7 figure Attraction Agent
Tom Panos interviews leading real estate attraction agents. These agents share their strategies for writing 7 figures year after year. Simple, powerful and effective - you can apply these tips to grow your real estate business today. For more FREE tools visit: www.tompanos.com.au
7 figure Attraction Agent
Avi Khan | People Over Properties: Breaking the Cycle of Poor Training & Poor Management
Since transitioning from a non-real estate background, Avi Khan has leveraged his leadership expertise and innovative approaches to achieve results.
Avi currently operates one of the top-performing real estate offices, well known for integrating technology whilst maintaining traditional relationship-building practices.
His dynamic approach has been instrumental in training new agents and shaping the real estate industry.
- Effective real estate leadership; human-centric management
- The strategic use of technology like data tools such as ID4me and AI tools enhances efficiency and productivity.
- How top-performing agents consistently display relentless work ethic, transparent communication, and adaptability.
This webinar is sponsored by ID4me
Welcome everyone. Welcome everyone. For those of you that aren't sure who the gentleman on the other side of the screen is that is not speaking at the moment, he is, of course, avi Khan, who's taken real estate by storm. Came into the industry not as a real estate person, which I sometimes think is a very big advantage, because, avi, I've actually said it to a leader this morning. He said to me Tom, what do you reckon is the real problem with management and leadership in real estate? I said I'll tell you what it is.
Tom Panos:A great real estate salesperson works for a bad real estate manager that decides one day he wants to be an owner of an office, so he becomes a business owner, and because he's been trained by a bad manager, he also becomes a bad manager. So the cycle continues. No one at any stage told a real estate agent if you're going to become a principal, here is some basic foundations that you need to understand to do your job. You're going to need to not list properties, but you're going to have to list people. This is called recruitment You're going to. There's Danny. Danny's raised his hand. Susan, I'm not quite sure. Danny, of course, is the owner of ID4Me. Let's have a look here. We view here. Maybe he'd like to come in. Susan, I'll get you to look at that.
Tom Panos:He's being promoted to a panelist. Thank you, susan. So Avi, so what actually happens and you can relate to this is you'll end up having this cycle of real estate principals that have been trained how to list a property but have not been trained how to list a person. They have been trained how to vendor manage but they haven't been trained how to people manage and, quite frankly, the cycle then continues because real estate leadership is not about putting deals together. Real estate leadership is about getting the best version of your people to show up each day, and that's why I have an acronym Avi. Ceo stands for Chief Energy Officer. I think they come in, they change the culture, they change the energy, they change the mood. Can you relate to what I'm saying? Avi, yeah of course.
Avi Khan:I think sometimes our decisions are formed by being with good managers or bad managers. I was fortunate enough to have great real estate principals I worked for and bad ones. That formed my belief of the kind of principal I wanted to be. But yeah, you're right, there's no training. We always just we want to do it. We get thrown in the deep end by ourselves and we go there thinking, look, I'm the best thing since sliced bread. I know what I'm doing. You know no one's going to teach me, but it just the reality hits you.
Avi Khan:It hits you really hard that you're not equipped to be an owner, you're not equipped to be a principal, you're not equipped to be a motivator, and it's tough, like it's tough out there. I read a book from steve wall saying when you become a leader, you're on the bus at the front and no one wants to sit next to you. Being a principal can be something like that along the way, because there's so much pressure on you. Like when you open up tom, you're the cleaner, you're the accountant, you're the payroll clerk, you're the chief energy officer, the chief trainer and most of the principals. They're the chief energy officer, you're the chief trainer and most of the principals.
Tom Panos:They're the main listing agent as well, so it's a hard work and, avi, there are times when someone is actually not even suited to running an office. Example I was sitting at a conference. Well, it wasn't a conference, it was one of those awards nights. It wasn't a Ray White one, it was an awards night and they named the person that was sitting on my table as the salesman of the year. And you know he went up there big cheer. You know his girlfriend pulled out the mobile phone, you know videotaping him as he's going up.
Tom Panos:And I looked at his principal and I said you got to be very proud of the young boy. And he looked at me and he said Tom, you know I've handballed him a fair few deals. I mean, if I was doing him, I'd be getting that award. And I just looked at him and I could sense some sort of envy or resentment and I thought to myself that's not the characteristics of a good principal.
