Ep18: From 0 to 2,500 — managing expectations through rapid growth — with Hope Faulks

Join us on this episode of Property Management and Me as we welcome Hope Faulks from the Wingman Group. Hope shares her incredible journey at Housemark,  where they organically grew the property management portfolio to 2,500 properties in just 4 years and the key strategies she's now implementing at Wingman Group to help other Property Managers achieve similar success.

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Connect with Hope Faulks — Wingman Group
Connect with host Kate Sunol — PropertyMe

Transcript

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Kate:  Hi and welcome to Property Management and Me, a series from Property Me bringing quick tips and insights to support your everyday practice.  I'm your host Kate Sunol and today I'm joined by Hope Fawkes. She's from the Wingman Group. She's a property management specialist and we're going to be chatting around her time at Housemark and some of the learnings that she's taken on board leading the team there, leading the property management department from ground up to two and a half thousand managements in four years, which is incredible.

And some of those strategies that she's now bringing to Wingman group and to other PMs so they can help implement those practices. So welcome Hope. We're really excited to have you here today. 

Hope: Thank you so much for having me. It's absolute pleasure and thank you for the big wrap as well.

Kate: It is a phenomenal feat, like two and a half thousand in four years. I mean, most people would set two and a half thousand as a 10 year or a lifetime goal for a management, particularly if you are looking at growing organically and, and really building from the ground up, it's, it speaks for itself essentially. 

So you've gone through the process. I believe it was a hundred properties in May that you've onboarded, which is phenomenal. That's  a hundred new clients, a hundred setups, a hundred tenancy transfers or leasings, which I mean, is such a massive scope for any business. What are some of the things that you use to manage that? Because I think even if you put customer service aside, logistically that is its own challenge in itself. 

Hope: I think fundamentally within our business, one of the things that we always say is, is process first. So that has always been huge for us and the level of excitement from myself when Property Me bought out the integrated process Task checklists, I absolutely lost my mind because we were previously paying for another platform, which was an additional cost to having the PropertyMe platform to be able to track all of our tasks and checklists. So that's been huge for us. 

We've really worked on what does the perfect process look like from taking over a new management to entering a form six to actually getting the property leased and the customer experience throughout that entirety of that process.

And we've built out customized workflows and processes for all of those components. And we're able to track it. You know, every minute via the PropertyMe portal to be able to make sure that we're meeting all of those expectations we've set for ourself. 

Kate: Absolutely. It makes such a big difference when you're working off the same page. It really transformed I think I sort of take it for granted because I'm like, Oh yeah, we've had templates for a while, but it does make such a big difference just to be able to roll it out and, and know that everyone's working off the same system, the same process, the same quality standard is being delivered to everybody.

And it's just transparent off that same platform. What team load are you looking at there? Like, do you have people that really focus on bringing in those new clients? Do you have sort of offshore help? Do you have sort of 1pm looking after it from start to finish? How does that sort of hand over work? 

Hope: Yeah. So within our business, we have 2.5 BDMs. I say 0. 5 cause Natalie South, our General Manager likes to still bring on new business, but it's not her full time role, but we also have Jordan Slinger, who works with us as well as Nicholas DeRosa. So they are our two full time BDMs and their sole role is to building quality relationships with clients that we do have referral partners as well as getting it, getting their names out and meeting and greeting with different people in our local networking area to try and build those quality relationships.

Jordan, Nick and Nat, they all do have their own dedicated remote professional who's solely does all of that administration component. So for us, we structure our business with the activities that are not dollar productive or client facing, we try to remove those tasks away from our agents so that they can focus on building better relationships and, you know, obviously making the business more profitable. 

Kate: So then the way that that would work is you're using the PropertyMe platform for that communication. So you're using mentions and sort of where everything's up to. So it is in that one spot. 

Hope: Absolutely. Yeah, 

Kate: The BDM can go in and see where everything's up to, what's needed, if there's a form missing, that sort of thing, they then do the client contacting.

Hope: Yep, absolutely. So, the remote professionals use their integrated checklist within the PropertyMe task workflow. And they, as we know, when you tick things off on there, it has the name of who done it, the time that they did it, the date that it was done. So, that way the BDM is able to monitor the workflow, and if there are things that a client's missing when they sign up with us, like the landlord hasn't provided bank details or the landlord hasn't provided confirmation of smoke alarms and stuff like that, we (well not we, the remote professionals do all of that for us), and they actually pop all of the notes within that particular task. And they tag the BDM and the BDM then goes and reviews what items that we need to gain from the client, have that conversation and get it popped into the system. 

