By 2025, the global real estate market is predicted to reach an astronomical $3.7 trillion. Despite being one of the world’s largest asset classes, the real estate industry is grossly underutilizing technology.
Sure, there are virtual tours, digitized models for construction, AI-powered customer support, and property management platforms. But how is technology being utilized internally by real estate companies?
Why automate real estate sales commissions?
PwC’s 2021 report cited workplace automation as one of the most important disruptors in both traditional and PropTech real estate businesses.
This should convey to real estate companies that it’s essential to prioritize workplace technology investment. While there are several internal business processes you can automate, let’s look specifically at why you should be automating your real estate sales commission process.
Provide transparency for all
There’s nothing worse than the friction that occurs due to misunderstandings. It causes mistrust and frustration internally.
Clerical errors are a constant worry when multiple stakeholders rely on manual spreadsheet-based processes to compute commissions. A deal changes or falls through, ops forget to update the spreadsheet, and then your broker is subsequently disappointed when they don’t earn what they expected.
However, things don’t have to be this way.
A real estate sales commission automation platform keeps all sales data historically accurate. Managers and payees can immediately see all commission calculations, clawbacks, and corrections. This much-needed transparency serves to reduce employee dissatisfaction and turnover.
Motivate your agents and brokers
In the same vein, transparent real estate commission software motivates employees in these two additional ways:
Real-time performance data
Companies are able to engage their agents with real-time performance data such as earnings to date, current commission tiers, kickers, and more. Agents can have their own dashboards and can easily access this information at any time, encouraging exceptional performance.
Flexible incentive plans
Plus, software integrations with CRMs such as Salesforce and Hubspot allow real estate companies to build their own incentive plans and easily test and adjust based on powerful analytics.
This is huge. A study by Deloitte found that 50% of employees will change employers for a more attractive incentive system.
Therefore, this flexibility to easily create attractive incentive plans is crucial to not only maintaining high employee satisfaction but also attracting new brokers in the war for talent.
Scale seamlessly
Given the rapid growth of the real estate industry, particularly in PropTech, a robust scaling strategy is key to business success. However, the processes in many companies struggle to keep pace with the expanding needs of the business.
For example, spreadsheets are great. However, once a company expands past a certain limit, they will find themselves managing many different spreadsheets. This demands too much administrative time to organize as we further discuss in this article Why managing sales commission in a spreadsheet does not scale.
However, good sales commission software should maintain the flexibility of spreadsheets within a software solution suited to enterprise-scale deployments. And rather than a flurry of emails right before payroll, stakeholders should have a central location to review, discuss, and approve commission payments.
Sales commission automation means growth doesn’t have to be messy.
Gain efficiency across departments
You know which formula often doesn’t pan out well?
Multiple spreadsheets + multiple stakeholders = Multiple errors
An estimated 88% of spreadsheets contain errors. A real estate sales commission platform counteracts this by acting as the accurate, single source of truth for everyone involved.
From the agents to their managers, and HR and operations, commission data is centralized, accurate, and easily accessible for all. Here are a few of the ways automation streamlines commission management.
Efficiency gains with real estate commission software:
- Customizable approval workflows
- Automatic commission calculations
- Generation of commission statements
- Commission payout reports for use by your payroll provider
Rather than manually doing all of the above, your teams can focus on what they do best. Automation of real estate sales commission lightens everyone’s load.
In short, 56% of real estate decision-makers rate their business “five out of ten or lower” for digital and technological innovation maturity. Make sure your business doesn’t fall into that 56%.
If you wish to disrupt the real estate industry, first invest in your real estate company’s internal processes. Automating your sales commission process is a great place to start! Our Buyer's guide to sales commission software can help you get started.
EqualTo + Real Estate
At EqualTo, we’ve done a complete rethink of how companies should manage sales commission. Our sales commission operating system offers a modern and unique approach to address the challenges encountered by real estate companies.
Curious to learn more? Schedule a free, personalised demo.