Good morning everyone, and welcome to our weekly Monday morning sales meeting.
Before we go around the room to hear about your new listings, I’d like to address a few observations and concerns that have started to come across my desk over the last few months…bear with me please. Thanks.
First up, it was recently brought to my attention that once again people are leaving dirty dishes in the kitchen, despite the signage we have taken the time to place conspicuously and clearly regarding cleaning up your own messes.
I appreciate that yes, you’re adults and that you’re busy in many cases with ongoing, fast-paced transactions and clients, but so are our receptionists and our admin staff – we do not have them here to pick up after you.
Beginning Thursday, we will install cameras in the staff kitchen area, and will advise the cleaners to place the dirty dishes in the office of the offender, as determined by recorded evidence. Failing resolution in this procedure, we will reach out and invite your mother to come to the office and holler at you while you are with your clients, to ensure that you do learn to clean up after yourselves.
Second, I’ve had several complaints that while on floor shift in the front office, one of you has been streaming The Price Is Right at a high enough volume that clients on the phone have heard the bells and whistles of the various winners going off.
Please note, this is opportunity time for prospecting, NOT a chance for you to provide catcalls and raspberries for ill-advised grocery bids. Let’s try and leave those devices for communication and researching properties for clients.
This next item is more of a reminder for you – while we are going around the room to let our colleagues know about our new listings, and we are clearly all friendly and relaxed in our interactions, you still owe your clients a duty of respect regarding their properties. So maybe tone down the comments like “tear-down eyesore”, “I’ve seen better kept junkyards after a tornado” and “their rumpus room smells like Brad’s armpit.”
No one has come forward as yet to admit they were part of that little gag last week, but I can assure you all that Andrew did not find your prank amusing at all. Given the hysteria of this red-hot buyer’s market, when he awoke to the doorbell ringing at 5 a.m., there was a substantial lineup of anxious buyers responding to the For Sale signs placed on his lawn. He had to scramble to deny them access and remove those signs forthwith. If you are going to play a joke on your colleagues, could we please just go back to wrapping their vehicles in cellophane?
Finally, as we are all extremely busy in this market, I would remind you all to be informative, flattering with respect to your listings and move things along as quickly as you can. Mary, your Powerpoint presentations, while admittedly stunning and extremely comprehensive, tend to slow down our sharing and deprive others of their allotted time – so please, just a few high points and allow everyone else a chance to showcase their own properties.
Kennedy, your amateur videos may just win you a cinematic prize of some sort somewhere down the road, but here it would be nice to just have you chat up your listing with brief descriptions. Kudos though on having Mike Holmes appear in the last one, that was quite a thriller seeing him in blood-stained coveralls and wielding an axe.
Okay, I think that’s it, let’s go around the room – Karina, get us started!
Humour columnist and author Dan St. Yves was licensed with Royal LePage Kelowna for 11 years. Check out his website at danstyves.com.
