Top honour for Watsons
Palmerston North company gains international recognition.
Watson Real Estate business development manager Greg Watson has gained international recognition for his work in property management. Greg was inducted into the Inspired Growth Training (IGT) Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Brisbane last month. Inspired Growth Training is an organisation that trains property management business development managers and operates in New Zealand, Australia and America.
For the past three years Greg has been named IGT’S top business development manager , but being inducted into the Hall of Fame is the organisation’s top honour.
‘‘It’s really cool that a little local company from Manawatu can be recognised internationally. It came as a total surprise.’’
He says the award is quite meaningful as it measures actual results, communication, workload and the ability to bring in new clients.
‘‘Sometimes awards can be somewhat subjective, but I’m proud of this one because it is objective and is based on statistics.’’
Greg says the role of a business development manager is to grow and improve a property management business and introduce best business practices and innovations. For Greg it’s a role he is passionate about.
‘‘I love my job and for me it’s about giving people help and advice regarding their rental property. My approach is to give people free help and advice. Recently I was valuing a house and was able to give the owner recommendations about renovations to the property to get the best rent and the best possible tenant.’’
Greg says the reason he gives free advice without getting anything back is because he is passionate about helping people. ‘‘I give away lots of free advice to help people move forward and because of that work flows back.’’
He says Watson Real Estate us known internationally for its innovation in looking after rental properties. ‘‘The changes we make in this area are almost always based on a win, win, win situation. When looking at innovation it needs to be a win for our clients, a win for our staff and a win for the company. For example our 3D virtual tours of a rental property mean our staff only have to show a property one quarter as many times in order to rent it. The client can rent the property faster with less vacancies and often higher rents and for the company the staff have more time to carry out other tasks.’’
While in Brisbane Greg addressed the IGT conference as a guest speaker.
‘‘I spoke on the top 10 tips to grow your rent roll based on a range of technology, offering services that competitors don’t. It also dealt with new ways of communicating with clients, for example video messaging and automated conversations and aspects of on-line marketing where prospective new clients can obtain information that is very specific via on-line chats.’’
Greg says it’s about giving other business managers the tools to differentiate from their competitors.
‘‘When you are talking to clients you need to be right up with the latest trends. You also need to dedicate time to carry out research and to bench mark what’s happening locally, nationally and internationally for any information that can help your clients, your staff or the business.’’
Greg’s understanding of property management has been learned from the ground up. ‘‘I started in real estate 22 years ago and have been in property management for 15 years, starting in administration through to property management on a day-to-day basis through to running the property management business to my current role which is the one I love most.’’