Tom Panos:A good principal would be very proud that this person has been selected over hundreds, maybe thousands of other salespeople as the highest producing. But he was sort of saying I want to be that person. And I'm thinking to myself maybe he should be a sales agent. Maybe he should be a sales agent with a couple of people in his own little effective business unit his pod, call it what you like and not be a person that is envious and jealous that his handballed listing leads to this salesperson, to this salesperson. So sometimes I think they still want to be putting the deals together and they get more enjoyment out of that than enjoyment out of seeing a young person grow.
Avi Khan:Well, my philosophy is like how can I make this agent better than I was? And then there's at times it comes to a point where you can't even train them because you don't have the expertise or skills to train them. So you have to figure out who's going to train them. What's the best trainer out there for this solution? They're trying to build a team. What can I add to them? What can someone else add to them? It's almost like a learning and searching journey for principals to figure out how we can help them grow. And I think volume is the answer to all the problems for most principals, tom, like, if you have 10 or 15 of those good performing agents you, you have 10 or 15 of those good performing agents. You're going to make more money anyway, so why not build them? Why not find more people to build? And why not give things away and build everyone else? So my philosophy is very different.
Avi Khan:I got out of selling in the first two months. The reason I did is because we started to recruit so many good agents coming through that I didn't have the time to train them whilst I was selling as well. So I'm like this is where I'm going to put my efforts in and look tom, there's some months that some might just make more than me. That's fine, that's it. It actually makes me happy because they know that there's a journey inside arby's office, that when they come in there's a, there's a role for them in the office, there's a training program and they're going to get everything to to them as well. Any leads that come through go straight to the agents and that's why they stay and that's why they grow. So I think, looking at the way that, oh, someone's making more money than me, it's totally the wrong way to look at it.
Tom Panos:Yeah.
Tom Panos:So, Avi you as a leader. For some reason you got labelled very early as being a tech-type person, and maybe I mean I remember listening talking to you and listening to you speak at the REB Innovations Conference right, technology is a big part of you. But then you spoke to me afterwards and you said you know, tom, the truth is, I love tech and I use technology to enable us to do more deals more effectively, more efficiently. But I also understand the model for success is high tech, but it's also high touch, and that technology is not there to substitute you, but to actually extend, give you extra arms. Compliment, you is probably the best word to say. That's your view, isn't it?
Avi Khan:I think, tom, when we look at it, the fundamentals of real estate has not changed. In fact, covid has taught us that the fundamentals of real estate are more important than ever. The best thing you can do for yourself and your agency and for your client is to get belly to belly, which is get in front of them. If you can't, you need to say investors, you'd be on the phone. So people that get belly to belly, people that get in front of these clients, are more likely to build relationships. So we have to look at tech in a different point of view, saying, hey, we need to use tech that's an enabler for those relationships rather than a disabler for those relationships.
Avi Khan:People just rely on text and tech and everything else. They're the ones that failing in the industry. They're the ones going through. The listing presentation is four or five people coming in. Why don't go uncontested? The relationships that you form will lead you to get uncontested listing presentation. So we look at tech. We're very big on tech. That's why people say, oh, this is a very tech innovative company. But we're bigger on traditional methods of real estate, which is face-to-face, which is make calls. My agents don't present offers by DocuSign If they're one hour away the client, they go and drive there. So that's the kind of philosophy that we have the fundamentals of real estate more important than ever before.
Tom Panos:Now this webinar is presented or supported today sponsored by ID4Me. Id4me is a company that a lot of people are aware of now because between me and I there's another few trainers and thought leaders and various people that are related services in the industry have been talking about the value of ID4Me. You're a business that uses ID4Me, and those that are on here are either people that use ID4Me or they're people that are curious about using ID4Me, or there are people that saw you on here and were curious to see what is Arvi all about. So they, you know, jumped on and it's being streamed on Facebook as we speak. Arvi, how do you use ID4Me in your business?
Avi Khan:So I think, tom, to answer that question, we have to understand the journey of sort of where the clients live at the moment. Right when we look at the traditional way of real estate, there's a saying that we we're the only industry that we know where our clients live. I think that's become less and less the truth every day that goes on, because at the moment, when you look at our sales, like 50 to 60 percent of them are investors, so we have no idea where they live half the time. So we can't just go knock or call from you know, white pages or everything that people used to do. So we have to get more innovative as to how do we find our clients. I do. For me, is like one of the solutions that we have to enable us to do that.