Kate: From a client perspective, they're still only ever dealing with that one point of contact, but all of the work is being done in the background, essentially without them even realising, but it's just so transparent across the team. 

Hope: Absolutely. And, and we're always transparent with our clients that we do have admin support. So we, like I say to people all the time, like I'll get my assistant to flick that across to you. So, so they're very aware of that. We're not necessarily, you know, Promoting that they are remote professionals, but they do know that we do have admin support within our business. And those team, some of those teammates do work from home.

Kate: Yeah. It's just nice sometimes for that consistency of service to have that one person that you're picking up the phone. So, you know, you're not speaking to, you know, Amy one day and Joel the next, and then someone else the next day, there is just that one point of contact sort of carrying that relationship through.

And then that would get handed over to a Property Manager once the client's onboarded. 

Hope: Correct. Correct. So once the client is on boarded and the property is leased, then once that's done, it's actually handed over to the Property Manager. The BDM and the Property Manager will have a little hand over. The BDM also has a template that they need to provide the Property Manager with any hand over notes.

The Property Manager then goes in and actually reviews the BDM's task for bringing on the property, the new business checklist, they review that task, they review the points, they make sure that everything is where it needs to be. We know sometimes BDMs are a bit naughty, not also detail driven. So having the ability to review that, that task list for them gives them a little bit of peace of mind of where things are also up to.

And then they become the landlord's new point of contact and the same process. Our Property Managers have a remote professional work in the back end, doing their administration components. And that way it alleviates the Property Manager to be doing their relationship building activities and providing critical advice where it's really required.

So, and again, our PMs are transparent that they do have an administration assistant and the reasons behind why they have one to make sure that they're able to answer their calls, they're able to make sure that they're there and available for the landlords when they do need assistance. And our, our landlords absolutely love that. 

Kate: Yeah, of course and looking at that process, what would you say some of those key things are that you're including from a customer experience perspective that really make the difference between that referral business and making sure that your clients are referring to grow that rent role as well.  

Hope: So I think the real it's really, really basic for us. I mean, every single thing that we do is customer driven. So every single time there is something that pops up, whether it's maintenance, whether it's needing further information from a landlord, we do it via phone call. We really don't instigate first connections with our clients via email. Certainly there's some landlords that do like that and we will tailor their preferences to our preferences.

But, you know, if we need something simple, we call the landlord. We have a conversation about it and build those relationships. We find that everything within our business is about having a quality relationship. So even if there was something that didn't go a hundred percent, how the landlord would have wanted it to, or, you know, they didn't achieve the premium price they were hoping to achieve because there has not only been a component of providing a service, but also.

Building that connection with the client, we find that they're much, much happier than a lot of other, a lot of other clients that we find from other businesses. So I think making, finding every task that you possibly could and making it a phone call if the landlord doesn't answer, sending them a text message instead of a lengthy email saying, Hey, can you give me a call back when you've got five minutes? 

Certainly the tone of emails as well, particularly for first time landlords, it can be a little bit stressful when they read these long lengthy emails about compliance or problems or maintenance. And just having someone to be an ear to talk them through that process makes a world of difference.  

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. I love when I chat to high performing agencies and I sort of ask what the secret sauce is and they go, really, it's the basics. 

And I think we can over complicate things by not having these processes and this structure in there. And what happens is the little things then become the friction points because we've missed a phone call cause we've been busy or we have written that email really fast.

It's probably come across a bit blunt and we haven't built that relationship and it's, it's really just making sure that those things are not a consideration and that you're always connecting with the client. So it is basic, but it is harder than it seems when you've got a million things going on. I can appreciate that.

Hope: With the technology that we have today, right? It's so much easier when you're in a busy head space or you're not feeling like you're up to having, you know, positive chitchat just to flick an email and worry about it the next day. I mean that. It's really, really easy to do that. But I think what a lot of the time people don't think about is when, when you send an email, that email has a reaction and that reaction can be either, you know, unhappy client, a client who'd like a phone call anyway, or a client, you know, that really wants further information.

So sometimes by taking the simple road, it actually creates more work for you. So I personally think phone calls the easiest way, because you can nut it all out in that one, uh, five, 10 minute conversations, rather than going back and forth over email or text, you know, for, for two, three days. 

Kate: Absolutely. And I can attest that that is actually something that you live by because when I sent an email to your team and said, you know I’d love to chat with someone, you just jumped on the phone and said, let's have a convo. And I love it. I think I have missed that from the day-to-day real estate is the conversations and soliciting behind email.

