Network News

First National news and matters affecting the industry

Awards Season: SA/NT GEM Award winners announced.

First National’s SA/NT agents were presented with their 2023 GEM Awards at a Pop Art themed event at Adelaide Town Hall, last Friday night.

FN Peoples’ Choice was announced Magnificent 7 – No.1 Sales Office of the Year and FN Taylor’s took home Magnificent 7 - No.1 Investor Relations Management Office of the Year.

Topping the individual awards was Nathan Janda of FN Salisbury who took home Magnificent 7 - No.1 Business Development Manager of the Year; Kelly Pengilly (FN Burton Groves, Tea Tree Gully) who took home Magnificent 7 - No.1 Investor Relations Manager of the Year; and Grant Fielke, FN Peoples’ Choice (Gawler), who achieved Magnificent 7 - No.1 Salesperson of the Year.

Proud winners of our specialist awards were:

Pillar Award – Krista Eime, FN Lewis Prior (Warradale, SA)
Opus Award – Melissa Slack, FN Peoples’ Choice (Gawler, SA)
New Investor Relations Manager of the Year – Georgia Attwood, FN Riggall (Prospect, SA)
New Salesperson of the Year – Megan Hill, FN Copper Coast (Wallaroo, SA)
Bill Marshall Spirit of the Community Award - FN Glenelg (SA)

More Details

Information Express: Making you the expert

First National’s new Information Express product kicked off last week, delivering you a national wrap up of First Home Buyer Grants, stamp duty waivers, concessions and financial support for struggling home buyers. Did you send it to your customers?

We’ll be sending you information about how to improve your business, or valuable information you can immediately share with your customers every two weeks for the rest of this year. Social media collateral and all the things you need to make it easy to share are included.

Head to the Media and Marketing section of Our Fabric to find out more.

Professional Development: Motivational sessions kick off

First National’s motivational sessions kicked off in Adelaide with an address from former WNBL basketball player and three-time Olympian, Rachael Sporn OAM. Rachael highlighted seven core team behaviours that are essential to success, both in basketball and real estate:

Stand up for your team mates
Acknowledge your team mates’ efforts
Coach yourself
Bring a positive attitude to everything you do
Respectfulness
Never give up
Believe in your mission

Our Adelaide agents also received a detailed presentation on First National’s deal with REA and its end-to-end digital prospecting tool – Connect. Online reputation and its relationship to business profitability was outlined and developments in the artificial intelligence space were also discussed.

In Sydney and Brisbane, Mark Donaldson VC has shared his experiences from Australian Army deployments in Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq, focusing on:

Resilience
Mindset
Determination
Motivational
Communication

Melbourne based agents have the opportunity to hear from Mark TOMORROW. Register here...

'Mark’s story was awesome; a tale of courage, resilience, and accountability. What made is so much better was the fact he is not a polished speaker but a great Aussie bloke telling his proud story.’

Neil Coupland

FN Springfield (Augustine Heights, Qld)

‘We all enjoyed Mark’s presentation immensely, were privileged that he joined our table for lunch, and he signed my copy of his book!’

Gai Flynn

FN Action Realty Ipswich (Qld)

'The training this time was different and very interesting. I personally loved this one.'

Rick Birader

First National Peoples' Choice (Gawler, SA)

Tech: The importance of ‘Useful Content’

Late last year, Google applied its ‘useful content’ update to its search algorithm, which is aimed squarely at benefiting websites that include information that people find useful – as the name implies.

One way in which your website’s usefulness is measured is Google’s PageRank Score, which is a score from 1 to 10 – 10 being the best possible result.

An audit of FN office websites shows this is an area that can easily be improved, primarily by each office deploying one or all of the Blog articles and newsletters emailed from First National on a monthly basis. By adding this content and spending no more than 5 minutes tailoring it to your area so it’s unique, you will attract more backlinks to your website and your PageRank will improve quickly.

How our websites rank:

39 FN members achieved a PageRank of 3/10
145 FN members achieved a PageRank of 2/10
46 FN members achieved a PageRank of 1/10
7 FN members achieved a PageRank of 0/10

The key takeaway is that unique content about your area will get rewarded by Google.

To find out your office’s exact result, ask your BGM for more information.

Cyber: Don’t miss our Cyber Security and YOU briefing

Don’t let your office be at the centre of a damaging data breach, like Optus and Medibank were last year.

National Awards: Black Tie

Are you getting excited about our National Awards? Fantastic, but don’t forget that the dress code is black tie. Register now for Convention.

FN Foundation: Golf Day

FN Foundation’s Golf Day fundraiser is always a National Convention highlight, and this year’s event is being held at the Royal Hobart Golf Club, Seven Mile Beach. Are you in? Register now by clicking the above image.