Login
iscover
Stacey Moseley
It's time for agents to work less hours but earn more money, according to Harcourts Australia's number one residential sales consultant.
Garth Makowski, director of Dougmal Harcourts Campbelltown, believes agents are working unnecessarily hard at aspects of their business that won’t see them increase revenue.
“Self accountability is something that I am passionate about, I meet a lot of agents who want help in shifting from where they are now to where they want to be in the future,” he told Real Estate Business last month at the Advanced Real Estate Learning (AREL) conference in Sydney.
“In order to do that I get agents to take a look at their business to really analyse what they need to do to make that shift."
In April, Mr Makowski told Real Estate Business that most agents wouldn’t be able to recite some of their key performance metrics and ratios, including their list to sell percentage. Too many were also disorganised, he added, and confused doing extra work with the assumption this meant they were performing better.
Mr Makowski's call for more accountability comes shortly after Macquarie Relationship Banking's 2012 Residential Real Estate Benchmarking Report found 45 per cent of agencies that booked higher profits last year attributed the improvement to higher revenue (50 per cent) and efficiency improvements (45 per cent). An increase in sales and marketing (40 per cent), along with cost cutting (36 per cent), were two other key reasons for the better profit results.
Many agents waste time by not analysing their business' activity properly, Mr Makowski said.
“I see a lot of agents who, for example are writing $250,000 a year in commission but would like to write $400,000,” he said.
“Instead of actually sitting down and analysing where there at and what their business looks like and how they created the $250,000, they just go to work and work harder for longer hours and they think that is the answer. It’s not.
“The answer is analysing the existing business that they have and figuring out where their income is generated from, looking for areas for improvement and then implementing new strategies to grow their business.”
Mr Makowski, based in Sydney’s south west, took out the Harcourts Australia's number one residential sales consultant award earlier this month.
Last financial year, Mr Makowski wrote more than $65 million in sales and sold 170 properties. He was ranked 44th in Real Estate Business’ inaugural Top 100 Agents ranking.
Newsletter