So it is definitely something that you live by, which is great. It made a big difference. I had like 50 emails in that hour and one phone call, and it made such, such an impression. How does that work? If we're sort of looking at the overall structure of the team, there is a lot of responsibility on BDMs to be bringing in the business, is that just solely their responsibility for customer relationship management. Do you have targets across the team. Is it sort of they look after it until a certain point? And then it's up to the Property Manager to manage that sort of how do you manage that whole workflow holistically rather than just the onboarding part? 

Hope: Yeah. Yeah. So we, we have our BDM's who's basically, their role encapsulated is getting the Form 6 signed. Once the Form 6 is signed, it comes into our system. We give them a call, say, thank you so much for your business. We're going to send you the copy of the Form 6. So when we send them a copy of that Form 6, we introduce them to our Leasing Team.

And we do have a dedicated, two dedicated Leasing Agents agents, one who does our relets, one who does purely new business. So that lLeasing Agent then becomes a primary point of contact for that landlord throughout the leasing process of that new business property, if it does need to be leased. And they will communicate with the landlord throughout that time frame.

So that really frees the BDM up more time to be bringing in more business, but the BDM certainly still has an aspect of checking in with the client throughout that experience to make sure that, you know, What, what they previously discussed with the BDM to what's going through to leasing is obviously aligned.

And just sometimes it's, it's good to have one person that's good cop, one person that's bad cop in certain situations, if we're trying to achieve certain things. So if it's like a takeover management and it doesn't require leasing, it goes straight from the BDM into the PM. So they do an immediate handover, but throughout those processes, there are ingrained checklist, ingrained procedures to make sure that those handovers from BDM to PM or to leasing are as smooth as possible. Because we'd know with new business, there's always some spicy properties or situations or things that need to be done. So we try as much as possible to protect our Leasing Agents and our Property Managers from that noise because, you know, our BDMs are extremely motivated to bring on as much quality business as possible.

So we really try to structure our team in a way that the BDMs are able to do what they're good at and the Property Managers and Leasing Agents are able to do what they're good at.  

Kate: And how do you work around that referral and that customer experience process? Do you ask for referrals and reviews? Because I know some people are sort of,  they, they work sort of in hope that they would get them or they might have it at the bottom of their email. We'd love a review. And then there's other agencies that are just like, you know what? We've delivered great service. Can you give us a review or would you be happy to refer us?

How does that sort of sit within your team? 

Hope: Yeah, well, look, absolutely. I think for us, if you don't ask, thou shall not receive. So we have it built into email templates that we have like once the property is leased, but we also encourage, you know, the BDM, the PM or the leasing agent to call and ask the landlord for a review.

Sometimes it's quite funny because the BDM will call, ask for one. The PM's already got in there first and yeah, then there's, you know, two different people are asking the client for a review, but they always, you know, really, really happy to give us one, you know, usually they do it without us having to ask for it.

But certainly if we haven't received a review from a customer about their experience, we ask for one anyway. As a business, we also use AskNicely, which is sort of another platform where we survey every single client on their onboarding process. If so, for those clients that maybe don't feel comfortable posting something online for whatever reason, we do also ask them to complete just a private survey on their experience.

And I guess that also helps us sort of encapsulate what their overall service was and what their journey was on more of a granular level. And certainly if there was a landlord that completed that and they provided us glowing reviews, you know, myself or Natalie, our General Manager gives them a call to thank them and also ask if they did feel comfortable popping it in, you know, a public forum as well. 

Kate: I think it makes such a difference if they've had that conversation, they've had that service and you are personally asking them versus an email, which is very, very easy to ignore, then it really does help that little bit extra to, into getting that, that review actually finalized. 

Your referral business, that is a large part of your business growth. I think I've heard you sort of share on that. It sits around from my memory, about 30, 35 percent of your business growth. You can really tell how important that customer experience. is to the overall health of the business. Are you happy sharing some of the KPIs around that or all the things that you have in place to make sure that you're generating those results?

Hope: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, you're absolutely correct with, you know, our referral from our existing clients is around that 30, 35%. So we had one Property Manager, I think it was in January, they bought on 12 new business properties from like referrals from existing clients. So that, you know, and there was another Property Manager that bought on six.

So it just shows you that if you're building those quality connections and relationships with your landlords and you're having conversations with them regularly, not only whether most landlords have multiple investment properties. For a start, whether they're in your suburb catchment or somewhere else.

