — not questioning whether it will work, just implement what they’ve done,” Beer notes. “Most people learn something that’s working really well for somebody else, and then they completely re-engineer it and modify it before implementing it because they think their marketplace is different. They literally change what worked for others and then wonder why it doesn’t work.”
Hear more about how Beer approaches his problems at his live session, and learn more about his philosophy through his answers to our questions.
Tell us a little more about your session. How will it address how the industry can embrace the shifting market?
The cool thing is that I’ve been through and I have every component of a team you can think of, from sales agents, buyers agents, inside sales agents, showing agents, a fully built-out operations staff — really, that’s the secret sauce: people who are empowered to hire, fire, impact the company. I remember the impact it made when I started to let go and invest in better people. There’s no doubt I can workshop any of those aspects with these problems, and I coach agents to do this.
The shifting market is going to be based on having a sound business, real business structure with predictable and duplicatable systems, not just based out of the genius stuck in your own head. That’s not facetious: It might be genius, but in the shifting market, it’s going to be unforgivable that if you’re on vacation, your whole business is on vacation. You’ll have to have a sound business platform. And the thing that always makes the difference in a shifting market is differentiation, from a marketing standpoint to a business standpoint. That’s something I would credit with a ton of our success, and I can help people think through those things who come and ask questions, mindset issues they might have, and if they appreciate a blunt style that really delivers what they need to know and need to hear to go and impact their business that very day, they’ll find it on our panel.
What do you think are the biggest opportunities to focus on in the real estate industry right now?
We’re still in a good market — it’s just a different market — but what’s the cash position you’ve put yourself into to sustain your marketing, your messaging, your brand, or even to elevate it while everyone else pulls back, which is how we take market share? The last market shift really catapulted my business when so many others were leaving. Can you take market share that’s left behind when people leave?
One opportunity is aging baby boomer retiring Realtors, especially those who say “I survived ’08 and ’09; I don’t have another one in me, I have a great database and need someone to just send me some mailbox money.” There’s going to be opportunity to absorb databases and create a mutually beneficial structure for you and for them. That’s going to be a big way to take market share.
Artificial intelligence (AI) will give us a big boost in what we can do from a lead qualifying and lead acquisition standpoint, and those of us who really embrace that next generation of technology that’s coming, if you understand this and look outside the business for real, professionalized, streamlined sales processes and operation processes from other industries and can bring those systems to what we do in real estate with our margins, that’s a big opportunity.
Teams have a huge opportunity because there will be a lot of very good agents who know what to do but start to suffer, so the biggest teams will start to get bigger. Individual agents, the ones who are super dialed-in, they’ll be fine. The ones who are doing good business but never really built their systems might end up in a place where they’re facing something similar to what I faced in the past: Am I going to grow a team, join a team, or leave the business? There will be unbelievably good talent out there for the strong, and the biggest teams are going to get bigger, and agents who see the benefit in pivoting will do well.
To stay competitive, agents, brokers and companies need to execute quickly. What do you feel are key areas where quick execution can vastly improve the customer experience?
Technology is definitely that for us, and it doesn’t replace people, it just makes us a lot better if we know how to use it. The AI component will allow my inside sales department to qualify a ton more leads without me having to expand my payroll. The industry’s moving to where certain things that happen in every transaction, there’s no reason why if you check the box saying the initial deposit has been received, an email or text message can’t go out to alert your clients — and that’s a task that a person doesn’t have to do. That creates a better customer experience because it doesn’t depend on the person remembering or having time to do the task, but the CRM or the tech or whatever you’re using is an employee that literally has a 100-percent dependency rate.
What are your hopes for the next 12 months, and what will you be working on?
I’ll be working on the way I see what my role is — I’m accountable to big ideas, big relationships, I’m accountable to solving big problems, and the culture of my company. That’s what I work on within my company, and adding value — not just to home-team agents but to all of those who are connected to me across the country. There are agents connected to me in upwards of 15 or so states, and my role is adding more value to help them sell homes. That’s really what I do and what I’ll be working on. I’m in the experience creation and value-add business.
Dig deeper into building a lasting team and discover the opportunities in a changing market at Inman Connect New York, January 29 – February 1. Jumpstart 2019 with tactical takeaways, unlimited networking and thought-provoking speakers. Learn more.
Thinking about bringing your team? You may qualify for special group perks! Contact us to learn more.