Skills upgrading seminar helps property agents facing tech takeover stay ahead of the game
Over 200 property agents and financial advisors gathered together yesterday afternoon for a special seminar on how to stay ahead of the game in the highly competitive industry. The seminar, organised by iCompareLoan.com, saw speakers helping participants understand how to make technology work for them and help set them apart from the competition.
The seminar comes as property agents face the increasing prospect of their jobs being displaced by automation in an already overcrowded market. New technology that is being developed by established listing platforms and startups may lead to automated services ultimately edging agents out of the picture.
In this new landscape, property agents “must upgrade or die,” according to chief mortgage consultant of iCompareLoan.com, Mr Paul Ho. In order to cope as technology threatens to take over the industry, Mr Ho says that agents must adopt technology and automate their workflow or risk being replaced by automation or technical tools.
These skills are what the seminar organised by iCompareLoan.com aimed to impart to participants. Several industry leaders shared their expert knowledge on how agents and financial advisors can use technology to their advantage, to beat the competition and be seen and heard in this increasingly information-polluted market atmosphere.
One of the speakers, Mr Ho, introduced iCompareLoan.com’s Home Loan Report tool to participants and demonstrated how agents can make use of this user-friendly technology to augment their services. The Home Loan Report tool is a Singapore’s first one-of-a-kind analysis platform that provides latest updates of detailed loan packages and helps property agents, financial advisors and mortgage brokers to analyse home loan packages for their clients and give unbiased home loan / commercial loan analysis for their property buyers and home owners.
As buyers of the future grow more discerning, agents cannot afford to just rely on their personality or their experience to attract clients. Buyers and sellers of the future will increasingly rely on agents to have knowledge on property finance calculations and this is where the Home Loan report comes in.
This trademarked tool is a one-stop solution that can help deliver a detailed home loan report to property agents in 3 minutes flat. This is especially helpful when agents who do not have knowledge on property finance calculations make cold calls to potential clients and need to have a thorough analysis at hand in order to best direct each client on what their property buying and selling options are.
Such a report will not only help agents deliver the best possible property options to their clients, it will also help prevent the agent or potential buyers or sellers from wasting each other’s time since they already have all the information they need on the potential client’s buying or selling prospects at hand.
The seminar also featured a representative from MediaOne, a top marketing optimisation agency, who gave tips and tricks on how agents and financial advisors can make use of search engine marketing or search engine optimisation (SEO) to ensure that they are seen and heard online where they can reach and develop a larger client base.
Mr Ho asserted that property agents who want to continue working in the industry must set themselves apart and position themselves as thought leaders, especially in this day and age where digital marketing largely drives the economy. “It’s not a science, it’s a soft art,” he said, explaining how simply organising content online, maximising contacts using platforms like LinkedIn, creating simple webpages and adhering by SEO principles can help agents become sought after without extraordinary effort.
The seminar, ultimately, taught property agents how to throw a well-equipped hook into the sea and wait for the bait which will surely arrive. The next training session will be held on Friday (9 Mar) between 2pm – 4pm at iCompareLoan.com’s office at Peace Centre.