And when you're in a position like our office, where we're quite lucky, where we service, you know, a varied of various Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Ipswich, we have the opportunity to manage a lot of properties that our clients may have in other locations as well. But not only that, you know, landlords usually have families, friends, coworkers that have investment properties and they, you know, they may talk about their Property Managers or their agents. And we really want to be that one where our landlords are like, Oh my God, I would not be a landlord without this agency. So, you know, our goal is to always provide landlords with solution based advice.

When we check in with them, it's not just trying to gain, you know, instructions for particular things. It's about asking them really key questions. So, you know, what, is, is the property generating a good amount of income for you? Is it meeting your financial expectations? You know, do you have any other investment properties?

Because sometimes even though you search on RP Data or, or Pricefinder, it, you know, landlords can own properties under multiple different types of ownership titles, superannuation funds. So asking those questions and, you know, asking the landlord, you know, if they say, Oh my God, you're the, are the best Property Manager I've ever had.

Encouraging those Property Managers, but well, if you think I'm so good, you know, anyone else who'd like the service  and you know, just having, having the confidence to have those conversations with the clients as well. And we, yeah, we find. You know, without too much effort that our business already is organically generating those referrals back in from our current clients or on the flip end that our landlords are so happy with the experience and being an investor has been easy that they want to buy another property and bring it on with us as well. 

Kate: Yeah. And I think that really speaks to the culture of the business, because I know there's been some people I know who sort of said, I really don't want to bring friends or family or people here because I can look after this part of it, but overall as a structure, I'm just not that confident, but it's really great to hear that your team are, you're going to get great service. No matter who you deal with, whether it's the BDM, the leasing, the property manager, you know, they're all reaching out for reviews. They're all having that consistency of the quality experience. So they sort of can feel confident in referring people in, that they're going to get that same treatment. 

Hope: Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, we, we all have a vision as a business, and I think that it's very important when you do have a team, whether it's small or large to all be aligned on what that vision looks like. like and what you want to achieve as a team. And we have every single Wednesday morning, we have a team breakfast that we put on for the team and we have our regular meeting and we go over what is our business vision.

It's not driven by achieving targets or achieving KPIs. It's more positive news. And, like we do with our clients, building relationship with our, you know, with our team members and getting to know each other, we play games, we do silly workshops, we play Chinese whispers and, and break down how those things can, you know, can impact others.

We also have guest speakers coming into our business as well to promote, you know, professional development, mental wellbeing and stuff like that as well. So it's an, it's important that what the service we're delivering to our landlords, we're delivering to our Property Managers as well. And on that note, just like every business, property management is a high turnover industry, and it can be very tricky to keep on quality long term staff.

And. We certainly did have a portfolio that I felt was cursed for a period of time because I had to call one landlord and say, look, I wanted to give you a call to let you know that unfortunately the Property Manager has moved on. And I think that was the third Property Manager in 12 months. And I was in such a panic about, you know, that portfolio and those clients. And that landlord said to me, Hope, I just want you to know that I don't care who manages my property. I know that no matter who manages my property at Housemark, I'm going to receive the same level of service. Um, and whilst that was, you know, a little bit of a, you know, tricky conversation, well, I felt it was, it was actually really positive because, you know, none of the clients in that portfolio left, we educated them throughout that process of, you know, property management being high turnover and made sure that whilst there was transitions of people in that portfolio, they still received the same service, the processes were still the same. So they still have the confidence within the business, not the particular PM. 

Kate: Yeah, that's amazing. It is really a testament to sort of the structure that you have and, and the things that you've put in place there. And really, I mean, if we were to sum up this episode, we are talking about tasks. We are talking about templates, reviews, emails, those sorts of things, having those processes in place.

But the whole philosophy underpinning it is when you have that looked after, you can focus on the things that actually do matter. So they really are, it's that core building block that your team can then know that that's looked after and have those things like, we're going to talk about vision rather than stuff that's hit the fan this week, we're going to talk about growth instead of fixing all of these holes because we didn't have a proper onboarding process in place when the client came on. 

And I think it's really important to sort of call that out because we can talk about customer service being important.

We can talk about phone calls being important, but if you don't have that system underlying you, you just don't have the capacity to be doing those things that you need to do. So they really do go hand in hand as being equally as important getting them right, so that you can focus on those things that matter.

Hope: Absolutely. And you know, we're very lucky that, you know, the system PropertyMe has the ability to help us align with the processes that we have as a business. And, that it also supports, you know, working in a large business where you can swap things from person to person and really have those remote professionals working in the back end, driving those workflows, making sure the notices are issued on time, you know, issuing, you know, leases and stuff like that so that the Property Managers can really focus on those client facing.

