The Property Edge Podcast

Property Edge Podcast – Episode 7

Data Mastery in Real Estate | The Value of Clean Databases | Tristan Lovell (GoList)

TL;DR: Tristan Lovell from GoList discusses:

The hidden cost of dirty data: real estate agency databases are full of inaccuracies which is costing deals. Proptech expert Tristan Lovell reveals how to turn agency data from a liability into a competitive advantage

• Messy databases kill opportunity – many agencies can’t even generate accurate lists of past clients or prospects by region due to poor data practices. 

• Clean data pays for itself – putting the time into cleaning and augmenting the database can deliver immediate returns through better, targeted, efficient prospecting. 

• Never merge departing agents’ contacts – instead create ‘orphan’ accounts to preserve data value for future recruitment. 

• Sales and property management system integration is finally catching up through new bridge solutions. 

• 2025’s PropTech wave promises streamlined processes and 10x social media lead generation efficiency. 

Listen to the podcast here

Transcript

Rob: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Property Edge podcast. My name is Rob Turnbull and today I’m really excited to be going down a bit of a different track. We’re going to talk all things data and I’m delighted to be joined today by Tristan Lovell from GoList and NextR. 

Tristan: Thank you very much, Rob. It’s great to be here. 

Rob: Let’s start with you. Let’s discover how your journey in PropTech has evolved and what you do now. 

Tristan: I started in PropTech over 20 years ago now. In 2004, I started my first PropTech business with my brother – that was Splash Displays. We pioneered the digital window display for real estate agencies all over Australia. That was a huge learning experience and we built a massive network. 

After that, I worked at AgentBox for five years with the CEO Eddie, who’s still at AgentBox, which is testament to REAPIT. Then I went to Rita, where we had an offering to the market to help agents prospect using AI built into the solution to take the guesswork out of who to call and what to say, and to basically mine for opportunity in the database using two-way SMS. 

Now in the past year, I’ve just been consulting, rebuilding databases, coaching agents, and researching the market on what’s next. What do agents really need? What’s the biggest problem to solve going into 2025 and beyond? That’s what I’ve been researching, and that’s what GoList is about. 

Rob: Well, there we go. We can talk about GoList as well. When Rita came out, it certainly made waves in the industry. I know a lot of agents and agencies are really happy with it. And of course, as a vendor, as a consultant now, you really need to be on the cutting edge, understanding what’s coming and helping people maybe not go cutting edge, but at least be one step behind so that they’re using validated products. 

In your consulting experience over the last 12 months or so, what have been the key categories of work that you get called in for and what are the key lessons to learn from that? 

Tristan: This is all about data. I’ve been working with a data specialist to resolve any data challenge that I find. A lot of databases out there, like 98% of them, have a lot of anomalies in them. They’re quite unkept. There are all sorts of agents that have come and gone, and there are different levels of understanding of how to use the database as well as appreciation of what data means. 

There’s a way of fast-tracking through a data specialist to clean up your database, to repair relationships and do all sorts of things to get it well on the way to being very useful and valuable. 

The importance of this is to close that gap between you and the people looking to list, sell and rent. That’s why we have a database – to be super organised so we maximize opportunities and keep in touch with people while giving a great experience. 

People usually try to use a system or invest some time to learn it, but there’s definitely that hurdle you need to overcome to actually learn how to use any system. If you’re not prepared to do that, then a lot of agents revert back to manual methods, which means very minimal data goes to the database. And a lot of incomplete data goes into the database as well. So effectively we end up with a bit of a mess. 

Rob: It’s one thing that I see, and from the people I’ve spoken to on this particular podcast too, is that the smaller to medium agencies tend to try and handle things in house, while the medium to large agencies are all about getting specialists in and having specialist teams within there. How can smaller agencies learn from that? If they were to bring someone in, what would the benefit be? What would they see in the first few months? 

Tristan: Number one is appreciation and insight as to where they’re at. You always work out where you’re at right now, and then at least you understand what the opportunity is. How do we do the simple searches to understand how many people we have in our database with an address, with a mobile number, which agents have enough data, which don’t? 

There’s plenty of amazing companies like offshore teams you could turn to – Shore Agents or Wingman – there’s plenty of other offshore companies which can really help you bridge that gap in a cost-effective way without having to invest huge amounts of money and go through an elaborate process. Education, turning up to events, that’s definitely worthwhile. I’m always willing to educate and generate more material on how to actually maintain and grow a valuable database that’s going to reap rewards. 

