Market Share
EXPLAINING OUR OBSESSION
For as long as I can remember , we have judged the momentum and performance of our group by the change in our market share across Australia and New Zealand . Given that very few in our group were around when the decision was made to make our change in market share our proxy for overall improvement or decline , we should consider the origins of it .
In the early 1980s , we were a Queensland business . National groups coming from Sydney had started to build momentum by promising better access to wealthier ‘ southern buyers ’, more resources for their people to build stronger businesses , and so on . Their appeal and momentum put pressure on us . We decided that the best form of defence was attack , viewing our own survival through the prism of a new term - international market share .
Fast forward many decades , and things have changed . We ’ re now the largest group across Australia and New Zealand with a market share of 13.93 per cent . It has never been higher than it is now . In terms of listings share , in Australia we are more than three times the second largest group . Therefore , the forces that initially drove our focus on market share no longer exist . So is it just inertia that has kept us market share obsessed ? customer satisfaction over the past few decades . We know that if we can improve , and then differentiate , through customer service then good things ( people , profit , market share , etc .) will follow , and we can also prove that bigger can also be better . We have since developed a strong framework that helps our business owners pursue a customer-focused operation , though we have much more work to do to drive stronger engagement from our members and customers to enable us to develop comprehensive insights on our overall performance .
Post the global finance crisis fourteen or so years ago , we recognised the need to be proactive regarding the financial success of our business leaders , and we have since developed a very talented team of Network Finance specialists delivering real-time information and financial advice to support these leaders . We have learned that we cannot be prescriptive on how a leader should run their business ( they all have different risk tolerances and talents ) and profit naturally moves with the market . Supporting business owner profitability is vital , but it has significant limitations to being our primary metric for our overall momentum .
The fundamental question is : is the improvement in market share a result of having more of what we think is needed to build the best environment for our people to reach their potential and build a career / business of which we can all be proud ? The things we believe are needed to create such an environment , and also what we like doing , haven ’ t changed over many decades , namely :
• The critical importance of strong leadership in every business and the impact leaders have on the success of their teams , and the joy we get from supporting them and to not setting any limits on what might be possible .
• Our belief in the auction method , and in marketing , to achieve the best results for our customers . Our auction market share for residential property sits at approximately 22.5 per cent .
• Our recognition of the unalterable law of nature that one must fight extremely hard to avoid the tendency for all living things to peak and then decline . So many longstanding and large real estate groups have been able to reverse their decline , and many have simply faded into the environment until they are no longer noticed .
Market share growth is the outcome of more and better leadership , more competition creation , and a relentlessness to remain relevant and to never fade away . And all of our members and customers will be better for it . Perhaps The Shed at Crows Nest remains so important because it is a physical representation of all of these things .
Some sceptics might think that the growth in market share is simply a result of more offices . This is not the case . Our market share has grown by 18 per cent over the past three years , while our office numbers have increased by five per cent . This is why the total office number is not a metric we are interested in .
Understandably , our business owners focus on other metrics inside their own business like talent development , stock management , profit and properties under management , and their competitors are very local . Our Springboard , which we continue to build and improve upon , supports their leadership as they pursue these ambitions . And we know these ambitions are being fulfilled when we see our market share rise .
Dan White Managing Director Ray White Group
Market share isn ' t the only metric we closely measure . We have put a lot of our energy into
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