Olga Sala interviewed in #personasqueinspiran by SIRA / CRS Spain
Olga Sala, founding partner of Monapart, shares her vision on innovation in the real estate sector.
Olga Sala, founding partner of Monapartparticipated in the webinar 'Conversations with' hosted by Pere Maymi, training manager and head of trainers at SIRA-CRS Spain. Interview for the series #personasqueinspiran number 187.
Below is a summary of the interview. But if you want to (must!) see the full interview, click here. here.
Pere Maymi [PM] As always, we start with the anti-journalistic question: What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?
Olga Sala [OS] [OS I have a degree in Law but I worked for many years as a publisher. All that side dedicated to narrative and my passion for communication, were the piece that fitted perfectly in the conception of Monapart by my two partners, Eduard Solé and José Luis Echeverría [also interviewed in #inspiringpeopleMay 2022], that of creating a real estate agency that would not subordinate the relationship with its clients to the duration of the pure real estate transaction and also with a more human and empathetic approach in a transaction as important as the sale of the property itself.
People sell their home once in a lifetime, there is very little repetition... So what we want to do is to encourage recommendation. How? Through the deployment of a narrative that keeps alive the relationship with a community where there are clients, customers, customers, users, fans of the brand...
[PM] Do you think brands are not able to create a community because they are too focused on results?
[OS] Taking care of a community is costly and implies a long-term view, something that clashes with the voracity and haste of the real estate sector, which is excessively focused on sales in the short term.
Real estate is the way it is because we don't generate demand... we "steal" it from the competition, which is why it is such a predatory industry. Unlike impulse purchases, where demand is generated in a millisecond where there was none thanks to a well-pitched promotion, there are many factors that escape real estate marketing and we cannot incentivise someone to decide to sell their house.
[PM] How is a community created?
[OS] The community starts with a message, its own voice and differentiation. It is impossible to create community by resorting to the same messages where you don't give input to the other, where everything is about you and your sales successes, with very similar creative and excessively large logos... All this alienates today's highly educated and demanding consumer.
You have to talk to the user on a one-to-one basis, at eye level. With authenticity, recognising what we know how to do and what we don't, with a sense of humour...
[PM] And choose who you want to address?
[OS] Absolutely, you can't go to everything. It is essential to have a clear positioning, either by area, by type of product, by type of customer or by interest. If you go for everything, you will be diluted and die in a context as competitive as ours.
In a context as competitive as ours, if you go all out, you get diluted and die.
[PM] There are strategic marketing decisions that cannot be ignored...
[OS] Marketing is a discipline where there is a duality. On the one hand it is very thankless, because although no one messes with the finance manager, everyone has an opinion on a certain marketing tactic... On the other hand it is very nice because we take the pulse of how our brand is experienced, how the messages are received... And at Monapart it gives us a lot of joy.
[PM] And there are also marketing services that have nothing to do with strategy...
[OS] We may be tempted to outsource certain marketing services... but voice is strategic, and strategic is not outsourced. If you cultivate a coherent narrative in your channels, after a while you are not only credible but also your company culture distinguishes you from the rest.
[PM] Where do you think the profession is heading with the advent of artificial intelligence?
[OS] It's still very uncertain... what there does seem to be a consensus on is that it's going to be a much bigger revolution than the advent of the internet.
You have to try, not jump in. We are all learning, ChatGPT too... And while it is true that there will come a time when we will not know where the man is and where the machine is, I believe that a narrative based on the reality of the real estate agent, the more human drive, "the street", will gain a new protagonism.
[PM] It is true that there is a risk that with ChatGPT there is now even more emphasis on quantity over quality....
[OS] It's not about "spitting out" content like crazy. Just because they give us a microphone like social networks doesn't mean that we can all start spreading a message... It's tiring, the emptiness is tiring and personally I'm very conflicted about it. Besides, when I analyse the things that make me happiest, they are always analogue.
[PM] Real estate professionals are still very much on Facebook when they should perhaps be more on Linkedin.
[OS] I always find value in Linkedin, there are professionals sharing very interesting content. Not so on facebook or instagram... where if you don't pay for visibility you won't be seen by more than 2% of your followers. They are really advertising management platforms and I also think that networks in general are losing people with criteria.
[PM] Many professionals are on Facebook "because they have to be"...
[OS] You have to understand what role each channel plays in the sales funnel. Meta is an evasion channel and is at the beginning of the funnel, to gain notoriety, to seduce... and for that reason it clashes head-on with a high involvement decision such as the one we are considering. When our potential client already has to make a decision, they look for elements of security that are elsewhere: reputation, Linkedin, your own website...
[PM] There are big foreign real estate brands setting up in Spain when the paradigm here is still that of the small agency. What do you think?
[OS] It is true that the big brands have a lot of power to attract professionals because of the international projection they promise, but it is also true that the turnover rates are between 50 and 65%. Why would a real estate agent who works with a local public fundamentally want a brand with international projection? I don't see it clearly, and I think that each professional has to find their place... But it is important to keep a critical eye, to analyse well the value proposition offered by the brand / platform, its reputation, how many people enter and how many leave, how they have informed you, how they have approached the call... etc. in the same way that we ask of homeowners when they have to choose a real estate agent they can trust to sell their home.
Monapart is a agent platform which has always been committed to quality and we know that it is not a question of phagocytising agents, but that what we want is for agents to come and stay, creating a well-cohesive professional community.
[PM] There is a certain rebelliousness on the part of SMEs because they prefer to maintain their independence and say they do not need everything that the platforms or brands offer them.
[OS] I think the platform model gives you the best of both worlds and small companies or independent agents may say they don't need as much service, but they don't... everything has become very complex and agents no longer get to everything: web, networks, materials, training, technology... Being in an ecosystem that allows them to not worry about everything because they have an infrastructure that works for them and this allows them, while maintaining their independence, to focus on their client.
Monapart is a brand that is determined to do things well. We have always opted for an empathetic language, close, more human, but always with honesty and coherence, which speaks for itself.
[PM] Is Monapart a cult real estate agency?
[OS] Monapart is a brand that is obstinate in doing things well, I would sum it up like this. I'm thinking of the recent #dopaminadecor controversy where they criticised estate agents who abuse lyricism and decoration to camouflage substandard housing... And that's bad for them, but it's also a disservice to everyone else, because the uninformed consumer can lump us all together.
Monapart has always opted for an empathetic, close, more human language, but it has always done so with honesty and coherence, which always speaks for itself.
[PM] How do you imagine Monapart in 10 years?
[OS] I imagine it with more people, being able to give service to the best estate agents in this country. And at the end of the day, helping the gap between the market and the real estate professional to disappear, so that people stop wrinkling their noses when someone says "I'm a real estate agent".
[PM] Do you think it is possible to close this gap only in the private sphere?
[OS] There must be professional regulation, without a doubt, because not having it keeps open the entry of opportunists and that feeds the stigma that weighs down the committed and responsible real estate professional.
[PM] It seems that curves are coming...
[OS] I believe that the best-equipped professionals are those who shine in times of crisis, like salmon swimming against the tide. At least that's how it's always been at Monapart, founded in 2010 no less... but that's a different story.
