6 Learnings From Our AI Advisory Board

By Tom Ainsworth, Chief Revenue Officer - Rex Software 

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Last year, we went out and asked agents across the globe a simple question: What are the biggest challenges in your business?

The answer didn’t surprise us. The loudest challenge was utilising AI.  

The gap between curiosity and clarity was enormous. Almost every agent we spoke to said some version of the same thing: "I know AI is important. I use ChatGPT sometimes. But I don't know how it fits into my actual day."

That response became the starting point for something bigger.

We assembled an AI Advisory Board - a group of leading estate agency principals and operators - and collaborated with them to really understand their workflows, and where AI could genuinely make a difference. 

Not AI for the sake of AI. Intentional intelligence with big impact. 

Here's what they told us. We bet you’ll find a theme here you relate to! 

1. When admin falls behind, data quality suffers.

Admin, well… sucks. I’ve never met a sales person that loves admin. 

Agents are busier than ever out on the road. Listings are moving fast, buyer enquiry volumes are high, and the administrative load that comes with each transaction has only grown.

The result? Shortcuts. Agents skip quality data entry or forget altogether. Notes from inspections don't make it into the CRM. Follow-up reminders get forgotten. Contact details go stale.

The board was blunt about this: it's not laziness - it's survival. When you're juggling fifteen active conversations, the admin is the first thing that slips. And when admin slips, data quality collapses. And that ultimately impacts everything. 

The takeaway was clear. If you want better data, you can't ask agents to do more admin. You need to take the admin off their plate as much as possible.

Here at Rex, we’ve got an AI solution for that…

2. Prospecting fails because agents don't know who to call today

This finding shifted our thinking more than any other.

Most agencies are sitting on databases built over ten to twenty years - hundreds of thousands of contacts across buyers, sellers, landlords, tenants, and market leads.

The problem isn't volume. It's clarity.

Agents told the board that they sit down to prospect and genuinely don't know where to start. Who in this database of twenty thousand contacts should I call right now? Who's likely to transact? Who's gone cold? Who opened my email last week but never replied?

Without clear direction, agents default to the same behaviour: work the leads they already know, skip the ones they don't recognise, and hope for the best.

The biggest unlock isn't more data. It's turning existing data into a prioritised action list.

Here at Rex, we’ve got an AI solution for that... 

3. Agents overwork the hot leads and abandon the rest

Most agents focus almost exclusively on their top 5% per cent of leads - the hot buyers, the ready-to-list sellers, the deals that are clearly going to happen.

That makes sense. Those are the opportunities with the clearest path to commission.

But it means the other ninety-five per cent of the database - past buyers who might sell, old appraisals that are now three years stale, market leads who enquired six months ago - are completely forgotten. 

The board described it as a leaking bucket. Agencies spend significant money acquiring leads, entering them into a CRM, and then letting them go cold because nobody has the time or the system to maintain thousands of relationships at once.

And, you guessed it, at Rex we’ve got an AI solution for that… 

4. Agents don't want more intelligence, they want clear actions

When we asked agents what they wanted from technology, the answer was not "better analytics" or "more reports." It was far more practical than that.

They want to sit down in the morning and be told: here are the twelve calls you need to make today. Here's why each one matters. Now go.

The board was clear that agents are action-oriented people. They don't want to interpret data or navigate dashboards to figure out their priorities. They want the thinking done for them - not because they can't do it, but because the time spent analysing is time not spent on the phone.

The implication for us was significant: whatever we built had to turn their database into an active growth engine that meets agents where they are - ready to pick up the phone.

At Rex we’ve got an AI solution for that too… 

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5. The biggest unlock is removing "what do I say?"

Of everything the board tested and discussed, this finding generated the strongest emotional response.

Agents don't just struggle with who to call. They struggle with what to say when they do. The hesitation before a call, especially a call to someone they haven't spoken to in months, is one of the biggest friction points in prospecting.

When we showed the board a concept that included contextual talking points alongside each call recommendation, for example: 

 "Call this person because they enquired on a property in March, attended an open home in June, and haven't heard from you since. Here's what to lead with."

The reaction was immediate.

Multiple principals said it was the single most impactful thing we could build. Not lead scoring. Not ranking algorithms. Talking points.

Because when an agent knows why they're calling and what to say, the call gets made. When they don't, it doesn't. It's that simple.

Yep… we’ve got an AI solution for that... 

6. Your database is your largest asset and most of it is idle

The final finding was a synthesis of everything above, and it's the one that should keep every principal up at night.

Agencies operate in one of the most competitive industries. High agent density. High marketing spend. High consumer expectations. And most agencies are sitting on databases that represent years, sometimes decades, of accumulated relationships.

Yet the vast majority of that database is inactive. Past buyers who could become sellers. Landlords approaching lease renewals. Appraisal leads from two years ago whose circumstances have changed. Market leads who were curious but never converted.

These aren't dead contacts. They're dormant opportunities. And in a market where every listing is fought over, the agency that can systematically activate its full database, not just the hot five per cent, has an enormous competitive advantage.

The agencies that will win the next decade are not the ones that generate the most leads. They're the ones that work the leads they already have.

What we did with these findings

These six findings became the blueprint for what we've been building for the past few months.

Every piece of feedback mapped directly to a capability we knew we had to deliver. 

Not as a standalone tool, but embedded into the workflows agents already use every day. Admin that handles itself. Prospecting that tells you who to call, when, and what to say. Nurture that keeps thousands of relationships warm without manual effort. And management visibility that helps leaders coach their teams to better outcomes.

We'll have more to share very soon. For now, we wanted to say thank you to the principals and operators who gave their time, and their honesty to this process. 

Watch this space. What's coming will change how you work & deliver you more CGI.