How Sarah Ward became Illawarra's top female real estate agent

Any real estate agent could learn a thing or two from Sarah Ward. Highly experienced, Sarah consistently gets results. In fact, she’s the leading sales agent at Stone Real Estate – Illawarra and the leading female agent across the Wollongong region.

Having worked in the industry for about 13 years, Sarah has built a strong reputation based on open communication, deep empathy, and incredible service. Yet the way she delivers on these traits has changed over time, in line with her clients’ evolving expectations.

These days, as Sarah explains, people very much have their finger on the pulse. “The day and age we’re in, people want more information and they want it faster. We’ve got to try and provide them with day-to-day updates on where their campaign’s at. I just feel like nobody wants to go to bed and not know what’s going on.”

To deliver on these expectations, Sarah has turned to real estate technology. Specifically, Realtair. Here, she shares how the platform has transformed her daily work.

Streamlining the pitching process

From Digital Introductions to proposals, Sarah is using Realtair every day to help streamline her workflows and get information out to clients in a more timely manner.

“Once an appointment is booked with a new client, we send out a Digital Introduction. This includes a video so they can see who I am, plus other key points I want to cover before I walk in the door,” she says. “Then, after the visit, I send out the proposal — which includes our advice, what we think their property is worth, our commission, marketing strategy, and even videos of our previous work in the area as well.”

It’s a polished package, which is quick and easy to set up using branded templates. In fact, it only takes about 10 minutes for Sarah to have a new pitch ready to share. In the past, it would take her up to an hour.

Sarah Ward’s pro tip: “My secret? I use a checklist, which I provide to my team, containing all the information from the appraisal — the property’s best features, who I think their buyers are, that sort of thing. Then, the team simply adds the detail to my proposal template,” says Sarah.

“I use my own specific templates, built the way that I want them. This is really good for me — while we’re all working together as a team, I ultimately don’t want to be the same as everybody else.”

Gaining flexibility and control

One thing Sarah loves about Realtair is the flexibility it gives her and her clients.

“We can now sign and exchange contracts everywhere and anywhere. I’ve had situations where it’s five to five on a Friday afternoon and I’m sitting in a dance rehearsal with my daughter, and I’m trying to get an exchange complete,” she says. “If I didn’t have the ability to do it on my phone, it wouldn’t happen.”

Sarah cites the example of an exchange of contracts that happened in the countdown to Christmas last year. “We had a couple of properties that we exchanged on the morning of Saturday, 23 December — right on the Christmas break. We were about to have our last open home that day, and we managed to get those exchanges done and cancel the open. If we’d waited for solicitors, it would have taken up to three weeks to find out whether it had gone through.”

Sold on the online auction feature

Auctions are a huge part of the Stone Real Estate business. Adding Realtair to their auctioneering strategy has been a game-changer — helping the team register bidders in advance and on the day. They are also using the online auction feature to bring in more bidders.

“We recently had an auction with 18 registered bidders. Nine registered prior to the event, and then at the property we had the two laptops running so bidders could register on the spot. Previously, this was a laborious process involving paper forms,” Sarah says.

At this particular auction, the winner was an online bidder. He came from a local family but was travelling for work, so Realtair made it possible for him to easily bid from afar. “Sure, someone could have bid on his behalf, but this way the buyer felt like he was still in control of his bidding. I think, sometimes, they don’t want to hand over the reins and let an agent do the bidding for them.”

Sarah firmly believes that the final price was pushed up thanks to the addition of online bidders. And, post-auction, she and her team now have 17 other registered bidders in a database ready to refer to other listings.

So, would Sarah recommend Realtair to others? “Definitely. But only to friends and colleagues in the industry who may still be doing things the old-fashioned way. I wouldn’t recommend it to my competitors — because I believe it gives me a competitive advantage!”