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After 20 years of real estate life, with the past eight being a coach/consultant/performance manager for major franchise real estate businesses, it was time for a change, writes Babette Coutanche.
And if you want to create effective change and bring forward an antiquated business model, how better than to enter the tech space where real impact and change can occur at a much faster pace.
And that is why I joined a proptech start-up. I see it as a way to take what is at the core of real estate — relationships — and turbocharge the outcomes for a business.
The real estate industry needs to focus on relationship-building activities and proper implementation and use of proptech enables this to happen. It’s about efficiency.
The property industry sometimes feels like a rat race. I love the real estate industry, but I feel it still has many traditional business models and is ripe for digital transformation. There is still a way to go to “update” the typical mindset and shift it towards embracing not only the right technology which compliments the business, but using it properly to replace mundane process-driven tasks which are taking away from the relationship building of client and customer interaction. This being the value of what the real estate industry brings to the table.
Many of my friends and colleagues, including myself, get burned out because to get more work done, you just take on more. The concept of continuous improvement, use of technology and training to improve and scale the business is not what is built into the business.
From my 20 years in the industry, many systems and procedures are stuck together with Band-Aids. Data and systems are disconnected, and skills and training are less than desirable. Most computers don’t have cameras, microphones, speakers and the shift to laptops has been slow — all in a changing era of hybrid working which the industry just isn’t keeping up with.
Even dress standards can be considered a bit traditional — suits, uniforms etc. Compare that with a proptech, where true self-expression is seen in the go-to jeans, T-shirt and blazer. The commitment to innovation includes a best-of-breed Apple laptop, conference speakers, high-speed internet, and co-working office and home office hybrid working environments. I truly believe this freedom and flexibility leads to happier team members who are able to perform better and, in turn, service their clients to a higher standard.
Properti is a part of the Brisbane Proptech Pilot Accelerator program and uses the Brisbane hub co-working office where there is lots of training, learning and collaboration. Further to this, in my first week I have been on paid training courses and have an enormous amount of self-paced learning to dive into.
I always felt the marketing could be done better in real estate and, in particular, social media. That’s where the brilliance of Properti.ai comes in being an integrated system that allows the sales agent or BDM to focus on their customers while the system looks after the rest.
When working with a modern tech company, the systems are set up for scale and collaboration. There are no boundaries and information sharing is part of the culture. Everyone has access to support, leads and other common channels using tools like Slack. Most meetings are done via Zoom, all sales and marketing in HubSpot, and everything else in Clickup.
I really enjoy helping people, working with people, and best-of-breed technology so that I can help achieve the best or a lasting process/outcome. I feel in my role as chief customer officer with a leading proptech, I will be able to achieve that. We intend to break the traditional technology mould in real estate by providing great software, great onboarding, regular follow-up and engagement to get the best results.
Babette Coutanche is the chief customer officer at Properti.
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