Harry is no stranger to the real estate industry, being a veteran with deep market knowledge from his decades of experience as a real estate agent, and a nuanced understanding of the landed property segment. While this property segment can be challenging, the wealth of business opportunities and higher commissions has kept him working with landed property owners. “It’s very rewarding when you work with them over time and eventually become their real estate advisor for the multiple properties that they own,” he shares.
Seeking new opportunities with market leader PropNex
Not being one to rest on his laurels, however, Harry has now recently moved to PropNex, the biggest property agency in Singapore with more than 12,000 agents under its wing —representing a third of the industry share. Harry explains that there were two reasons for his move. “I wanted to break through my sales plateau, even with my years of experience. I felt that PropNex could provide me with the new training and sales opportunities to become a better entrepreneur and leader. The other reason is that during Covid-19, I saw that PropNex was able to provide strong leadership to their agents, showing them how to adapt to the changes in the market, and find innovative, digitally focused ways to improve their businesses.” It is important to Harry that an organisation never takes its market position for granted, this aligns with his own can-do and nimble attitude. It made his switch to PropNex a natural choice.
Harry’s team is under the Jason Tan Advisory (JTA), which is affiliated with the Marcus Luah division (MLD). In 2021, the MLD generated a total of $200 million in sales commissions, and minted 31 new millionaires. What makes this even more impressive is that one of these agents achieved this milestone within 8 weeks, and with only 2 years of industry experience. With its strong platform and a culture of sharing best practices, Harry hopes to learn and replicate the secrets of these successful millionaire agents. Beyond its successes, PropNex’s management team is also far-sighted in its approach to nurturing its agents and educating its clients. In 2021, PropNex set up a union to promote the welfare of their property agents, and provide them with an avenue to share their feedback. PropNex has also recently launched a Monopoly Championship to educate its clients on the ins and outs of property ownership.
Building a supportive and nurturing team
After achieving success in the landed property segment, many agents reached out to Harry for advice. Harry found himself being passionate about helping these agents, and these conversations made him decide to build and mentor his own team. As a team leader, he feels responsible for the professional growth and results of his team members. This also means keeping abreast of market developments and upskilling to take advantage of new opportunities. This was certainly the case when Covid-19 struck Singapore. Harry had to quickly adapt, as he could not as easily conduct face-to-face meetings with his clients and gauge their interest in buying and selling their properties. PropNex’s training allowed him to build his knowledge and skillset to better engage his clients. “The trainers were engaging, and I often felt enriched after attending these workshops,” he says. He became more digitally savvy, upgrading his equipment and leveraging Zoom’s many functions to engage and interact with his clients. He also began to focus his advertising efforts towards the digital space to adapt to the changing consumer trends.
Choosing to pay it forward, Harry’s own team values are focused on developing a supportive environment where agents feel appreciated, validated, and affirmed for their efforts. Harry also believes in achieving collective success, as this also motivates agents to perform at their best and achieve breakthroughs. Finally, he also inculcates a culture of grooming leaders for agents who are interested and ready to step into managerial roles. Harry also places great emphasis on equipping agents with the skillsets and tools to provide clients value-added services such as providing advice on restructuring their investment portfolios and growing their property assets. Agents who join Harry’s team will benefit from learning four structured sales systems centred around new launches, customer relationship management, ready-made presentation kits to empower agents to be prepared for any client interactions, and access to Harry’s online digital marketing platforms across Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and TikTok.
Signature Landed Mentorship Program
Harry has also devised a signature Landed Mentorship Program that is open to all agent, regardless of their agency affiliations, who are interested to enter the landed property segment. With his decades of experience, the 6-month program is structured into classroom learning where agents are taught client engagement skills and technical knowledge (e.g., government regulations and guidelines governing land use), and on-the-ground training where agents can apply what they’ve learned in real-world situations. This program is also kept deliberately small to ensure that agents receive sufficient attention. He hopes to use the program to train more specialists in this property segment. With these opportunities for professional development, Harry welcomes all agents to join him in this journey, whether they are newly minted real estate agents, or seasoned agency leaders who are looking to break through their sales plateaus. To join Harry’s team, agents must be aligned with the division’s values of being supportive, uplifting, having a positive mindset, and being willing to grow as a team. Moving forward, Harry hopes to fully integrate his team with PropNex, leveraging on its resources and reputation as a market leader to grow his team.
Staying hungry and foolish
When asked to provide advice to the intrepid agent new to the industry, Harry stresses that having the right mindset and being in the right environment is key. He strongly encourages agents to join PropNex, where they will have access to courses and workshops by top producers who are willing to teach the best practices that have garnered them their million-dollar sales commissions. A winning mindset is also a key feature of these courses, and this is important in empowering agents to meet obstacles head-on. Taking a leaf from Steve Jobs’ adage to ‘stay hungry, stay foolish’, Harry shares that an agent must always push himself, and be willing to try new things and persevere through difficulties and naysayers. “I’ve been in the industry for a long time and weathered many crises. It’s not easy to be a real estate agent now, but find the right platform and team, persevere, and stay focused on your longer-term goals!”
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