What does team cohesion really mean?

This month marks five years for us in business on our own. From a directorship in a bigger firm prior, to taking on a humble little office in our early days in Yarraville, we love our sun-filled office above the Post Office. Having helped over 800 clients since opening our doors, it’s been an exciting five years.

Part of our process for searching for properties for our clients involves calling agents for off-market listings and looming new campaigns. We leave messages for busy agents often, and when they call back it is often a surprise to them to find that we are all working on the same client files.

They sometimes ask “Is it OK to talk to you? I was returning Cate’s call about a property.”

What they worry about is not unusual in our industry. They are concerned that they may be talking to someone in the office who has their own clients to look after. They are respectful enough to ask us, in case an opposition buyers agent is about to take the lead on an opportunity that is not rightfully theirs.

But that doesn’t happen in our office.

We each have input into every client’s file. No staff are incentivised to work separately on their own file, or to favour one client’s brief above another. We have a group-access spreadsheet to record every off-market opportunity and we are all acutely aware of each client’s assignment criterion.

We were recently told that we had impressive team cohesion and it was something we all reflected on.

So what does an office look like without it?

Teams and processes vary in every office and it is quite normal in some busy Buyer’s Agencies for staff to be remunerated solely, (or mostly) in commission payments. This can lead to a different behaviour if a Buyer’s Agent is paid for managing their own clients. Other by-products can include clashing briefs (giving rise to clashes on properties for sale) and disharmonious relationships in the office.

Being a boutique agency is what we set out to be back in 2014. Now that we are five years’ on our mandate is no different.

We do our best to make sure every client brief is a positive journey, a great educational experience and a successful, out-performance result long term.

But we also make sure we have fun along the way too.

Happy fifth birthday to us!