When community is your focus the rest falls into place

Having grown up in a small fishing village of 500 people in Scotland, a sense of community is nothing new to me. In fact, it’s my life blood and the very core of how I live my life and conduct my business. 

I believe every business is part of an ecosystem and plays a key part in its survival. Although now I live and work in a much larger city, each suburb has its own ecosystem within the community. If you plug yourself into that, you become part of a self-sustaining flow of information and business, ultimately building trust within the community. 

I believe that every business has an obligation to support its own community, whether it’s real estate, a hairdresser or a coffee shop. It’s about the businesses recognising themselves as being part of a community as opposed to recognising the community as a source of income. 

Essentially, how we conduct ourselves within a community is the judge of our success or failure. Whatever your business, the community will judge your value based on how you behave. Traditional marketing is of course still critically important to driving your business forward but not if your actions don’t match your words. 

Behavioural economics teaches us that, as humans, we all want to be appreciated and valued for what we offer the world. In a healthy ecosystem the value flows between customer and business equally. That’s why it’s so important to put people first! The focus must always remain on the person, not the transaction. This intangible value brought to the community is what drives repeat business and a satisfied client. 

The key is to understand your client’s plans and needs and make recommendations based on the market conditions. Sometimes this advice won’t suit their plan but will achieve their goal in the end. Focus on doing the right thing by your customer and business growth and success will follow. 

Often people sell because they’re wanting to catch a good market, but when the market gets tough people must make some serious financial decisions. It’s in these times, our clients need advice. If you give advice based on your own personal goals, you’re not doing the best for your community. You give somebody the right advice, which might be “don’t sell”, they’ll go and tell 10 people about how you put them above your commission. The focus must always remain on the people in your community.  

I’m a competitive person but I’m not competing with other agents, I’m competing with myself. Traditionally agents have focussed on status or a trophy, their mindset has been on ‘winning’. As soon as you start seeing the client as the trophy, you’ve got it all wrong. I’ll say it again, it must be about relationships. 

And that’s how our business works and it means that I can go home and proudly tell my children this is how you conduct yourself in life. Putting people first, seeing your business as a valuable member of your community is a lot more powerful than just having a quick win. I believe success for both my client and myself is a by-product of the underpinning ethos to ‘put people first’. 

The attraction of Cammeray is the lifestyle and the people in it. It’s a small suburb with a limited amount of property in the area. If it weren’t for the power of this community moving in the same direction, we wouldn’t have buyers prepared to pay top dollar to come into this suburb.

For advice on your property in this market, speak to Anthony and his team.

Anthony Cowie
Director, Cammeray – LREA
+61 405 285 502
+61 (2) 8969 4120
anthony.cowie@raywhite.com