And, you know, we wouldn't be able to sit down every Wednesday and have a chit chat and have a meeting and play games If we didn't have people supporting us and didn't have good systems and good processes to be able to, you know, support our business as it is. 

Kate: Yeah. Just out of curiosity sake, how many managements are your PMs looking after with that support?

So if we look at it sort of from a business structure, typically PMs can look after anywhere from 80 to, I have heard of ridiculous, you know, over 300 sort of numbers. But with that extra support, how, how does that structure within the team? 

Hope: Yeah, so I'm going to tell you some ridiculous numbers.  Our Property Managers, for us, with the processes system structure that we have, it's an expectation that a property, a Senior Property Manager in our business can manage a minimum of 250 properties and some of our Property Managers by choice manage you know, 350 between 350 to 400.

And that's, that's not something that we've pushed upon them, but that's because they have, you know, a vision of what they would like to achieve within themselves personally and professionally as well as financially. And we always encourage our Property Managers to come to us so that we can look at structuring their work and their role to be able to benefit them to get to where they would like to be, whether it's personally or professionally. 

So, there are certainly some PMs that manage, you know, quite large portfolios. I think, I mean, I even think 250 is a large portfolio. With, with the processes and the support that we have, we find that, you know, the Property Managers feel very comfortable at that level.

Like they're coming in when they start every day. Although our team do like to get in quite early. They like to go for walks together and stuff, but they don't start till, you know, 8:30, they finish at five, you know, they take their hour lunch break. They're not overloaded. They're not overworked and you know, they're not overstressed and they enjoy their weekend.

Kate: I say ridiculous in the positive sense. I mean, if you are, if you are great at your job and you want to be growing and looking after more people and you've got that structure there, then absolutely take on the ridiculous and perform in that level. It's, it's quite amazing that they can feel supported too do that, to really triple, triple, um, what some people are managing in other areas. And it is a testament to the support that they receive. 

Hope: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, with that comes different things as well. Like sometimes you might have somebody who. would like to manage those numbers, but they're not necessarily there yet.

But, you know, we always, no matter what it is, if it's a Property Manager who wants to, you know, manage a large amount of properties, if it's a Property Manager that wants to try BDM that wants to jump into leasing, we, we really try to search for key talent in our office and work to their strengths and work out what does success look like for that individual so that we can, you know, maintain and look after our long term staff.

Kate: Yeah, so you found that having that career path and those different options and those growth stages for your PM has helped with your retention? 

Hope: Absolutely, absolutely. Having that administration support so it means that our Property Managers don't have to be, you know, lawyers, builders, maintenance professionals, you know, administration workers, inspections officers, and all of those other things, having the ability to, you know, delegate those processes and tasks across the team to really, you know, I don't even like the word Property Manager anymore.

I like to really call them relationship managers because that for us in our business, that's what they are. They're building quality relationships with their clients to make sure that we're able to generate successful outcomes for everyone. 

Kate: Yeah. Amazing.  Thank you so much for joining us here today, Hope, sharing a little bit about what underpins the success of Wingman Group as an extension of that.

It really, it really is great to have PM professionals come on and share their work. I love sharing what they're doing and you have done an amazing job growing the business. It is a real credit to the work that you and the team have done. If our listeners would like to reach out and continue the conversation, how can they get in touch? 

Hope: They absolutely can. And I'll, I'll send you over my details so that they can reach out. But my email address is just hope@thewingmangroup.com.au. So if they would like to connect with us, they're very, very welcome to. And, you know, and that's a part of what my role is now that I've transitioned out of our Housemark office on a full time basis, I mean, I'm still in the same office as them and I can't help myself, but, you know, now my role is, you know, working with other businesses across Australia, identifying areas of where there could be better processes, better procedures to, you know, build the foundation so that they're able to, you know, grow their business or create more work life balance for their team, or just give themselves back some more time, because we find that a lot of business owners and Principals are spread so thin across so many different areas of their business and Property Managers are feeling overworked. They're feeling overloaded. And, of course they would when they're, you know, managing end to end portfolios and trying to maintain the new expectations that clients have, particularly in an environment where there is a cost of living crisis. 

So, you know, and very happy to support anyone, even if it's just, you know, an ear to chat with, to put through ideas or people that feel that they'd like some more hands on support, we're happy to help.

Kate: Wonderful. Thanks so much, Hope. 

Hope: That's all right. Thank you.