Avi Khan:Um, you know, if you list the property, how do you hot spot that property? How do you tell the client that, hey, I've got something listed on your street? How do you tell the client I, hey, I've got something listed on your street? How do you tell the client that I've got a great price for you that will change the values of properties on that street? So finding data has become harder, as the way people live has changed. Like I always say to my team, there's no interstate barriers anymore. It's like it's also intermingled now People in Brisbane owning properties in Sydney, people in Sydney owning properties in Melbourne and vice versa. So we use ID4Me a lot to find out where our clients are and you know how do we contact them. This is the numbers that we contact them with. So calling people, creating relationships the fundamentals of real estate is so much stronger if we use ID4Me and get the data to call these people.
Tom Panos:In case people are asking what hotspotting is, can you please let us know what hotspotting is and can you also explain how you use it in hotspotting?
Avi Khan:So at any given moment it's saying that 1%, 2%, 3% of Australians are real estate mode. That's the stat that goes around. So when someone lists the property it kind of evokes that thing in the neighbours' mind. Oh, I wonder what it will go for, wonder what I'll get for mine. Three doors down, the neighbours think of the same thing. So instead of always trying to find people in real estate mode, this is the next best thing that an agent can do is to prospect on the street, I'll get him to join back on.
Tom Panos:So I want to let you know that one of the key methods that my real estate clients are using ID for me is when there's a new agent joining let's face it, a new agent that has no real estate experience and really doesn't know many people in that area. What I do is I get that agent to start getting data from ID4Me because, yes, door knocking is an effective way, but door knocking together with id for me is far more effective. Now, arby, you're back on. Can you hear me?
Avi Khan:yes, I can sorry if it's my connection sorry, is there?
Tom Panos:is there a possibility that you're back on now? Uh, hopefully it's going to be fine, but the internet reception is not the best. Where we left it, avi, was we were talking about hotspotting and we've missed a lot of that conversation about hotspotting. And can you just repeat what you were saying?
Avi Khan:Sorry, can you hear me what you were saying? Sorry, can you hear?
Tom Panos:me back now, tom. I'm good I can hear you back now yes, Sure.
Avi Khan:So what I was saying hotspotting is so, at any given moment, 1% to 3% of us are remote. When there's a signboard on there's a for sale sign, sold board, that's when the neighbors start to realize what market is, what's my property worth, what is this property going to get? This is the moment that you want to be talking to the neighbors of the property. This is the moment where you want to be talking to the street. So this is when the neighbors are really heightened in the state. So for us, that's when we talk to the neighbors and to have the data to do so, we need to use ID4Me. To have the data to do so, we need to use ID4Me.
Avi Khan:Door knocking sometimes work because sometimes they're not home, sometimes they're working, sometimes they're investors. So this is where we go to ID4Me saying, hey, can I get the details for the street? What are the numbers for the 60 people on the street? Then my team and go call them saying, hey, I've got a property listed on the street. Wanted to invite you to the video this Thursday. See how your home compares to the home that's on the market at the moment. If they don't want to come through, do you mind if I keep in touch with you, Let you know throughout the end of the campaign what this property sells for and how it's changed values on the street. So simple things like that works a treat when you've got the data from ID4Me.
Tom Panos:Now can I ask you new agents? You've told me you've been having a lot of success with new agents you hire. You've told me you've been having a lot of success with new agents. When I say new agents, they're totally new, not just new to your office, new to real estate. Am I right there?
Avi Khan:That's right, Tom. Yes, We've hired a lot of new agents the last 12 to 18 months.
Tom Panos:Okay, explain to me how you use ID4Me with a new agent.
Avi Khan:So when a new agent comes through, there's a few things they have to do. They want to build profile in the marketplace, but at the same time, we want them talking to all the homeowners in the marketplace as well. Building the profile is something that the office takes care of them for them, but calling people is something that we want our agents to do. So we don't want agents just to sit there and wait for the phones to ring, because that's death, right, smells of death. We don't want that. So what we do is we try to give them data for the whole suburb. So here's all the suburb data. What we want you to do at least make 50 to 60 calls a day to that suburb and introduce yourself to the homeowners. Tell them what's going on, offer them a free market update. Tell them you're on the street. We speak to them about four or five sales they should be talking about, telling them how it's changed values of homes on the marketplace.