Rob: I’m in country South Australia, and I know from the local agencies here, the ones I’ve spoken to about their data, they sort of roughly trust it, but they’re quite comfortable because they see most people at the pub or at the footy ground. That’s not necessarily a really strategic way to go. When you’re looking and cleaning up a database, what are the top few things you’re seeing that’s wrong with it off the bat? 

Tristan: There are different segments of the database. The top of the list is past clients – we really want to make sure that we look after those. That’s a big weakness in a lot of agencies; they’re so busy on the now that there’s no time. There’s a bit of guilt there actually. Like “I really would love to, but it’s been a few years since I called that person. I’m just going to focus on this other thing now.” 

We really want to make sure we look after those past clients and the people that will hopefully refer us. Then of course, you’ve got people with appraisals. So past appraisals, we want to make sure that’s accurate. Then you’ve got property owners, buyers in the market right now, and you’ve got the largest section of your database which is buyers that have come into the database more than 12 months ago but are dormant. 

It’s like a triangle. I’ve got this little diagram of a triangle which I usually talk to. What I find is that there’s a lot of focus very much on buyers now. That’s a comfort zone to be reactive around that section and appraisals. One thing I see in a lot of databases is there’s appraisals that go back way beyond 12 months. They’re hopeful that one day maybe they might sell their property. 

If I could distill it down to this – it’s all about focus. An agent is only as successful as the focus they have on what’s really important right now. 

Tristan: What we look for in a database is to ensure categories, appraisals, and past listings are accurate. So when we bring up a list – and it’s all about the list – that’s how you focus and systematically work through that list in a prioritised fashion. That’s why Rita helps people to have focus on different segments of the database. That was part of our value proposition. 

The things I’ve really seen were not enough address data with mobile numbers. That’s highly valuable. There’s a lot of people in the database with the wrong category or just unkept. In a lot of databases, it’s actually not possible to bring up a list of past clients easily from the contact section. 

In contacts, that’s where you usually go to bring up all the people you want to call. Usually categories are a whole mess – either too many, or totally inaccurate. A little bit of maintenance is required. That’s a combination of admin and moving forward. If you’re looking into the future, we want systems to really help us with that so it’s not so manual. That’s where we’re seeing a new breed of CRMs and systems that’s going to emerge next year. It’s going to be quite exciting next year. Stay tuned. There’s a real movement to automation and help to make sure we don’t have to work so hard to have an accurate, useful, valuable, easy to use database. 

Rob: That sounds exciting for 2025. I know from our lived experience that our CRM gets dirtier the longer the data sits in there. We might type in the data today, but in six months time, the chances are some of that data might be wrong. A proportion of that data will be wrong. And when we’re talking about appraisals that happened 12 months ago, there’s a significant change there. How do agencies do that? Do they get an admin person? Do they get the up-and-coming agents to be the data gurus? How can they systemize that themselves without having to get someone in, if they don’t want to do that? 

Tristan: Look, I think you can have rules across the business or an agent can have their own rules. But anything, any appraisal that’s older than 12 months, just take it out of that realm of focus. Close it off. Also, you could have a VA or someone to say, well, any appraisals I do have, if it goes with someone else, close it off. 

I’d like to push a button and see all the ones I’m focused on closing in the next three months. This can be done in different ways in different systems. It’s just how you use a system to achieve that. That’s where I’ve been coaching a lot of agencies. 

What I also find in a lot of agencies is that some agents just keep their cards really close to their chest. They don’t put appraisals in the system. They’ve got their own little spreadsheet to manage their opportunities. That’s very common throughout the entire industry because of the trust factor. If there’s no really cool systems like email and SMS and calls to keep in touch with people, to generate more opportunity, to protect opportunities, then the agent can probably get away with that, but they’re very limited on what they can actually achieve if it’s a fully manual system outside of the database. 

Rob: What does an agency owner do when an agent leaves? 

Tristan: This is really important. I want everyone to reflect on what they’ve done in the past, because what I see when I look at databases is that when an agent leaves, usually all those contacts, those thousands of contacts potentially are transferred either to another agent or to the director. The result is it pollutes the agent’s or director’s database, so they can’t find the people that are really important to them easily. 

If you’ve got a new agent coming on board later on, and you actually want to share those contacts or redirect them, then it’s really hard to do that. This year I’ve been pulled into multiple agencies trying to undo that, and it’s really complex. 

Tristan: What I suggest is to have an account – it could be user or admin account – but you can just have it as agency name, office data or orphan data, whatever you like, but it’s data that’s not owned by an agent as such. Then you pile all this data into that one place, and that can be used for recruitment, centralised prospecting. The benefit is that you can actually get a return on that data far more easily. Then as people build relationships with that data, you can put it into their name. 

