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In this business owner’s experience, being a good leader and operator doesn’t go hand-in-hand with listing or selling.
Speaking on REB’s Business Empowerment Showcase about the business model that underpins his agency, LJ Hooker Property Centre’s managing director Iain Carmichael has said one of the factors that have led them to be successful is the fact that no owners in the business are listing or selling properties.
Explaining further, Mr Carmichael said: “Our whole focus is on supporting the agents and making sure they go as well as possible.
“We’re not distracted by our own listings, our own sales. We are just focused on helping each agent do the best they can.”
Acknowledging their primary job, as owners, is “to support the agents”, the managing director quipped, “if they do well, we do well”.
“We are very unselfish. We spend all our time helping them – and the track record of agents in our office is that they do a lot more business here. Because they’ve got a lot more time, they’ve got a lot more support, and they can concentrate on the pointy end of what they do,” he said.
An extra benefit of not listing or selling as a manager is that there are no distractions, nor any conflict of interest, according to the director.
“For instance, when leads come into the office, all the leads are given out to the agents. We don’t take any of them. Even pricey houses – we don’t say, ‘well, we’ll sell that one’,” he said.
“It’s not what we do.”
With a team of approximately 16 people working in their agent support team to support 25-plus agents, Mr Carmichael said it allows agents operating within the system to concentrate their full attention on what they do best: prospecting, listing, and selling.
He describes the business as one “that just concentrates on doing the best it can in every area”.
According to the business owner, it also allows for a more positive agent experience.
“We give them loads of help, we simplify their life, and give them back time,” he claimed.
“Agents can’t be expected to be good at everything.
“They can’t be good administrators, or good on social media, or graphic design. We take care of all that for them.”
Instead, under Mr Carmichael’s system, they get to focus on “their part of the job”: working with the customer.
You can listen to the full conversation here.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Grace Ormsby
Grace is a journalist across Momentum property and investment brands. Grace joined Momentum Media in 2018, bringing with her a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Communication (Journalism) from the University of Newcastle. She’s passionate about delivering easy to digest information and content relevant to her key audiences and stakeholders.
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