- My name is Chris Hanley.
I'm one of the directors of the business here.
I've been involved in the business with a number
of partners for about 25 years.
There's been a First National office in Byron Bay
for the better part of 30 years now.
There's a lot of us been together here for a very long time.
Our market share has been significant
through all of that period,
I think that's the thing we're probably proudest of.
Through GFC's and upmarkets and downmarkets,
and flat markets, and headwind, and tailwind, and no wind,
we've managed to sustain a good business,
a profitable business,
one with deep roots in the community.
We've got just over 30 staff now, 31 or 32 staff.
We've just had our biggest ever year in business
in spite of the fact Australia wide
a lot of the markets are,
seriously heading into a headwind.
Our market has certainly slowed down
but calendar year just finished
was our biggest ever year in business.
- Marketing has changed a lot.
When I first started about 11 years ago,
even back then,
newspaper ads were all done you know, manually.
I remember dropping off a sheet
of cardboard to the papers with a disc of photos,
actually I don't think it was a CD,
it might have been a floppy disc even.
- Twenty years ago, we understood the space,
because there wasn't much, it wasn't very complicated.
You took a photo, you wrote some words,
you put in a paper.
The phone did or did not ring
and it was pretty straightforward.
It doesn't work like that now.
- It's changed a lot,
it's got more social, it's got more interactive,
it's not as straight-laced.
I think everyone's had to loosen up
and get more personality.
- And the second part that's even more interesting is
there's all these channels that didn't exist
and most people who work in real estate,
in spite of what you see at conferences,
they don't really understand what they're doing.
They might go out and interpret what an expert knows
to their seller and get money from that seller
and come back and say they're doing marketing.
But generally most real estate salespeople don't,
in my view, study it to the depth that the experts do.
So, my biggest feeling today is that we're a little,
we're wandering around in the dark without anywhere near
the certainty that we had years ago.
And number two,
we're learning as we go along
by tweaking all of these things.
And our recent website development
with you is a pretty good example of that.
- We wanted to build a new website for several reasons.
Our old website was really slow
and we were always getting complaints
about the page loading time.
We've always been good at content marketing
and we just didn't have the vehicle
to really show it off to its full potential.
We do a weekly e-newsletter, it goes to 15,000 subscribers.
So, we wanted the customers to have
a really enjoyable experience
when they went through to our website.
- We partnered with Stepps in this instance
because we interviewed others and it's simpatico.
When you talk to people and your building, anything,
whether it's a brand or a website,
or all sorts of partnerships
that you have in business today,
the people that you deal with have to get you.
Not pretend to get you.
- Stepps has brought so much to the table.
Things have been able to integrate so smoothly
with our CRM, that's been huge for me.
Our network is a really intricate system
with inside our office,
so Stepps being able to launch our new website so smoothly
because in the past that hasn't happened.
It's normally a pretty messy process.
- The main thing you always want every day,
that headwind, tailwind, no wind, you want listing leads.
You want good people who want to sell their property
and you want to be able to help them do that
for the maximum price.
We've had very good quality listing leads
since we built the new website.
(upbeat music)