Within the highly competitive industry that is real estate, real estate agents have begun to feel the sting of burnout. And unfortunately, the performance of many agents across the world has started to falter as a result. However, there is one tool that agencies can wield to boost performance within their teams without negatively impacting their team’s mental health: gamification.
In a nutshell, gamification is an incredibly powerful motivational tool that uses a mix of psychology and video game mechanics to activate one of the biggest driving factors within our brains — competition. But what are the biggest pain points faced by the real estate industry, and how can gamification solve them? Read on to find out, plus learn how the real estate industry has been impacted by sales gamification.
4 Major Challenges Facing Real Estate (and Their Solutions)
Real estate is an increasingly competitive industry where agents and managers face a variety of pain points. It can be challenging to differentiate your agency from others and to get new properties for sale — as well as to have comprehensive control over your team and data quality.
So what are the major challenges facing real estate agencies? According to our customers, here are the top 4–and how to quickly and efficiently solve them with sales gamification.
1. Poor data overview
How do you manage your data quality? Has your team had difficulties entering data? How many hours have you spent, as a manager, manually inputting data from your team? Manual data entry is tedious, dull, and inefficient. And considering that being overworked and not having enough time is a common issue for real estate agents, it doesn’t make sense to waste valuable time on mind-numbing tasks like data entry.
Solution: Utilize sales visualization within gamification software
With sales visualization and gamification software, you no longer have to input your data manually. Instead, you have automatic, real-time data with instant notifications–that are visible to your entire team via TV screens, phones, and via the app. Thus, agents and managers will spend less time on data entry.
You will also experience higher data quality and greater transparency of both individual and company data. This will allow everyone to be on the same page, gain insight into what needs attention and celebrate milestones together. All that boils down to less tedious input time from your agents and greatly reduced lifts for managers to pull sales reports and other crucial data.
2. Low motivation
Low motivation and disengagement are common problems among real estate agencies. Agents often feel unappreciated and overstressed. And since most agents work in and out of the office, it is all too easy to feel lonely and disconnected from their colleagues.
Solution: Use gamification to re-motivate
Sales gamification allows you to build a team of highly engaged agents that understand their contributions to the company and feel valued for their work. In turn, you will also foster a more positive company culture–people will feel more fulfilled and satisfied with their work, and team spirit will be much improved.
3. Stunting potential
Real estate is a highly competitive market, so agents can often become discouraged and thus not live up to their maximum potential. This issue only becomes magnified if they continuously miss the mark and get “out-classed” by another agent — even worse, the same agent again and again. When employees are demotivated, regardless of industry, their performance has been proven to drop significantly over time.
Solution: Introduce gamification practices
Why not make competitiveness enjoyable? Introducing fun sales contests and leaderboards will help to re-motivate your agents and drive better performance. Studies show that gamification employs the “reward compulsion loop” and thus compels people to perform better. It also triggers a release of dopamine, which enhances alertness, motivation, attention, and learning–among other things. Not only that, but creative competitions like lottery competitions allow everyone to have a chance to win, not just the top seller, keeping your low and middle-performers engaged throughout the competition.
4. Holding repetitive competitions
Competitions can do wonders for employee engagement and motivation. However, when the same people typically come out on top in sales competitions, it can be irritating for your entire team. The same applies to holding the same type of sales competition over and over. Repetition may be essential in certain areas of life, but it’s a big no-no when you’re trying to boost sales performance among your real estate agents.
Solution: Change it up with gamification software
Using customized leaderboards that compare more closely matched agents is effective in keeping everyone engaged and encouraging all levels of performers to do well. Tracking less traditional metrics is also helpful. For example, most houses sold on a random day, in a particular area, smallest house sold, etc.
Implementing different types of contests can counteract the frustration of middle to lower performers. For instance, try running team competitions or even a lottery competition in order to give everyone an equal chance of succeeding.
How Gamification Impacts the Real Estate Industry
The real estate industry is notoriously competitive–and with agents frequently in and out of the office, it’s common to feel disconnected from each other and the company as a whole. This often leads to poor company culture and lower employee engagement. With sales gamification, you create visibility and transparency amongst co-workers, employee morale and teamwork skyrocket, and, in turn, you become an attractive employer that all brokers want to work for. Here are three ways gamification has impacted the real estate industry:
1. Improving visibility and data quality
Many real estate agencies reported issues with data entry/quality, as well as agents struggling to see their impact within their organization. Through the use of sales motivation software, real estate managers are noticing better data quality, and they have a better handle on where their agents are at any time of day.
Agents also gain a more holistic perspective on how they are performing, and they are able to see how their results are directly impacting the company. All of this gives agents the autonomy they need to feel like they have the capability to make their own decisions on how they want to work and make the most of their time on the clock.
2. Building team spirit
Since real estate agents are frequently on the road, teamwork and company culture often suffer as a result. Sales motivation software helps bring colleagues together and promotes collaboration regardless of where your sellers are. Since information is easily accessible and shareable, agents are encouraged to work together more and celebrate achievements together.
For example, when a broker books a meeting with a potential client, it will show on TV screens throughout the office(s). Then, perhaps, a co-worker will notice that it’s in an area where they grew up or are incredibly familiar with, so they can provide valuable and relevant information that may help to price the property most accurately and increase the client’s overall satisfaction. Win–win–win!
3. Differentiating your company from the competition
Aspects of sales motivation software, such as leaderboards and gamification, will help to differentiate your agency from others. Leaderboards highlight performance and provide a clear overview of company data–prospects, meetings, sales, etc. When people have more awareness and know how they are performing, it is easier for them to identify strengths and weaknesses and adjust accordingly. They will also know how others in the organization are performing, thus sparking friendly competition amongst colleagues and encouraging bigger and better sales.
Speaking of competition, gamification makes it exciting for employees to compete with their colleagues while simultaneously driving performance on key targets. It combines recognition, rewards, fun, and competition in order to motivate and engage people. Studies even show that “90% of employees are more productive when they use gamification.”
How to Use Gamification Software to Drive Performance
Whether it's a result of legislative changes, the economy, or simply the number of available properties, the real estate market is always changing, and with it, the market value of homes. Is there a way to keep sales steady, make sense of the numbers, and make accurate projections?
Here are three of the best ways to use gamification software to boost performance in your real estate agency:
1. Data visualization
For data to be valuable, it must be easy to visualize and understand at a glance. You need to be able to draw clear connections between your operations and the results of that work. This requires real-time data that is easily accessible to you and your team, not just in receiving that data but also making sense of it. The more you can make your data intuitive and transparent, the easier it is for your teams to crush their targets.
2. Leaderboards
People are naturally competitive, so seeing where they rank compared to their coworkers and peers is an effective motivational tool to inspire personal and professional improvement. And with unmotivated agents being one of the major pain points in the real estate industry, leaderboards are a fitting solution.
3. Competitions
Running competitions is a fun way to increase activity, performance, and ultimately profits. It’s a great way to incentivize daily tasks to be more exciting and engaging for agents. And you don’t have to have huge prizes in order to motivate your salespeople; they simply enjoy the thrill of the chase and the recognition from performing. Just don’t forget to change things up every so often to prevent “competition burnout”!
Summary
Gamification is a great way to make dull and boring everyday tasks, such as data entry or cold calling, more engaging. This is why sales gamification is the perfect tool for the real estate industry.
Utilizing gamification software can lead to building a stronger company culture, happier teams, and a more productive workplace resulting in more motivated employees, lower turnover, more celebrations, and, best of all, happier customers.
