Almost six months into her role at ASAP Katy Billany (main picture) has found exactly the kind of environment she was looking for.
The business has given her the support to continue something that has run throughout her property career: helping agents make better decisions by looking beyond market perceptions and understanding what the evidence is really saying.
Her interest in property data did not begin with one defining moment.
Instead, it developed as she repeatedly encountered a gap between how people believed the market was performing and what the figures showed.
LOOKING BEYOND THE HEADLINES
“In my previous role, I used to present market updates at industry events and sometimes worry that I was going to tell the audience things they already knew,” she explains. “But quite often the reaction would be: ‘I didn’t know that.’”
Agents may know their immediate market extremely well, but the demands of running a business can leave little time to consider how local conditions fit into the wider national picture.
“We’ve all seen headlines saying the property market is crashing or that conditions are terrible, but the reality is usually much more nuanced,” she adds. “Data gives you the opportunity to look beyond the noise and understand what’s actually happening.”
For Billany, information is most useful when it challenges established thinking.
One example is what she calls the “power of pausing”. Rather than continuing to market a property that is failing to attract interest, the data may support withdrawing it, allowing it to rest and then relaunching it.
That does not mean allowing a spreadsheet to dictate how agents run their businesses. It means giving experienced professionals another piece of evidence against which they can test their assumptions.
Billany is now bringing that approach to ASAP, encouraging the use of data not only in high-level commercial strategy but throughout everyday sales and account management.
FINDING A ROUTE INTO LEADERSHIP
While Billany encourages others to make evidence-based decisions, her own progression into leadership was not always part of a carefully mapped-out plan.
“I was incredibly lucky,” she says. “I worked with a leadership team who saw things in me and either created opportunities or encouraged me into roles.”
During her time at TwentyEA, Billany spent six years as the company’s only female board member. It was a positive experience, but seniority did not remove the doubts familiar to many people stepping into leadership.
“There’s always that little bit of imposter syndrome – ‘Am I actually good enough to be doing this?’”
Billany does not see imposter syndrome as an exclusively female experience. What helped her was having people around her who provided support and encouragement.
At two points in her career, female colleagues offered coaching which helped her work through those doubts. She had not deliberately sought female mentors, but believes having somebody with whom she felt comfortable discussing them made a significant difference.
OPENING THE NEXT DOOR
That experience now shapes how Billany supports people coming through the property industry.
Alongside her position at ASAP, she is involved with Women in Estate Agency and would like to see the organisation maintain its focus on structured mentoring and leadership development.
For Billany, that support should extend beyond helping women return to work after having children or overcome a particular career hurdle. People can reach a point at numerous stages of their working lives when they ask what comes next.
“Sometimes you just don’t know where the next opportunity is or how to open that next door,” she says.
Mentors and visible role models can help provide the answer. Seeing somebody with a relatable background reach a senior position can make others believe that a similar route might also be open to them.
Billany believes this can be especially important for women, who may need greater encouragement to put themselves forward before they feel completely ready.
It is something she keeps in mind within her own leadership style. She wants to remain approachable and, wherever possible, offer others the encouragement which helped her progress.
A NEW CHAPTER
Her role at ASAP brings together many of the threads that have shaped Billany’s career.
Whether she is assessing the housing market, considering how to approach a difficult instruction or helping determine a company’s next commercial move, the principle remains the same: use evidence to challenge instinct and never let an assumption make the decision for you.
