The Shifting Market Playbook: How Mark Lands Is Winning Vendors and Buyers Right Now

Almost 500 agents registered. More than 200 joined live. And the questions kept coming for the full hour.

For session two of the Shifting Market Playbook, Aaron Shiner sat down with Mark Lands, director of Lands Real Estate in Adelaide, to unpack what’s actually working as the market shifts. Mark joined us from a family holiday in Japan (thanks Mark, and apologies to your lunch date), and he held nothing back.

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Watch the full replay below, then work through the workbook to turn the key ideas into actions for your team.

Jump to a section

• 00:00 Welcome
• 01:16 Mark’s story: from the family business to a team of 18
• 04:46 How Matthew Lipari went from Domain rep to 44 listings in a quarter
• 09:48 Is this market worse than the GFC?
• 12:57 The systems serving Mark’s team right now
• 17:28 How the vendor portal works
• 20:28 Four vendor calls a week
• 23:36 World-class buyer service: ask one more question
• 28:12 Getting more buyers to your opens
• 33:53 The questions that get buyers to open up
• 37:24 Accept, adjust, protect your energy
• 40:40 Nurturing your database on autopilot
• 49:15 Q&A: moving a stuck listing
• 52:28 Q&A: what lead agents and associates should focus on
• 54:56 Mark’s typical day
• 57:13 Advice for newer agents

Meet Mark

Mark has been in real estate for 23 years. He spent the first 15 working alongside his mum and dad in the family business, and six years ago he and his wife bought it. Today Lands Real Estate has a team of about 18, Mark is still selling, and he’s one of South Australia’s top agents. The team has run on LockedOn for six or seven years.

What makes Mark worth listening to isn’t only his own results. It’s that he’s built systems other people can run. (Want the backstory? Read Man in the Arena: The Mark Lands story.)

1. Leverage, not just labour

Aaron’s view is that there are two ways to grow. Hire more people and work longer hours, which is obtainable. Or build leverage through systems, which is sustainable.

Mark runs his business on lean principles. Every system exists so the team can do more of what makes a difference, and the test is simple: is this getting me a sale or a listing?

The proof is Matthew Lipari. Matthew was Mark’s Domain rep before joining Lands five and a half years ago. Last financial year he and his team transacted 112 properties, and he listed 44 homes in the first quarter of this financial year. Tyson Benbow stepped up as a sales partner in January and listed 16 homes in the same quarter.

Mark’s explanation? Matthew asks more questions than anyone else in the business, and when he gets advice, he doesn’t reinterpret it. He deploys it. Aaron added two lines of his own: top performers always ask more questions, and the amount of stress you can handle is directly linked to the income you can make.

“I’ve got to make it as simple as possible for them to do more of what they do well.”

2. It’s not necessarily worse. It’s faster.

Is this market worse than the GFC? Mark isn’t sure it is. What makes it feel tough is how quickly it’s changed, and how much more demanding clients have become. (When Aaron polled the audience, most said “comparable” or “worse”.)

But deals are still happening, because real estate is driven by change in people’s lives. People partner up, separate, change jobs and move. Your job is to have done the work so you’re the one beside them when that decision gets made.

3. Four vendor calls a week, backed by the vendor portal

With fewer buyers through each campaign, there’s less buyer work and more vendor work. Mark’s rhythm, assuming nothing else happens that week:

• Saturday: straight after the open, from the car
• Monday: a summary of every callback
• Tuesday: confirm the next open and share anything new
• Thursday: the mid-week update, with something meaningful to say

Underneath sits the LockedOn vendor portal. Every call, inspection, callback and piece of price feedback is logged, timestamped and visible to the vendor in real time, so nobody is typing up weekly reports anymore. The team gets an alert when a vendor logs in, and if one isn’t engaging, the report can be emailed to them weekly in two clicks.

“If you make frequent calls, the calls are simpler.”

Aaron’s version: an informed seller makes an informed decision. An uninformed seller makes an uninformed decision.

In Mark’s team, associates are now picking up more vendor work. His rough mud map moves an associate from 80% buyer work and 20% prospecting to something like 60% buyer work, with the rest split between vendor management and hunting listings. Lead agents spend more of their buyer time with the key buyers.

4. Ask one more question

A buyer walks through a tenanted property and says it’s not suitable because of the tenant. It would be easy to log that and move on. Mark’s challenge to his team: why isn’t there an offer on the table subject to vacant possession?

If the objection is the tenancy, solve for the tenancy. If it’s presentation, invite an offer that reflects the work the buyer would want to do. If they still say no, now you know where they really stand.

Then tell your vendor what you tried. Agents do so much for clients behind closed doors and never mention it. When vendors can see you’re in the trenches for them every day, they’re far less likely to point the finger if things don’t go to plan.

5. The buyer who says no is your best source of information

A buyer who likes a property is guarded. Once they’ve decided it’s not for them, you’re no longer selling them anything, so give them a reason to open up:

• “If I found you something suitable, would you like to see it before anyone else?”
• “If you found the perfect home, what’s the absolute maximum you could go to? I’d rather you delete a few emails than miss out on the right one.”
• “We like to post brochures out as well. Where could I send one?”

That last question gets you an address, and with it, whether they have a property to sell first. Mark’s team calls these buyers BBS: buy before sells. Every buyer gets a profile in LockedOn so new listings reach them automatically, and when a new listing email goes out, whoever clicks through becomes that day’s call list.

6. Nurture your database on autopilot

Vendor calls are eating into prospecting time, so Mark leans on automation:

• Every 3 months: a CMA report on each contact’s own property, sent in bulk from LockedOn
• Every 2 weeks: The Rundown, a newsletter of listings matched to each buyer’s criteria
• Every 12 weeks: an email inviting registered buyers to update their criteria

The last quarterly CMA went to about 2,500 contacts and brought in around 11 appraisal requests. Mark’s tip: block out two hours straight after each send to handle the replies. Aaron’s tip: put a short video at the top of the report.

Aaron calls this your minimal viable product. Even if a contact slips through the cracks on the phone, they’re still hearing from you with something useful four times a year.

7. When a listing won’t move

Three things drive a result: presentation and marketing, location, and price. If the first is right and you can’t change the second, price is the lever. Give your vendor clear advice and the reasons behind it, then back their decision.

Mark credited Aaron with this one: the market used to create urgency for us. Now it’s our job to create it.

8. Mark’s day

• 7:30am: an hour of admin, with proposals and CMAs prepped by the evening team
• 8:30am: the same team meeting, every day
• 9:00 to 11:00am: revenue block for prospecting and buyer callbacks
• Middle of the day: vendors
• 3:00pm onwards: on the road

His advice for newer agents: knock on doors, be productive rather than busy, and find someone doing what you want to do and copy them verbatim.

Download the free Implementation Workbook

Want to put Mark’s systems into action? Work through the workbook as you watch the replay and build a plan for your vendor calls, buyer questions and database nurture.

Download the Free Workbook →

See how Mark’s team runs it

The vendor portal, buyer matching and bulk quarterly CMAs Mark talked through are all built into LockedOn.

If you love your current CRM, stay there. Just make sure you’re getting these three things out of it. If it can’t do them, book a demo and we’ll show you how Mark’s team does it.

Book Your LockedOn Demo →

A big thank you to Mark for giving up part of his holiday, and to everyone who joined live and sent in questions. See you at the next Shifting Market Playbook.

Let’s list and sell!