The Word

Clare Barry, Department manager, CENTURY 21 Wentworth Victoria
REGULAR MEETINGS

“In a tough market, the two departments need to stay connected. We’ve implemented procedures such as weekly meetings with the sales team to discuss properties that are possible property management leads, and to discuss referrals from the property management department to the sales team. The meetings ensure the staff stay connected and also make sure our clients are being serviced properly by both departments. We also have property managers attend the sales team’s weekly caravan, when they look at new listings. The property manager will give an appraisal, so if investors enquire, the rental appraisal is already available.”

John Minns, Chief operating officer, Independent Property Group, Australian Capital Territory
CENTRALISED SYSTEM

“A lot of sales agents are reluctant to pass on a client to the property manager because they may not have confidence they will be looked after. We have a direct interchange of referrals between property management and sales, which allows us to have a centralised system. This way we have specialists in every area of property management – from leasing agents to everyday managers – all under one roof. This means that the sales team has more confidence that whoever they refer across will be looked after by a system and a very good team, not just an individual property manager.”

Philip Bell, Director, Stockdale & Leggo Albury, New South Wales
PROPERTY PARTNERSHIPS

“We have a partnership arrangement where each of our sales staff is partnered to a property manager. This means that if there are ever any referrals that have to go across to the other department, they simply pass on the information to their partner. We have three partnerships between the six staff members, and since we’ve teamed them up we haven’t had any problems at all. It was pretty simple to break the team into the appropriate pairs because we knew which people would work best with each other, which is something you have to keep in mind if you decide that you want to try this out.”

Sharon Botha, Principal, Peard Real Estate Mindarie Western Australia
REFERRAL REWARDS

“My property management section has a good rapport with my sales team, but my sales team is very reliant on immediate responses from the property managers. When a lead is given for a property that is going under management, or an investor wants a rental appraisal on a property, the sales division will want answers immediately, even if the work won’t have any benefit to the property managers. We give an incentive to our sales associates, so that when a sold property is put under management, they get a reward fee. As you can imagine, that keeps the sales team motivated to keep sending referrals.”