Bigg est and Best Prope rt y guid e in the Bolan d
SOLD Boland
5 MAART
D i s t r i c t M a i l | E i k e s t a d n u u s | P a a r l P o s t
SALES DOUBLED IN A YEAR
Local Rawson branch takes top award Late last year, the Rawson Property Group’s Somerset West franchise took the National Chairman’s Award in the 2014 competition – one of the group’s most highly respected awards. This franchise was taken over by Johann van der Merwe in 2005 and has since 2009 been under the management of his son, Schalk van der Merwe, who also owns the group’s Strand and Gordon’s Bay franchises. At the annual awards function held last year at Grand West Casino in Goodwood and attended by some 700 estate agents and franchisees, Tony Clarke, managing director of the Rawson Property Group, announced that the Somerset West franchise raised its turnover above R250 million and in 2014 had doubled the number of sales that it made in 2013. His franchise’s success, said Johann van der Merwe, could in part be attributed to the new system under which his sale partners now operate. During 2012 his team had adopted a model which gives access to four dedicated in-house admin support staff, whose task it is to process much of the clerical work – thereby freeing up the sale partners’ time to concentrate on client service. This new system has been described by Clarke as “ground-breaking”. Van der Merwe, like other franchisees in The Rawson team in Somerset West recently received the Rawson Group’s Chairman’s Award. the Rawson group, has supported his team by providing them with services that give the sales partners a freer hand in their primary task. He has placed particular emphasis on the accumulation of stock, a key factor to success in an era where stock shortages are now a major challenge to many sale partners. At the annual awards function, Clarke explained that the Chairman’s Award is given to a franchise who, in the management’s view, is seen to be operating in a truly customer-orientated service-minded fashion. While it is not possible, he said, to win the award without achieving a high turnover and a good profit margin, other factors, particularly client satisfaction and staff morale, are also taken into account. “To win the Chairman’s Award,” said Clarke, “the franchisee must not only be competent and a good leader but also able to foster and grow his staff. In short, the winner of this award is the sort of franchisee which we would like to see the other franchisees emulating.”
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“To win the Chairman’s Award,” said Clarke, “the franchisee must not only be competent and a good leader, but also able to foster and grow staff. In short, the winner of this award is the sort of franchisee that we would like to see the other franchisees emulating.”