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To be a successful salesman, says top estate agent Peter Chauncy, you need to have focus, passion, a good mentor and an excellent marketing strategy
At just 30 years of age, McGrath’s Peter Chauncy has managed to establish himself as Australia’s top real estate agent.
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The Sydney-based ‘young gun’ sold 79 properties in the past financial year, for an estimated $88 million – no easy task in the current property market.
In fact, so effective is Chauncy that he was recently recognised as the top, or “most productive” agent in Australia by The Adviser’s sister publication, Real Estate Business.
“You need to be incredibly focused on your goals,” he says, when asked what lay behind a majority of his achievements.
“For example, as an estate agent I know how many appraisals you need to generate to get a certain number of listings and how many listings you need to generate to get this many sales,” he says. “You need to have a really structured, disciplined set of goals that’s in front of you 24/7.
“It doesn’t matter if you have been working in your chosen field for one year, 10 years or 20 years. If you have a set of goals and you write them down, you are so much more likely to achieve them.”
The makings of success
While discipline and goals have been incredibly important to his success, Chauncy says his ability to believe in himself has also played a large part in his achievements.
Some might argue that success has to be down to a natural ability to sell well; the man himself disagrees, emphasising that being a successful salesman is all about belief.
“A positive mindset is everything – I had that from day one,” Chauncy says. “I would get to work and say, ‘I’m going to make this happen and it doesn’t matter what I need to do or how hard I need to work’.
“That was my attitude”
Just two years after joining the real estate profession, Chauncy was selling 30 to 50 homes per year. Not bad by many estate agents’ reckoning, but not good enough for Chauncy.
“Certainly, a large number of people who try to make it in real estate fail, don’t do well or simply coast along,” he says. “I was aware of that and it was a motivator and constant reminder to keep me on track and not to be one of those statistics.
“So, in the first few years of starting in real estate, I found the time to pull over any other agents in the office that I could work with and offered to do anything for free.”
McGrath Estate Agents Mid North Shore principal Shane Smollen was one of the agents who took Chauncy up on his offer and Smollen then spent the next few years training him in the ways of real estate salesmanship.
Chauncy attributes to Smollen a significant proportion of the surge in his sales
“Having a coach or business mentor is absolutely imperative to being successful quicker,” he says. “Having someone to be accountable to really helped my growth.
“For me, it was important that I didn’t try to become a hero overnight, because I knew that wouldn’t happen. You have to have the right expectation when you enter any industry. I had low expectations but really impressive goals, which is why I aligned myself with a successful business.
“In my experience, I find that if you align yourself with an experienced, successful peer and then work with that person for at least two years, it will pay dividends in the long run.”
According to Chauncy, having someone to answer to also keeps you on your toes, forcing you to push towards your goals and to go that extra mile.
A marketer’s dream
Mentors aside, Chauncy says it is equally important for salespeople to have strong marketing plans and procedures in place. Real estate agents need to market their successes as this is one of the most important ways in which to attract clients.
“When you have made a sale, you have to let people know,” he says. “Every person in my suburb receives some sort of message from me every seven days. It has been like that for the past four years.
“Do they get sick of me? Yeah, probably. But at least when it comes to selling their property, I know they will think of me first. In my experience as a real estate agent, you can never touch your clients and potential clients enough.”
But communication in and of itself is not enough, he says; the communication must also be “effective”.
“For me, in my position, it is important to communicate effectively with my clients every day,” he says. “This industry isn’t complicated so long as you communicate well with your clients, build relationships and get people to trust you.
“In real estate, as in mortgage broking, it is difficult to create a positive image. There is a negative stigma attached to both industries.
“But as long as you remain positive and always act professionally, you can build relationships of trust – relationships that go the distance.”
