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To Ai or not to Ai? Would a 5x Productivity Lift Convince You?

By REB Newsroom
10 August 2020 | 13 minute read
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Promoted by AiRE

Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Caloundra had record breaking months during COVID conditions, leveraging the power of their data and a secret weapon named RiTA.

Danelle Wiseman, Principal of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Caloundra is an industry veteran with over two decades of experience. She is no stranger to selling, and leading, in tough markets. And like many tough agents, Danelle had her best years of real estate during the GFC - learning the value of a database and the importance of deep roots in a community.

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So when COVID hit, and the 2020 business plan went in the bin, Danelle looked for a technological edge to leverage the power of the strong database that the agency had accumulated.

“Like a lot of agencies, we had been very diligent about collecting data and we had some good processes in place - but we needed to turbo charge and find a way to get as much yield from that data as possible,” said Danelle. 

“With all of the complexity that needed to be managed once the virus hit - I wanted a simple way to find the gold in the database and to help my team start every day with purpose and find time to focus on the most important part of the business - our customers.”

“There is gold in your CRM, you just need to know where to find it. That’s where RiTA comes in.”

RiTA, by Australian software company AiRE, helps real estate agents to build hyper-personalised relationships with the best prospects hiding in data. 

By analysing multiple data sources and combining them, RiTA gives agents an optimised list of their contacts to connect with each day and she even finds relevant topics to talk about with your contacts, so you’ll never be stuck for words.

“Without having to think or research, we know the very best calls to make and the most relevant things to talk to them about are right there in front of us,” says Danelle. “RiTA turned our database into a serious competitive advantage for all of our agents and increased productivity 5 times over.”

The business had always enjoyed a good prospecting culture and kept stringent analytics about the results of their prospecting efforts, which helps to really demonstrate the before and after impact of implementing the RiTA platform.

“In one week with RiTA our team recorded 16 appraisals. Prior to RiTA, at an average of 6 minutes per call just calling your database from A-Z with no artificial intelligence applied, you would have taken (on average) 88 hours to get those 16 appraisals. Now by using RiTA, it only took 17.6 hours,” accounts Danelle.

“That is 1/5th of the time to achieve the same result. This means that your productivity is 5 times higher using RiTA and what is more exciting, is potentially 5x more income for the same amount of previous effort.

“The point of innovation is to increase productivity,” says Danelle “and there are so many solutions that just don’t give you that return. RiTA definitely delivered on her promise and as a leader, who promises her team an opportunity to be successful in this industry - I can rely on RiTA to set up the play and all the agents need to do is execute.”

“My advice to other agents, whether it is COVID or any other type of market is this: Move on from procrastinating and simply accept the old way of calling A-Z no longer works. Time is money. We have all now been gifted this amazing digital personal assistant called "RiTA" but it has one catch, you still need to pick up the phone and dial - that part is the same - however, everything following that, has now changed.”

Since implementing RiTA to help her team with pinpoint prospecting, Danelle has given RiTA a promotion to now work as the first responder of buyer enquiries. 

This intelligent response is individualised to each enquiry and can answer questions buyers have about each listing. 

“It frees up our agents to prioritise talking to the best buyers, and with RiTA doing the heavy lifting everyone who enquires gets an immediate, but also a personalised, response. It is a fantastic experience for customers and also for agents.”

The team at BHGRE recorded record months in June and July, and while many real estate businesses are contracting, Danelle and her team are looking at expansion plans.

“With the data asset we have built over the years, we can guarantee agents an opportunity to build a sustainable career in any market and we are even scouting for a second office location to take advantage of the volume of opportunity that we have.”

For more information about how RiTA works, you can contact AiRE.

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