A primary aim of all estate agent training, says Tony Clarke, Managing Director of the Rawson Property Group, has to be the increase of the agent’s ability to be sensitive and sympathetic to the client’s needs.
“All too often,” says Clarke, “estate agents are accused of being insensitive and there is perhaps nothing clients dislike more than the feeling that the estate agent is focusing on achieving a sale and not on their needs.”
The culture at the Rawson Property Group, says Clarke, is non-exploitative and the primary aim of their agents is to always focus on the people and not the sale. The group’s training courses emphasize this attitude further by promoting the belief “We sell homes, not properties.” This, he says, is the only attitude that will ensure sustained success.
Training which genuinely results in estate agents adopting this approach, says Clarke, has shown to be ‘pivotal’ to their achievements and to the building up a base of satisfied clients.
In addition, he says, the obtainment of all estate agent qualifications is all important in the Rawson Property Group and “something we take very seriously”.
“It has been said so often, but it needs to be said again,” says Clarke. “The estate agent is in many cases assisting the client with the acquisition or disposal of one of the biggest investments of his life and any form of self-interest on the part of the estate agent is totally out of place in so important a transaction.”
In appointing an estate agent, property sellers, says Clarke, should ask not only what relevant qualifications the estate agent has, but also what training he or she has received from their group. The client should also ascertain how long each course lasted and how regularly estate agents have to attend.
“There will of course always be exceptions,” says Clarke, “but in general the client can expect better service from the estate agent whose group has provided him, not only with intensive introductory courses, but also with on-going professional development courses thereafter.”
