Current 1 September 2010
Part of what we offer as a group is the invitation to specialised retreats. Not only do they provide an opportunity for business owners to review where they are at personally, but they are also an important development session for the person who is hosting. When you bring 10-12 owners together for two days there is some degree of pressure on the person hosting the retreat to ensure value. That in itself is a development tool for what I see as part of our growth inside Ray White New Zealand.
This is also a responsibility that I take on personally each quarter and last week I had 10 business owners attend a focus retreat at Rotorua. It’s not always evident where businesses can reach capacity, but it is important that there is a mode of change occurring and the group that joined me had demonstrated a degree of restlessness. We opened the retreat with a case study by Sue Douglas of our Manurewa office. Her story centred on energy, on being a leader and on personal pride. It was a great story to get underway with given the brutal reality of our industry and how market conditions and culture come together as the benchmark to measure our business growth. We went through Business Analytics, which gives each owner an insight into productivity, market share trends, sales rates and market activity. We discussed break-through lines of how to get off a current line or to move within that line. This is more difficult than what it sounds and many businesses get caught doing the same thing only to realise that they are potentially moving along a line of decline. We looked at how the impact of decisions affected business success. That saw the conclusion of Day 1. Corinna Mansell, who leads our business performance team, hosted the dinner. These have a set format which add value and gives insight into those who attend. Bob Mountfort opened Day 2. What a story Bob and Neil have. The renaissance of their business is their simple measurement of open home share; while the overriding success of the Mountfort Estate Agents group is put down to productive people. Bob’s comment is “people share equals market share.” We then took time to go through the proven drivers of growth and looked at succession planning, while at the same time there were individual breakout sessions occurring. We closed the day with each of us writing a personal letter, which has long been a part of my goal setting.
How do you measure the success of those two days? That is yet to come. Simply committing to time away from the business and looking at it from a different angle is part of what makes business leaders successful. The preparedness to change is also a big part of that success.
Some may be aware that we have listed our house for auction with Daryl Spense at the Ponsonby office. To be honest, getting a house ready to bring to the market is just a pain. There was activity with guys painting, washing down the house, cleaning the windows, doing the hedges and fixing all the little things which you never bother to fix when you live in the house yourself. It’s funny because by the time the house is ready and looking its best, you begin to wonder why you should sell it. But in my house it only takes about three minutes for it to revert back to where it was given that Chase is full of energy 99% of the day. We are marketing the property during the Marketing Statement and it appears this weekend in the NZ Herald.
I spent the last couple of days in Northland. It was good to catch up with Ken Bogue. Many of the coastal areas have tightened up considerably and getting insights from Ken as to how he handles market conditions through his group of offices provides me with real-time information from a business owner who has been through these conditions before. Further up North, Gary Steed has our Kaitaia and Mangonui businesses and we caught up in Whangarei to look at his structure and how his business is moving forward.
Yesterday also saw effective termination of the Parnell franchise by Jireh Realty Ltd. Our business has made significant progress in the last five years through the Ray White One System. Many people told me that this was impossible to achieve – how could you put an open system in front of so many competitive people without it becoming too delicious for them? In Parnell’s case they were right. Twice they put their hand in the lolly jar and the most recent time with a much more significant database than ours. All this leads me to believe that the abuse, the repopulation of data and having access to our company data is based on trust and respect for each other and our company. The Parnell office had neither. My decision came about to finalise their agreement mid-term because of a change in their structure and we didn’t wish to re-offer the franchise to them. I am proud that we are in a position to be strong in our decision making. In the past where we have done this it’s given us a better platform to build on. Sometimes it’s hard to let go of some revenue, but if I am thinking and acting as a leader then there is no decision to make; they have to go for the betterment of our group and the progress that we are making. If they continue trading they would be best serve as an independent given there reputation for theft of data from within.
Our final numbers are coming in for August – it’s not going to be a great month. Our property listings will show a decrease of about 3% on last month. This is again going to tighten up the opportunity for buyers and the irony of that is that prices will continue to hold. I will be doing a video online this afternoon which will give an overview of the August results.
We are into the start of our National Marketing Statement. This will drive our brand to a new level as we focus this through media, signage and online marketing.
Great news this week in the South Island with Ashburton, Pleasant Point and Methven of Burdett Real Estate agreeing to commence with Ray White in the next week or so. This will take our network in NZ to 135.
I welcome any comments to my email csmith@raywhite.com.
Carey
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