Article by Cheryl McKenna, Wilsons office manager and licensed estate agent.
Many people distrust salespeople; in fact according to a quick google search, 97% of us don’t trust sales people. The only people we trust less are politicians and car salesmen. Not surprising really, as the popular view is that people in sales only care about the dollar, not the person; that they would say anything to ‘make the sale’.
I was one of the 97% of those who distrust salespeople. Not anyone or any field in particular, they all just belong in the one basket, right?
I remember reading a local newspaper many years ago and seeing a ‘House Wanted’ ad in the real estate section – ‘we have a buyer looking for a house on an acre, with 3 bedrooms, room for the horses and a shed for the tractor‘. My first thought was ‘what a load of rubbish – as if that is for a real person!’
Now if you’d have told me 5 years ago that I would now be working in a real estate office and loving my job I would have called you an idiot. Having studied disability at uni and working in that field for 13 years, I was committed to community services – the polar opposite of sales! Why on earth would I consider changing from community services to a sales business for goodness sake?!?!?!
As time moved on I decided that I needed a change – a job that I could leave at the door at the end of the day, a job where a persons health and welfare wasn’t, at times, solely dependent on me. I applied for a receptionist job with the only sales office I would have ever considered – Wilsons – because of their focus on ethics.
I remember my first staff sales meeting, and almost fell off my seat when they came to a particular agenda item – buyers! The sales team sat and discussed the list of buyers who had either called wanting a specific type of property, or who had missed out on buying a recently sold property. These were the people from the newspaper ads! They were real people! These were people actively looking for a particular kind of property, or wanting to move to the area, or who wanted to live in a particular part of town, or who had specific requirements. And they were REAL!
I guess that I had always thought that if people were looking to buy a house, there were only the properties listed to choose from. I had never considered that there would be a way to find exactly the kind of property that you wanted, or that any real estate agency would bother looking for something specific for a buyer. This was a whole new concept for me!
Fast forward to now, and I can tell you that, even though my title is not actually salesperson, some of the best parts of my job involve helping find the right home for a buyer. I love that, at Wilsons, we ie. not just the agents in sales – all of us! take the time to really listen to what a buyer is looking for, and do everything in our power to help them find their perfect home, whether or not we have their perfect property on our list yet.
Whether it is a family moving to the area who need a large family home with a big yard for their dogs close to a high school; a retiring famer who still wants space from their nearest neighbour but a bit closer to town; the grandmother who wants to move off the farm into town to be closer to grandchildren; to the couple wanting to build in an already established area; to the older lady who can no longer drive and due to health issues needs a home close to the local hospital; even to the lady who had her heart set on living in a particular street – all of these buyers are real people, with real stories and real requirements, looking for the right home to begin their next chapter.
To me, when we match a buyer with their perfect home, that is still a kind of community service. I guess it all depends on ethics – doing the right things for the right reasons.
Have a look on our website for our current list of buyers (real people!) and what they are looking for – does your home match? Are you thinking of selling? Can we help? Click: https://wilsonswarrnambool.com.au/properties-wanted/
OR, if you are looking to buy and want us to try and find your perfect property, contact us and let us know your requirements, we’ll run a “property wanted” ad for you – there is no cost and no obligation.
