It was 1991 and Australia was in the middle of an economic recession. Less than a year earlier, Ray Wood and his brother, David, had just opened their first real estate firm in the Melbourne suburb of Armadale.
From the start, he recalls, the business was in survival mode.
Months of door-knocking, cold calling, getting screamed at and even being chased by a dog delivered little success.
The fourth-generation estate agent needed to come up with a creative way to get business.
It was then that the idea for a booklet started. "I wrote a little booklet -- 'How to sell for more' -- and got a flyer out," he said.
From there, people started responding. He kept enhancing the free publication to the point till eventually a book was published.
More than 100,000 copies have been sold.
"Real estate agents, by and large, are great at marketing property but not so good at marketing themselves," says Mr Wood.
"That's where the book comes into play."
The booklet was the turning point for Mr Wood and the start of his sprawling business -- the business has evolved into a real estate marketing company called Bestagents.
The company is for real estate agents and essentially offers them marketing support.
The five-year-old company now has about 150 members in Australia and seven branded offices around the country.
Mr Wood estimates the company's annual revenue growth rate at 20 per cent.
As part of the Bestagents offer, agents are given exclusive marketing tools for their area.
Common mistakes agents make, says Mr Wood, are that they struggle to stand out from the crowd and also do not communicate with their sellers.
By the latter point he means that once sellers complete the sale of their property, they are unlikely to hear from that agent again.
"They should be practising relationship marketing," he says.
Australia's most successful real estate professionals are great at relationship marketing.
"They are good at giving their contacts a reason to keep in touch, so they might be supplying them with tips, ideas, advice."
If agents want to stand out, he says, they need to stand for something.
"Real estate agents spend billions of dollars trying to find new business, while turning their back on existing business they've already had."
For those just starting out in real estate, he recommends choosing an area where there is regular turnover. There needs to be a marketing plan and costs need to be kept down.
Mr Wood's own path into the real estate game came early.
He left school and went to work for his father selling property at the age of 18.
Eventually, he got his real estate licence and his career kicked off from there.
Later, he and his brother, David, opened their first real estate firm.
He continues to evolve Bestagents by adding new marketing tools for its clients and the concept is attracting interest from the US and Canada.
His message to property sellers is that they have the power to influence the sale price of the property if they follow a few rules.
One rule relates to the way the property is presented to the market visually and the descriptive copy that goes with it.
He says agents should find the five most important things about the property and feature them.
Also, the property needs to be priced effectively.
"Property has a shelf life," he says. The longer it is on the market, past a certain point, the less it is likely to sell for that price, he believes.
He thinks that generally, anything that has been on the market for more than six weeks is not in favour.
By Katherine Jimenez. Published in The Australian October 21, 2010
