CHAS EVERITT PROPERTY
CHAS EVERITT INTERNATIONAL PROPERTY GROUP
Challenging the
Status Quo PRODUCTION: Djamil Benmehidi
The reaction of Chas Everitt International Property Group to the toxic cocktail of threats that has throttled economic growth in recent years is proof if ever there was any that adversity truly does breed dynamism and ingenuity.
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INDUSTRY FOCUS: PROPERTY
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Over the course of its 37-years history, Chas Everitt has emerged to become one of South Africa’s industry leading real estate players. With operations in every province of the country and a fast-growing international footprint, the company has developed a reputation for excellence and superior service in the eyes of the property buyers,
property sellers, landlords, and tenants whom it serves. On the surface at least, Chas Everitt is unrecognisable from the small family business that was first setup by Chas and Tilla Everitt in 1980. Today, it boasts a staff contingent of over 1,300, and has operations stretching from the African continent to the booming Pacific Rim region. However,
CHAS AND BERRY EVERITT
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while the company is every inch the tech-savvy corporate rising star it appears, its modern-day success has been underpinned by its commitment to the business’s original family values of hard work, ethical business practice, and innovation. It is these values that enabled the company to survive a challenging start to life during the upheaval of the 1980s-90s period, and thrive today in the face of a highly challenging economic and political environment. “The market has actually shrunk over the past year, we’ve seen it shrink across the board,” explains Berry Everitt, the company’s CEO and second-generation family leader. He continues: “However, our market share has increased because we’ve absorbed a lot of players into our operations. Rather than just fight for market share, our strategy of acquiring agents who have existing market share has worked well. “We plan to increase our market share by 1% over the next 12 months, and to achieve this it means we must recruit a further 187 estate agents and boost revenue by more than R1 million over the next year in fees. That’s quite a big challenge – we’ll need to add R1.8 billion worth of additional turnover to our coffers. But it’s quite achievable.” The pursuit of such an aggressive and ambitious growth strategy at a time when the South African economy is in such difficulty might appear a little reckless; doubly so, taking into account the property market’s vulnerability to diminishing credit flows and the threat of rising interest rates. But, as always, the devil is in the detail, and by concentrating primarily on the luxury property market, going global with this focus, and through its membership of the global network, Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, Chas Everitt has enjoyed a year that in Berry’s words has been
It is not about how much technology you have – it is how you use it Technology is essential to repeat and referral business in the Real Estate Industry. Real Estate is a relationship business and Agents who understand this use a CRM tool and are typically the top earners. They know that a CRM will; > Help them make more money > Nurture Relationships > Automate their marketing for consistency > Get more referrals Top agents say that Referral and Repeat business contribute up to 39% of their earnings so it is proven that using a CRM will help you nurture and retain relationships way beyond a single transaction sales approach. In 2015, we started working with the leadership team at Chas Everitt to create a purpose-built CRM for the Real Estate Industry. The result was MYCE, which stands for My Customer Engagement. MYCE is all about enabling Agents to grow
Pre-populated CRM
Follow-up Management
their database and turn a contact into a relationship, nurture those relationships on an ongoing basis to retain the customer so that you can increase your chance of getting repeat and referral business. With technology being introduced to us daily we sometimes sit back and wait for the next disrupter that will potentially put Real Estate Agents out of a job. Well if that were the truth then why do the NAR’s stats show that 87% of buyers purchased their house using an Agent, showing an increase from 69% in 2001.
communication, then, when the opportunity arises to do business, you are already top of mind. That being said, let’s look at what this really looks like in real life. Let’s use an example of two suburbs with 10000 homeowners It would take an agent over a year, doing 25 calls a day, to contact each homeowner once. This is not a sustainable way to build relationships and therefore using MYCE is essential to sustaining repeat and referral business in Real Estate.
Technology is not changing how customer relationships work it is simply making it easier to do more business.
