By Ian Grace
Each country is different, but where offices have sales and property management together, sadly, most of the time they don’t work together co-operatively.
When they do, it can be a veritable goldmine.
In a previous article I discussed working with property investors/landlords to sell them a new property roughly every two years. The sales department makes the sales and property management manages the property afterwards – everyone wins.
An office in New Zealand had a great idea to get their teams working together:
They put signs all around the office saying, “Courtesy is catching”. Then they printed a whole bunch of $20,000 notes and distributed them evenly throughout the office.
They announced a fun staff auction event in several weeks time, where everyone could bid for a number of products they had acquired from local businesses – everything from white goods, TVs and DVD players to pampering products and meal vouchers for two.
The secret was this: every time someone in the office did something helpful for someone else, particularly in another department, the person who received help had to give the other person one of their $20,000 notes. So in an instant, guess where everyone’s focus was – not on themselves, but on how they could help someone else. By doing so, they had to get to know each other better and understand each other’s jobs better (some even job swapped).
In no time at all, the atmosphere was electric and there was a sense of total co-operation throughout the office and sales and property management were able to work together cohesively and effectively.
This is just one simple idea that worked very powerfully and emphasizes the point that it is vital to get your internal customer service right first, before looking at your external customer service for existing and potential paying customers.
A colleague of mine, Jo-Anne Oliveri, who is currently doing some property management/systems training in the U.S., related an event that illustrated the benefits of sales and property management working together.
A property on the river in Brisbane, Australia had just sold, with the new owners not taking possession for six months. Working with a U.S. relocation company, she was aware of an executive who needed a residence for two years, budget $2,000 per week.
Working with the sale departments, she approached the buyer and asked if they would accept $2,000 per week for two years and take possession then. They accepted, she got them $2,200 per week – everybody happy – and something was created out of mutual co-operation.
From a sales perspective, another great bonus is that once you are working with your landlords (now correctly titled “property investors”) to build their property investment portfolios, you have now built a bank of buyers that are great for preview VIP open houses on a new property that has just been listed, before the advertising even starts.
Known internationally as “Mr. Real Estate Advertising”, Australian-born Ian Grace is acknowledged as one of the world’s leading authorities on real estate advertising. Since 1994, he has delivered his programs throughout Australia, New Zealand, U.S.A, Canada and the U.K. His articles about real estate advertising have been published around the world. www.iangrace.com
