Login
iscover
An unorthodox sweepstakes contest has identified a pipeline of soon-to-list sellers for a Queensland team.
Hayley Van de Ven — principal of RE/MAX Bayside Properties, Cleveland and Alexandra Hills, and RE/MAX Results Morningside — describes the opportunity as something of a win-win: sellers can enter to win a $25,000 discount on their sales commission if they list and sell through her teams, completing a sale before 15 July 2024 and settling no later than 30 August.
“We wanted to do something to recognise that the marketplace is hurting a little bit at the moment, and there’s a lot of financial strain on sellers,” she explained, noting that they’ve been encountering a lot of people hesitant to list because of the costs attached.
But as Ms Van de Ven noted, her agents have received a definite boon through the competition as well, in the form of an almost-guaranteed pipeline of people looking to sell within the next 12 months.
Though she admits there was a bit of confusion at the outset, when she first introduced the idea to staff.
“They were like, ‘I’ve got to comp my commission?’” Ms Van de Ven recalled, before explaining that the sweepstakes would actually be funded by the office as a team.
She breaks down why for her, it makes complete financial sense.
“We have 58 sales agents on our floor. If you split that between 58 agents and you look at that contribution, it would be like letterbox dropping for example, right? So if we were going to letterbox 10 suburbs and each suburb will cost $160, that’s $1,600 a week, over how many weeks? Would that then yield the same amount of interest or qualified leads? No it would not.”
As she noted, the competition is only attractive to serious sellers who are looking to test the market during the competition parameters. So, what they’ve been able to identify is a pool of people really hoping to sell in the immediate future.
The idea came to her during a charity event for a school, when she observed that an agent had listed a $25,000 discount in commission as an auction item, which then attracted a number of serious bidders vying for the winning bid.
As she watched the proceedings, she thought, “The auctioneer just identified eight sellers in the room”.
While the team had tried, in the past, to generate interest through the luck of the draw by holding competitions where sellers could enter to win a north Queensland holiday, Ms Van de Ven realised that it may have gotten a few potential vendors over the line, but it did nothing to generate leads.
“The endgame here is to build a long-term pipeline for the team,” Ms Van de Ven explained.
And beyond that, it’s turned into something of a community-building event, as they’ve decided to embrace the winter chill, drawing the lucky winner at a Christmas-in-July themed party at the office for both staff and entrants to enjoy on 25 July.
“All of our sales teams are excited to think their client might take out the competition and prove to be the winner,” Ms Van de Ven said of the buzz around the competition, which so far has attracted more than 40 entrants in the four weeks since it launched.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Juliet Helmke
Based in Sydney, Juliet Helmke has a broad range of reporting and editorial experience across the areas of business, technology, entertainment and the arts. She was formerly Senior Editor at The New York Observer.
Newsletter
