Focus is the key, especially in hard times

By Bob Dey

Phill Priestley sips his latte, gesticulates, talks of how tough times bring out the marketer in him better. Last November he dropped out of an administrative role, and this year emerged back on the streets of the North Shore, promising his clients he will handle just four jobs at a time.

Only four? What kind of salesman is that?

Priestley got into the real estate business in the heady days of early 1987, then fought his way through the tough times of the early 90s and, like every real estate salesperson, seems to have worked for half the firms in Auckland.

He sticks to marketing a handful of properties at a time because he believes that way he can do the job properly. And he writes his clients a guarantee of close attention to their cause, a sale.

So he would not fit easily into a big firm where he would have to take his share of listings whether he liked them or not.

Priestley reckons he has sold more land on the Shore than anyone else in real estate, helped by the decision of the Housing Corporation to sell its 126ha in the Albany Basin in 1994.

In the space of 18 months, Priestley acted in the sale of 80ha, including two large slabs of that Housing Corp land. In the 12 years since he quit corporate sales and marketing, he says he has sold about 100ha.

In his days marketing for major corporates, Priestley says he found that, "no matter what I did or said, it was the board that made decisions. I disagreed with a lot of them - their feet were not on the ground.

"I learned my trade well at Bayleys under Deborah Kelland [who now runs her own agency]. She taught me how to be focused, that you can't be all things to all people and you must be specialised, not necessarily in the product you do. I specialise in sole agency marketing."

Priestley started with Milford Commercial in 1987, moved to Bayleys and then to Swann Archer before setting up a North Shore commercial office for Barfoot & Thompson, which he left last year as it came under the wing of Barfoots' Newmarket commercial head office.

This year he joined Premium Commercial, a separate entity from the Premium residential agency which was set up by Jonmer's Ian Calderwood and is now owned by Gray Pearson.

Priestley readily concedes he was not management material and is pleased to be out of that. As a marketer, "I'm able to get into a partnership with the vendor.

The difference [between him and the standard salesperson] is commitment to the property.

"Before we enter the partnership we talk about the fundamentals of the property, the marketing, the pricing. I don't buy listings - I've walked away from listings if we aren't able to agree on the fundamentals. I only take on four projects at any time - if I like the job the money will come.

"I tend to work on projects that other real estate salespeople have forgotten, or it's got too hard for them. When a new listing comes on, people get excited for a short period, they run around, it doesn't work for them and they go on to something else."

Enter Priestley, who colloquially calls himself "Doctor," prepared to sit down with a vendor needing help. His advertisements are distinctive for their precision on matters such as price a square foot, the kind of information he says many salespeople omit.

He also believes many salespeople use an ad hoping just for a phone call which they can use to promote other properties.

Priestley says in his commitment to a property he will not lead buyers to other properties unless they say categorically they want to move on.

Priestley is disparaging about the attitude in many firms during the tough times of 1998. "New Zealand's a boom-and-bust economy and the majority of real estate agents are wonderful during the boom. They're order-takers. When the economy slows, they really don't know how to do their job.

"They know what a hard time is but they don't know what hard work is. They eat well off the good times but tighten their belt in the hard times.

"As a manager my income was based on theirs and I wasn't in control of my own future. I cut my teeth in bad times and I prefer a soft economy, because then you're dealing with real people making real decisions on their business activities."

One of Priestley's first handful of projects this year was to sell 4800 sq ft (440 sq m) of office and showroom or warehouse at $55 a sq ft ($600 a sq m), which quickly drew enough interest for him to expect his third sale in six weeks.

He drew 45 responses to two weeks of promotion, "because it's priced right. People look for value for money."

But there is more in the background to his promotional work. Priestley believes in gathering all the material a prospective buyer will need, such as lim reports (land information memos), insurance details, valuations and rental prospects.

"You can't just walk in the door and say to a buyer, 'This is a factory.' You have to say, `Here's the information for you to make a commercial decision.'"