Jay grew pissed off with the pink tape that slows down property gross sales
After two months as a business improvement supervisor (BDM) for Your Travel Corporate, Jay Speller feels pretty sure of 1 factor. It is unlikely he’ll lose a sale to a shopper’s useless donkey.
He explains that in his earlier function at premium property company Fine & Country as supervisor of the West Malling workplace, a vendor pulled out of their property sale on the level of change as a result of their equine pet’s demise.
“I’m not sure they even had a donkey,” Jay laughs as he remembers the trials and tribulations of life within the property trade.
“Most transactions at that end of the housing market were difficult and lengthy due to the nature of the type of property we were selling: listed building restrictions; covenants on land; various title deeds – all of which could all throw a spanner in the works. Sometimes the problem would be a difficult vendor or buyer rather than the property itself, digging their heels in over the smallest of issues.”
Jay was at Fine & Country, the place property costs usually begin at £1 million, for round seven years and likewise held roles in different businesses within the Kent and London areas from the age of 28.
“I’ve worked in sales for 20 years, picking up the phone and speaking to clients – those skills are very transferable to the travel industry,” he asserts. “But the service side is important too – building relationships, keeping in contact, ensuring clients are happy throughout their journey with us.”
After numerous discussions with Your Travel Corporate, Jay took on a BDM function with the remit of going out to fulfill shoppers and generate new business.
“At Fine & Country I was used to sitting in front of people that expect a certain level of service and selling our business to them. It’s not so different to what I’m doing here – meeting chief executives, finance directors and PAs and selling a brand or a lifestyle to them.”
But he believes among the challenges he has confronted on the property aspect, useless donkeys included, will stand him in good stead.
“I think the clients I will be dealing with now, whilst they will obviously expect a certain level of service, will be far easier to manage. If there is a particularly difficult one, I think I’ve had more than enough practice to cope with most situations,” he asserts.
Technology benefit
While the product might sound the most certainly factor to distinguish working within the property and journey markets, Jay says the factor that actually stands out is know-how.
“There are far more systems in travel from GDSs to CRMs that just don’t exist in property,” he insists.
He provides that journey is a softer promote, and an actual constructive in his opinion.
“There’s no steam rolling in and trying to get a meeting with someone from the first phone call. I think property could learn from that.”
On the flip aspect, Jay says that in his property company function the crew would meet each morning for an hour and run by particular person progress, any new shoppers, advertising and marketing that wanted doing and HR issues. He has instructed it as a weekly fixture in his new function to assist preserve the crew knowledgeable.
Ultimately his important take away for anybody contemplating making a transfer into journey is that he solely needs he’d performed it sooner.
“I enjoyed estate agency but sometimes it could take a year to progress a sale, and that timeframe is growing with the current red tape. In travel, if a client books a flight, you get paid the following month,” he says.
Finally he notes that whereas it’d take six months or so to build relationships and become familiar with new know-how in journey, the rewards will come, and are available rapidly.
“In property there is a ceiling which doesn’t exist in travel. You can build more and more clients and keep building on that base.”
Property may need given Jay some agency foundations, but it surely appears in journey the sky actually is the restrict.