Avi Khan:So getting the data from ID4Me is crucial for us. Enable us agents to do that, because that's again building relationships with our agents and the marketplace. That's what we're trying to do all the time with our new agents. I think the new agents coming through the wave of agents at the moment, everywhere in the industry. It's all about social media, tom. Everyone's just trying to get on socials, post things, but that doesn't win your clients. You need clients at the start to find you on social media. That's what you do. You have to call them, you have to introduce yourself and tell them what are we selling in the area. So that's been a crucial policy of ours is like can we get the data to them straight away? Can we get them calling straight away?
Tom Panos:Okay, Jeez, you communicate that so eloquently. I mean technology and social media and videos. They all help in the game of attention, but no decision is ever made unless a human being gets involved and answers and solves a problem. One-on-one encourages nudges someone. We all suffer from procrastination. That's what sales is right.
Tom Panos:The biggest challenge I've always had, avi, with new people in real estate is after they've extended their 100 or 200 circle of friends, family and relatives in a new area. That's where it sort of stops. It's not enough and a lot of people don't have 200 friends or family in an area. They might be working in an area that they weren't brought up in or lived at any stage in their life, and that's where you know having a data set is useful. And I can tell you also, avi, that, and I know that you've told me off air that you're using various AI programs such as Retar, nurture Cloud in combination with ID4Me. Tell me more about that and I'm interested. You know you've got both of them on. You've got both Retar and Nurture Cloud because you are a Ray White business.
Avi Khan:Yeah, so we call them like habit-forming software. I think that's what a lot of people call it. But we've sort of encompassed that in our team. Our team it's actually one of the things it's doing. It's actually encouraging our team to call by recommending people that we think will list in the future. So we look at you know, are they active on our databases? Are they active on rea domain? So we recommend 10 20 people a day for our team to call.
Avi Khan:Now what that enables our team to do is have better conversations with our database. So the conversations, tom, are no longer just cold conversations. They're warmer conversations because we're talking about relevant sales in the marketplace. We're talking about the properties they've looked at, they've gone open, homes and things like that. So the data set really helps us because it gives us data of the suburbs and then we can identify who we actually need to call and who's relevant, as long as we get their permission, who's relevant in our databases and who's about to list. So Nurture Cloud is very good for us in that regard and our team are starting to call more and more every day and, like I said at the start, it's the relationships that you can form by having that data and feeding into your CRM and calling people every day.
Avi Khan:Now Reader does the same things for us. It recommends a different set of people that are looking to list, and it also texts people on behalf of the agents as well. So we've got the text messages going, we've got the phone calls going and we teach our agents what to say. So the important thing is, tom, like most people call the marketplace and say, hey, the market's great, look at the market. This Most people will call the marketplace and say, hey, the market's great, look at the market. This is what the market's doing. People don't generally want to know that, tom. They want to know why the market's great with you. So that's the differentiation that we have. We tell our clients why the market's doing better with us and the tech helps us do that.
Tom Panos:Yeah, avi, I love that term habit-forming software. Habit-forming software because I think it's best described. I have a look at you know, I mean even wearing, you know, watches or the Fitbits, these things there, these devices are there to help you become compliant in an activity right, if you think about it, by making that activity more enjoyable, gamifying it, by making it more accessible, whatever it is, and all I can say those that are watching. And, by the way, susan, if you are in the background, if you can, please put both in the Facebook comment section and also on Zoom in the chat, the URL for people to go to ID for me because I can tell you. Thank you, susan, it's up there in the chat box. I can tell you that it's the 100 or whatever. It is 120 bucks, 30 bucks, I can't even remember. You'll get that paid within a minute if you actually ring the right person. And I can tell you that powerful lists equal powerful results.
Tom Panos:And, avi, I have found my time as a consultant, as a coach, as an educator, with prospecting. I often find, if you can just simply overcome the issue of who to call, you're sort of in the game, because a lot of agents get this, what is called paralysis by over analysis, where they're sitting there and they just don't know who to call. Now I'm not quite sure. On my screen you have frozen again, avi, but I want to see whether you can hear me, and I don't think you can, but you've got the gist of it. Ladies and gentlemen, I've got to let you know that ID4Me is going to help you hotspot. Id4me is going to help you actually get data that you'll be able to put into your CRM system, that you can begin a relationship with clients, because we all know that real estate is not one and done. It is jab jab, jab, jab, jab, and you only hook when a business, when a, when a vendor is actually ready to sell. If you try and hook before that, you are considered to have strong commission breadth and be a pushy agent. Avi, as you're coming back on again, I was just summarising the three things that you've been using ID for me hotspotting, helping new agents actually build a farm area and the third one was they work in combination with your AI, being Nurture Cloud and Reader, because without actually having the data, ai has problems. Both AI and Nurture Cloud require you to get on top of your data and it's been outstanding.
