WHAT IS CURIOSITY DAY ?
There is no such thing as a bad curiosity , the only bad thing is no curiosity . Brian White AO
Each year , the corporate team takes part in Curiosity Day , a Brian White initiative encouraging staff members to think big and challenge the status quo . Each staff member gets five minutes to talk about their ‘ curiosity ’.
This can be something they question about how the business runs , or how it can be improved . Borne out of Harvard Business School thinking , the Curiosity Day has resulted in Ray White initiatives you would already know - the weekly newsletter , The Insider , our express auction reporting system and Pulse .
Our Curiosity Days were held in each state throughout early March , with bold questions and challenges being put to the team . We can ’ t wait to see what comes next !
If you think Curiosity Day may work for your team , get in touch with Jaslyn Ackling jackling @ raywhite . com to learn more .
REAL ESTATE OF ORIGIN
Appraisals are the lifeblood of real estate and twice a year we hold a call-a-thon to create some friendly rivalry between the states and New Zealand .
Our seventh Real Estate of Origin was exceptional and shows the breadth and scale of our group . No one other single group could drum up 6,100 plus appraisals in one afternoon . Queensland won the bragging rights this time , with New Zealand pipped at the post .
The Sunshine State stormed home with a huge 2,043 new appraisals booked in , ahead of their mates across the ditch who managed a very respectable 1,902 appraisals .
However , the Kiwis weren ’ t complete bridesmaids , with Charlie Brothers of Manakau in South Auckland winning individual appraisal numbers with a whopping 153 ( just besting Sarah-Louise Anderson of Maroochydore on 101 ).
The call-a-thon was hosted by our Chief Strategy Officer Mark “ Macca ” McLeod , along with Bianca Denham in Adelaide and Tim Snell in Sydney from the group ’ s national performance team . The bi-annual drive was powered by NurtureCloud which is Ray White ’ s latest innovative prop-tech tool which turbocharges an agent ’ s call list . NurtureCloud finds the best calls to make , built around pipeline lead scores , last contact date and behaviour and it ’ s evolving all the time .
Ray White agents who used the smart call list within NurtureCloud were generating more appraisals from the same amount of calls .
THE PROFIT TEAM : OUR SECRET WEAPON
Every business needs to know its bottom line but real estate businesses have their own special needs . Many real estate business owners come to ownership from a sales background and learn financial skills along the way through trial and error .
Many business owners cannot afford to hire experienced , high-quality internal accounting staff due to scale , yet their tax agents and accounting firms have limited experience across the real estate industry . This was the driving force behind the need to create an accounting firm within the Ray White corporate team that could advise business owners around their financial metrics and how to achieve profitable , sustainable growth .
As in many areas of our group , our people are our competitive advantage . Our investment in its profit team over the last 10 years means we have developed a team of accountants to service the business who truly understand real estate agency operations .
The team of experienced , certified accountants based in Brisbane , Sydney , Melbourne and Auckland service the entire Australia and New Zealand network . Our accountants consult with our business owners and high performing agents alike regarding : agency financial performance , profitability metrics and benchmarks , forecasting , staff remuneration , funding , and succession planning .
The team also looks after the monthly accounting processes ( such as payroll , creditors , BAS and reporting insights ) for 60 clients and counting . The beauty of the profit team has been its ability to create an Australian profit benchmarking report , which gives Ray White members an edge to track their business ’ performance .
No other group has such a view over its network ’ s profitability and the like-for-like office metrics from the 2021 report were incredibly insightful .
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