Don’t you dare take Ailo away from this agency!
Ailo
21 March 2024
“If you took Ailo away from me, I’d pack my bags and walk out the door. ”
— Janine Prinsloo, Ray White Northern Coast
Meet Janine Prinsloo, Director of Investment Growth at Ray White Northern Coast in Western Australia. With over 15 years of experience in property management (over two decades in real estate!), Janine has a deep understanding of what her customers want and a passion for bettering the industry.
We recently caught up with Janine to learn more about how Ailo is helping her to achieve her ambitious growth goals and why she would leave the industry if she could no longer use Ailo to deliver more choice and control for her customers.
Excuse the terrible sound quality, but this video was too good not to share!
How has Ailo changed the way you pitch for new business?
Before Ailo came along, I was selling traditional property management - I was in the same boat as everybody else, offering the same service and trying to sell by focusing on fees.
Since Ailo came along, I now open up my conversation with “We are not traditional property managers, we don't do property management like everybody else does. If you’re looking for a traditional property manager - It’s not us.”
“Do we charge a little bit more? Absolutely, we do. But the service that we're delivering to you is 10 times better than any other company because we've got time saving measures that allow us to offer a much better service. We’re not spending a whole day running end of month anymore, for starters.”
— Janine Prinsloo, Ray White Northern Coast
How do you prove your service is better than your competitors?
When you’ve got an investment property, you want to grow your wealth, so when I first meet with investors I explain that their money is now in their hands. I say, “you don't have to wait for anybody to tell you how you'll spend your money, when you're going to get your money, or what you’re going to do with your money”.
We've always looked for ways to get out of this trust accounting environment where money is sitting in a non-interest bearing trust account for ages - for 30 days sometimes, and we're talking big rents. Now, that money can be shifted to an offset account where it’s actually useful.
This is so life changing in this industry, because you don't want anybody to control your finances - you want to control it yourself. And this is what Ailo gives you the capacity to do.
What’s your favourite Ailo feature?
Oh, that's a tough one, but I think my favourite feature is the owners having visibility and control of their finances in their Portfolio Wallet.
I don't have owners phoning me at end of month anymore asking “when am I gonna get paid?”, “how much am I getting this month?” or “my money hasn't come in”. We used to get the same questions asked every month, and when you're managing a big rent roll, there’s so much that can go wrong. I don't miss those end of month phone calls.
How has Ailo helped your agency to grow?
Our growth has been phenomenal. I signed 150 properties in the calendar year of 2023 - and more than half of the properties that I signed came a few months after we joined Ailo. It was a massive change for me and just became an easy sell!
I recently had an owner who bought quite an expensive property in one of our exclusive suburbs called Mindarie. He bought via a buyer's agent and the buyer's agent gave him the names of a few property managers, but - my name was not on that list. He got hold of me through the Ray White network, and we set up a video interview.
Within 24 hours he had signed with me. I told him about how we use Ailo, that he could have live chats with his property manager and that he could see when his rent was being paid. He really liked that he could be in control of his property. Aside from the fact that we got on really well, I think that Ailo definitely pushed him over the line.
I have found that most investors want to be in control. Ailo really helps them with that and we, as property managers, have time in return to build a relationship with them. I very rarely don't win new business anymore when pitching using Ailo as my point of difference.
We heard you also purchased a rent roll, how did Ailo help with the transition?
It was really easy to transition the rent roll over using the team at Ailo. They were extremely helpful in every aspect. We realised how easy it is to load property history into Ailo and that got us excited about future purchases.
The day after the acquisition, we walked in and everything was on our system. Sure, we had to do a little bit of work loading ancillary fees, but it was nothing in comparison to the amount of work we would have had, had we not had Ailo.
Any tips for agencies who have a few renters / investors who are hesitant about using Ailo?
We have one person in the office who's brilliant at explaining tech things to people. We have a few older tenants who got stressed about using an app, so she invited them to the office for a cup of tea and sat down with them to show them how it all works on their phone. She took the time to set it up for them.
It's not a complicated app, and to me it's easier than mobile banking. Once you explain it a little further to those that need help, they feel a lot more comfortable and they feel great that they're actually part of this new technology.
What was your Ailo onboarding experience like?
We had more issues getting out of our old system, than we had coming onto Ailo. Ailo did everything for us. They loaded up all of our properties, and, they made sure that all of our documents were in the right place. The day we switched over to Ailo, information about every single one of our properties was there in front of us.
There is extensive training before you come onboard - they set you up with a portal of your own where you can jump on and you can test things out (where you can’t break it!), which is fantastic because by the time we actually switched over, everybody was very comfortable with the system.
Our biggest challenge was convincing the team that [switching to Ailo] was a good thing. Nobody really likes change and they had all just got the hang of the last package. But Ailo’s training really helped to get them onside.
We love customer feedback at Ailo. Tell us about how you’ve put this into practice!
We encourage our team to share their thoughts on anything they want to add to Ailo or to speak up on anything they don’t like. When we pass the feedback on, 99% of the time we come to work the next week and Ailo has sent us a message to tell us our feedback was taken on board and we can now do what we requested!
That's the beautiful thing about working with Ailo, they're actively asking for your suggestions. And that's been the fun part - seeing some of our ideas being utilised!
How would you feel if we took Ailo away from you tomorrow?
I would be very lost after having a taste of Ailo. I'd be lost without the immediate support; I'd be lost without the point of difference. And I'd certainly be lost without that dashboard on my computer every day, explaining to me at a glance - the state and shape of our business development and growth. It tells you how many properties you manage. You've got a report that shows exactly what you've lost, what you've retained, and your new business wins.
“If you took Ailo away from me tomorrow, I'd pack my bag and I'd walk out the door. I could never go back to the old way of Business Development. I'd have to go and look for something similar and we all know that there's nothing out there that even touches it.”
— Janine Prinsloo, Ray White Northern Coast
Ailo literally does half your job for you and saves you so much time. Once you have loaded your new investors, at the click of a button you transfer their information to your management authority, and get it out for signing. What once took so much time, can now be done literally in minutes. Oh and the checklists! I LOVE THEM!
I’ve worked for a long time in this industry with a lot of talented people and Ailo has taught me a lot in a very short period of time, about the potential of delivering a great service through technology.