Race to the top: How 2 offices turned competition into growth 

According to Place New Farm director, Sarah Hackett and Place Bulimba director, Paul Curtain, creating high-performing offices came down to fostering healthy competition, embracing discomfort and building discipline in teams’ day-to-day routines.

Recently, Place New Farm was named the number one sales business across the network after recording 21 per cent growth on its previous best financial year.

The New Farm office was the first to surpass Place Bulimba in over two decades, finishing more than two per cent ahead in gross commission income.

Hackett said the result was close and she considered it a “win-win”, given that the competition pushed both offices to perform at their best.

“It's when someone's in front of you that you can strive that little 10 per cent more to pass, and without Bulimba we wouldn't have done that,” she said.

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Collaboration

Curtain said that, despite competing for the top spot, the two agencies fostered collaboration, celebrating each other’s successes and viewing them as shared victories.

“So many of those performers either work together in the same office, be it that they work together at Bulimba or they work together at New Farm, or other place businesses,” he said.

“Then when they come into training rooms or event rooms, they genuinely are excited for each other's performance because there are many of our top 10 sales staff also across the network from those two offices.”

Additionally, he said the teams knew how to cope with their losses in a healthy manner, and, instead of feeling defeated, reflected on how they could improve for next time.

“When you come second or if you lose a grand final in sport, you probably learn more about yourself sometimes than winning,” he said.

“So they’re not going around the office going, right, we're going to take New Farm down next year, but it probably just puts that little bit of fire in the belly to say, okay, what can we achieve next year?”

Get out of your comfort zone

Hackett said much of her team’s success came after she vowed to double the business, after a client told her she had been staying in her comfort zone.

At the same time, she realised that the New Farm team had been consistently writing the same fees for the previous few years, and had failed to see substantial growth.

“I thought, okay, well, let's do this as a business. And we doubled that business. We had to do more than 2x to beat Bulimba,” she said.

Hackett said she had to encourage her whole team to adopt a different mindset and go beyond what felt familiar, including refining systems, processes, and their weekly routine.

“Everyone went in on this to achieve this goal, every single person from reception, property management – we were all on the train.”

Discipline over motivation

To achieve success, Hackett also said it had been essential to teach her team the difference between discipline and motivation.

She said discipline required agents to be prepared and to have difficult conversations with buyers and sellers, especially in tougher and slower markets.

“We have a team of very experienced, capable individuals that are going about being positive, raising the bar for buyers, but being realistic with the sellers as well,” she said.

Additionally, she said agents had to be consistent with advertising, marketing, and social media to ensure listings could reach as wide an audience as possible, while continuing to build their databases.

“We have built our databases, they've doubled in size – so so proud that when we launch a property, 70 per cent is Place [buyers] through doors versus from realestate.com,” she said.

Retention over recruitment

Curtain said his agency prioritised retention over recruitment to ensure its best-performing team members were satisfied and wanted to stay with the brand.

Rather than “gimmicks” – including trips away, fancy dinners, or other incentives, he said leaders should give their staff the fundamentals to succeed in the market and boost their confidence in their role.

He said that it was most important for leaders to give their time and expertise so agents could refine their skills and be motivated to continue their careers with the business.

“In a marketplace like we're in right now, the gimmicks should get pushed to the side for a variety of reasons,” he said.

“If you sit in the lounge room with them, that's actually what they are then basing their relationship with you on – it’s your time, and it's your technical ability.”