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Harris Real Estate Kent Town was one of only four agencies to exceed $1 billion in settlements and placed fifth in REB’s Top 50 Sales Offices 2024 ranking.
Managing director and auctioneer Phil Harris credited the South Australian based-agency’s success to offering customised support to each sales agent, including marketing strategies and prospecting plans, to enable them to sell properties and achieve optimal results.
“We treat each salesperson as an individual,” he told REB.
“First and foremost, we identify what our agents’ expectations are out of their career, and what goals they’d like to achieve. We simplify that by asking how many homes they want to sell during a financial year.
“Then, our sales management team works with each individual by giving them customised marketing and prospecting plans.”
As a result, Harris Real Estate Kent Town sold almost 1,400 properties during the 2023 calendar year for $1.1 billion.
It also climbed from seventh in 2023 to fifth place in this year’s Top 50 Sales Offices ranking.
The agency largely sold apartments and houses priced between $800,000 to $3 million, Mr Harris said.
Another upshot of the strategy has been a considerable improvement in numbers achieved by every salesperson in their office.
“The vast majority of our sales team wrote better numbers than what they did the year prior,” he said.
“That comes down to the work we've done around skill set training.”
How to succeed in a low-stock environment
In unison with this, Harris Real Estate Kent Town has sharpened its vendor management skills to combat the low stock environment and achieve strong sales numbers.
Noting that the Adelaide market continues to favour vendors as buyer demand exceeds supply (although it is not as strong as it was 12 months ago), Mr Harris said his agents must be adept at securing listings.
“You’ve got to be able to generate listings because properties are getting snapped up quickly,” he flagged.
Other ways to maximise efficiencies
Outsourcing administration tasks and other functions that cannot be fulfilled by using technology or artificial intelligence has also helped the Kent Town office streamline its internal workflow, Mr Harris said.
Secondly, around 30 new employees have been recruited across the Harris Real Estate group over the last 12 months, which has contributed to the settlement numbers in the Kent Town office.
Agents also use the Harris Real Estate centralised database (which is used by all the offices) to connect with prospective buyers. According to Mr Harris, agents across the group typically meet between 2,000 and 3,000 buyers every weekend.
“That database is critical to the number of properties that we sell either by going to the open market or to a buyer in the database,” Mr Harris said.
He added that while Harris Real Estate sold 2,500 homes across the group, it is aiming to sell 3,000 properties this year, while the target for property management business to manage 3,500 homes (up from 3,100 homes at present).
Tips for other agents
When asked how other agencies could thrive, Mr Harris suggested auditing the properties agents sold during the past year and identifying what the lead source was for them (there are typically three or four major lead sources for high-quality agents such as referrals or buyers).
Then, agents should collaborate with a sales manager or a trainer to chart out appropriate marketing strategies to convert those leads.
For example, if past clients are the major lead source for an agent, they could implement a strategy to nurture those relationships and communicate frequently with that segment, Mr Harris advised.
He concluded: “Get clarity on where your successes have come from in the past because most agents actually don't know what's working.
“Identify where you are naturally strong and where your listings come easy to you. Then, pay attention to that and put more authority into those areas.”
Click here to download the complete REB Top 50 Sales Offices 2024 rankings and report.
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