Rob: Let’s now talk about integrations and how integrated different platforms are. How does that work in your experience? 

Tristan: I was astounded in the first research for the new business I was doing – it’s just incredible, the amount of fragmented systems out there costing huge amounts of money which had very limited connectivity between each other. Literally we have leads coming into inboxes which don’t go into the CRM. And if they did go to the CRM, it’s all copy and paste. 

You’ve got property management system and you’ve got the sales CRM. Traditionally that’s been totally separate, and that’s why you’ve got REAPIT and MRI investing in themselves in their own systems, like AgentBox and Console, you’ve got Vault and PropertyTree. Those ones connect to each other. But talking to hundreds of clients this year, some have actually taken the leap and changed their system, but the majority are very resistant to changing their property management system. It’s quite a significant task. It’s much easier to change a sales CRM than it is to change a property management system. 

Tristan: That’s where I pioneered with a company called High Caliber – we can actually connect the dots between the sales CRM and the property management system. For example, we can connect PropertyTree with AgentBox and Rex. It’s already got a connection to Vault, so there’s no value there. There’s some things that the industry will get to learn about next year that’s possible, which will synchronize listings and contacts. 

The benefit here is for BDMs for communication. For example, if you’ve got a listing that’s just come up for sale, you might want to send it around to all your current landlords to say, “Hey, here’s a great investment.” Here’s all the details you want to know. Keep it in your rent roll. Sell it to an existing landlord. If you don’t have that all in sync, it’s really hard to do that. You can do all this manually without a connection, of course, but you’d have to somehow download the contacts from your property management system and manually keep it all in sync, which is super hard. 

Rob: Now you’ve said that 2025 looks pretty bright. What do you see on the horizon? 

Tristan: Next 12 months, you’ll see some very clunky manual processes, like in property management, it’s already started. There’s solutions out there already to totally streamline, reduce the amount of time to do an inspection report. That’s a really good example where it really works. 

You’ll see opportunities coming through around lead generation. I know there’s some platforms coming to market which are really exciting. Not many agencies know about this, but there’s some social media solutions coming to market early next year. They’re actually available right now, but they’ll become known. They get 10 times or more the results for the same amount of money. What you’ll see is much bigger bang for your buck. 

Tristan: With GoList, we’re not positioning it as an AI product. This fad of company-name .AI, we’re not doing that because I don’t feel like that’s something we put on the front foot. Of course it’s got AI – every new platform is going to have quite a significant amount of AI built in, but that’s not the front foot here. It’s about the problem you’re solving and how much time or opportunity you’re putting in their pocket. 

What we’ve learned is that to build and innovate as a PropTech company, the speed at which you can do that is so much faster. If you’re not bogged down with legacy infrastructure, then the new products that have started to create even a few months ago are going to soar ahead next year. There’s going to be amazing platforms being launched throughout next year, starting in January, February that are really going to make a big difference to the bottom line and top line of these real estate agencies. 

With GoList, it’s all about never letting a good lead go to waste. It’s about applying all the lessons we learned from our Rita experience. The key lessons are agents don’t want another app to use. We want to minimize tech trauma to get results. We want to maximize their ability to convert the lead without having to learn new tech. We want to resolve that challenge of all the leads from so many different sources – website, rent roll, social media – the list goes on. A lot of these leads go into email inboxes of admin directors, all fragmented, lost. It’s like a black hole. 

We know there’s a huge amount of business in there. What if we streamline that entire thing using AI and all the latest tools, get it into the hands of the right agent, and have it in a way where they’re on the phone as fast as possible to respect speed to lead? That is the measure of really getting results quickly. You don’t have to do as much follow up if you react very fast, and your likelihood of getting that listing or rental property skyrockets compared to if you left it a day or the next day to follow up. 

Rob: Enlightening stuff. Thank you, Tristan. Thank you for your time today. Much appreciated. How can people find you if they’re looking to tap into your expertise? 

Tristan: LinkedIn is good. Type my name into Google or LinkedIn and I’m always there to help. I get phone calls every day. Just before this, I had a phone call from someone who is using AgentBox and wanted some help. I shouldn’t step in, but I really helped them very quickly just to understand what’s going on. I’m there to help the community, and next year I really want to be contributing as much as I can at events and in podcasts like this. 

Rob: On behalf of everyone at Property Edge, thank you for your time today. Really appreciate you being part of this podcast. 

Tristan: Thank you very much, Rob. It’s great. 

 

Note: This transcript has been edited for clarity. 

Get insights from SA Real Estate leaders – subscribe to our newsletter

Land Services SA (ABN 86 836 650 939) © Copyright 2023. All rights reserved.