Much is made of mentoring and training.
With so much constant change it is necessary to keep up, even if only because of the legal pitfalls of not doing so.
Some agents are assiduous in this but there’s really no substitute for watching the best in action and learning from them.
Being an estate agent is not only about being a good sales person. Indeed, for many, usually of a male persuasion, they would do well to recognise that their best side is sales and they should let ambition slide and avoid becoming terrible managers and even worse directors.
Before Christmas, Eliza Leigh, a guiding light and perfect example of continuous professional development in the truest sense, succumbed to a long illness.
Her memorial service was packed out last week in Knightsbridge – the area in which she operated for almost 40 years.
The reason I mention her, apart from being extremely sad, is that I was lucky enough to work with her for six years in the late 80s and early 90s in a small high-end Chelsea based company called Read Cunningham.
Occasional training and mentoring have a place, but to be able to sit, absorb and learn from someone like that – not that I knew or appreciated it back then – every minute of every day reminds me how lucky I was.
I’m not talking about how much she sold, and she went on to later dominate her market while working for Knight Frank, but rather the way she did it.
Honesty, declining intro fees, knowing who she was acting for, pointing out areas of possible conflict, and all delivered with the strength of a metal fist in a velvet glove.
My time as an agent was spent learning from one or two giants, and despite her car seat being so close to the steering wheel that I couldn’t even begin to get in – polite way of saying she came in a small package – she was one of them.
…’to be able to sit, absorb and learn from someone like that – not that I knew or appreciated it back then – every minute of every day reminds me how lucky I was.
I wonder how many of the younger people involved in agency now us can say that about their boss today?
I is always sad when a person of influence passes on and a packed memorial service says it all.
I was exremely lucky to have joined Bruton Knowles in Gloucestershire in the late 1970’s under the wise amd watchful eye of Richard Courtney Lord. In those days not unusual to be given experience as the office junior across all departments from Estate Agency – rural and urban, new homes, local cattle market, commercial, fine arts, valuations and survey,industrial, estate management, farms and country property, professional department. Need I go on?
I certainly absorbed and learn from Richard and his other partners. Yes the market place has changed today and specialisation it at a lot younger age but they do not appear to have the breadth of knowledge across the propertry sector that I and former colleagues have.
So if you have time or if not make the time to sit, absorb and learn from someone like that. Eliza Leigh was obviously a special person. So still is Richard Courtney Lord and a host of people like them up and down the country who had the time to give to their young charges in those days. I’m sorry it does not happen so much or in such a similar way these days and the youger generation of those within the industry are the losers.
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