Chantelle Fraser
CRM’s are used to track communication with past and current customers and record your followups so that you are in constant
CEO & Founder of MYCE Mobile 071 300 9435 Email chantelle@dracore.biz Tel: +27 (0) 10 595 3571 www.myce.co.za
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Email Template Builder
Bulk Email & SMS Marketing
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INDUSTRY FOCUS: PROPERTY
BERRY EVERITT CHAS EVERITT CEO
absolutely phenomenal. “Being part of this organisation has been incredibly beneficial, particularly in the luxury side. The luxury portfolio international, which is the niche side of real estate has really positioned our offerings to highnet-worth individuals more than any of our competitors. It’s been a great compliment to the Chas Everitt brand. “There’s not so much demand within South Africa right now, but around the rest of the world we’re seeing quite a lot of demand. Our SE Asia and Pacific Rim operations are getting on steam very, very nicely in places like Indonesia and China, for example – they’ve really started to make a big impact. “There are exciting changes happening and having access in these markets. Having access to a network and marketplace located across so many countries around the world. It’s incredible, there
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are some very exciting things happening that we can’t talk about at the moment, but in a year’s time it will be public information.” However, Chas Everitt’s success hasn’t come about as a result of this only, but also through getting the basics right. Closer to home, the company has implemented a cutting-edge IT system to increase efficiency and improve the effectiveness of its internal processes – something that Berry is delighted about, having already seen the positive results that it has brought about. “The installation is all done, it’s been rolled out to all our agents. We can plug any CRM into our system now. It enhances our database, procurement, and management. So, because the information is checked against various other data sources to ensure our current date is accurate. It’s working very, very nicely. “It’s been rolled out effectively and efficiently since it was
CHAS EVERITT INTERNATIONAL PROPERTY GROUP
completed at the end of May this year. Data transfers, verification – we’re still building some additional reports, some additional MIS stuff that we require, but the foundations are now laid. It’s been easier than we expected it to be. This is the fourth time that we’ve implemented new systems like this in 12 years, we’ve learned lessons from the previous rollouts. That’s why it’s all gone quite effectively and efficiently. The team have taken to it very well. Almost intuitively, in fact.” So, following on from what has been a fantastic 12-months for Chas Everitt, what next is the question? More of the same according to Berry, who is eager to maintain the company’s upward trajectory with a view to growing the company and creating more employment opportunities for South Africans. The troubled economic and political arena in the country has created a situation where unemployment continues to rise, as does hardship among the South African people. Berry feels that as a thriving company he has a duty as an employer to take on, develop, and empower people to step up in life. “For me as a business person in South Africa, it’s part of my responsibility to create employment and to grow the economy – we’re not looking for or expecting the government to help us, or the economy or international markets. We can only rely that our own ingenuity and innovation is going to create a need for more people to service our customers. “We want to train and develop them. The very same people who have been waiting for the government to fulfil the promises they haven’t. We’ve already seen the middle class grow but it’s now time to step in and impact the lives of poorer people in this country. It’s our responsibility in business to do that because ultimately they’ll become
our consumers of the future.” When asked to elaborate further on his plans for the next year, Berry concludes by saying: “We’re going to keep on moving forward, and keep investing in our staff. I want to make sure our agents are the most knowledgeable in the market in terms of their product and the laws, and in terms of the environment in which they work in. This is to me is where we can differentiate ourselves. “Many companies have access to cutting-edge technology and great leadership. Our focus is very much on facilitating staff development – of making sure the right people have the right knowledge to guide and support customers. “We are a glass half full company, in spite of the political difficulties and challenging economic conditions that exist
here in South Africa at the moment. That said, these challenges breed dynamism and ingenuity, because to survive in a harsh environment, companies must innovate and be able to adapt and find new ways of doing things to survive. We’ve had a few growth spurts because of our ability to do this, and ultimately this will continue to be one of the keys to our success.”
CHAS EVERITT INTERNATIONAL PROPERTY GROUP +27 11 801 2500 @ChasEveritt www.chaseveritt.co.za
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Issue No.63
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TRANSNET PORT TERMINALS
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ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
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OCTOBER 2017