Tom Panos:Now, avi, before we finish off here today, I want to ask you. I'm curious whenever I talk to all agents around the marketplace, because life is quite different in real estate than what it was many years ago. Many years ago, I'd say to someone how's the market? And they would say to me this is what it is, and that would be a pretty reflective answer on the broader market. In Australia, however, in 2024 and in the world post-COVID, we have micro markets within micro markets within micro markets, so one market can behave in one way and five minutes away it behaves in another. One kind of property in the same market behaves differently than another kind of property in the same market, maybe in the same street. Give me an overview. Brisbane is the talk of the town. It looks like everyone's leaving Melbourne and people even leaving Sydney heading to Brisbane.
Avi Khan:I think one of the stats that's been thrown around, tom, to answer your question and I'll get there is a of the people buying properties in queensland don't even have a mortgage. Now, let's think about it. A third of the people are buying properties for cash. So the reason that's happening you talk about micro markets. One of the one of the ideal price points to buy in brisbane is between 600 000 to 1.2. This is where majority of the buyers are buying and these are the people escaping Sydney, escaping Melbourne, both as unoccupiers and investors. So the market's actually humming.
Avi Khan:So we were having a chat today about interest rates. Interest rates hasn't made an impact to Brisbane's market in the last 18 months. Like, I don't even look at it, tom. Like there's someone posting on social media now it's no one cares because people are still buying. People are unlocking their equity in Sydney and Melbourne and escaping to Brisbane. So our markets are booming at the moment and that's because we've got investors, we've got homeowners, we've got owner-occupiers who are first-time occupiers, like 21 to 25-year-old, funded by mom and dad, and we've got people reinvesting as well. We call it like a perfect storm of buyers at the moment, every angle you can think of everyone's coming into this marketplace between the 600 to 1.2. So if you're investing, it's a great time to invest in Brisbane and it's a relatively easy market to get in Tom, as opposed to Sydney or Melbourne Avi your best real.
Tom Panos:give me your top, don't give me their names. Sure Top three real estate agents. What are their qualities that make them so good? Is there any that are common amongst all three?
Avi Khan:They don't put the phone down them or their team members. They have the ability to have tough conversations with their sellers.
Tom Panos:Yes, and they're not. Nine to five people, jeez I love that.
Avi Khan:No, anyway they're not nine to five people. Jesus, I love that they're not nine to five people. They work around the clock. They might start at 11 am but they'll go to 11 pm. You know, that's the core characteristics of great agents at the moment in my business.
Tom Panos:Okay, I'm going to repeat that everyone, because I know that nearly everyone's here. Well, everyone here is an agent and everyone on Facebook is probably an agent. Let me go through what Arvi has just said.
Avi Khan:How many staff have you got in your business there? 142 at the moment 142.
Tom Panos:What did Arvi just say? Arvi said the three qualities are number one they've got the phone glued to their ear. Number one. Number two when the owner's house is getting feedback at 900 and the owner wants to get 1 million 100, they don't sit there and say it's fine, you'll get it. They actually sit there and they say this is the reality.
Tom Panos:I might hurt you, the truth, but I'm not going to comfort you with a lie.
Tom Panos:My job is to tell you the damn truth, whether you like it or not. And of course, harvey, that's a lot easier to say if you haven't been bullshitting yourself at the listing presentation, because if you have, you're not going to feel comfortable looking him in the eye, because no person wants to be a contradiction in life. And then the third quality that you said, which is a very obvious one it's one that people don't realize is probably the biggest competitive advantage that you can have in your first two years in real estate is you don't even have to be good, you've just got to be there. You have to be more there than the other people. You've got to be more there. Why? Because if you get in early, if you work hard and you stay later, you will actually have that make up for your deficiencies in skill and, as time goes by, as you get better, you can be less there because you're more good. Right, but the best ones are they, they're good and they're there.
Avi Khan:That's the best ones, Exactly right. And they're willing to learn, Tom. They're willing to learn, adapt change.