First Century 21 outlet in city

Press, 30 August 1989, Page 57

First Century 21 outlet in city

Brian Heffernan, the director of Sherris and Robertson, Ltd, recently had a conversion experience at the national Real Estate Institute Conference. The faith he has enthusiastically embraced is in the clout and competence of the world’s largest franchised real estate system, Century 21. Century>.2l put on what the real estate community concede was a powerfully convincing display at Stand C 8 at the conference.

Hard on the heels of the display Brian Heffernan has signed Sherris and Robertson up to become the first confirmed Century 21 member in the South Island. With this decision he believes that his company has taken a major step forward in gaining a place in the “globalised” real estate world of the emergent future.

The recent past has certainly displayed a dynamic tone to the evolution of Century 21. In lessi than 20 years the organisation has grown from a few offices in Los Angeles to a network of more than 7000 throughout the United States of America, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Mexico and the Caribbean.

In the preceding 12 years the organisation has continually topped the United States real estate market.

An agreement was signed with Australian real estate leaders, The A. H. Taylor Family Group, in early December, 1988, resulting in the formation of a master franchise; agreement for the Asia Pacific region.

Century 21 South Pacific is responsible for the marketing of Century 21 franchises throughout Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. The first past the post in Christchurch in joining Century 21, Brian Heffernan explains that he had been "quietly tracking the organisation from a distance for some time.”

"We had resisted the opportunity to join what we consider are lesser franchise organisations because we knew that Century 21 was coming. “We took the view that if we

were to become involved in franchising we had best run with the biggie,” Mr Heffernan said. He considered the debut of Century 21 in New Zealand as a “golden opportunity” for some of the smaller, successful independent firms to considerably lift their public profile, and to “avail themselves of some worldrenowned marketing techniques.” Mr Heffernan was intrigued with the claims made by Century 21 about having the most offices in the world, most sales staff, sales transactions and the highest volume of sales.

"Everything they said could be substantiated,” he said. The pivotal event for him, however, was the video presentations Century 21 made at the real estate conference. “This confirmed our view that this was the high-powered organisation that we wanted to run with,” he said. The state-of-the-art marketing techniques employed by Century 21 are of a calibre so far not seen in Christchurch, he says.

“The organisation also offers a lot in the way of staff training, management training and in-staff recruitment techniques. “Their reputation globally is for a back-up to franchisees that is second to none.

"In our short association with them we have been very impressed with the quality of the liaison we have had- from their Sydney office and the New Zealand staff.

“There are some very good established firms in this city that will grasp the Century 21 opportunity with both hands and put themselves on the map again,” he says. He also forsees the possibility of some firnjs Involved in existing franchise options “suddenly wanting to make a U-turn.” Joining up has not been "a matter of joining Century 21, putting on a gold corporate jacket and expecting sales to drop out of the sky.” Membership will “make a good firm better, but will not transform a poor firm into a great one,” he says. “We are very comfortable about the calibre of the other firms we are likely to end up allied with.”

Mr Heffernan explained that this optimism was attributable to the fact that Century 21 has fairly demanding criteria for members who must have a good “track record” and fairly high success levels.

Having viewed the high-impact electronic media advertising employed by Century 21 Mr Heffernan doubts that the organisation will “have to buy up every comer dairy in town and turn it into an outlet.”

He even ventures the prediction that in the future history will show some of the major firms close their suburban outlets as the nature of property marketing is altered by the Century 21 approach. Brian Heffernan is also heartened by the rapid ascendancy of Century 21 across the Tasman. "They tend to become number one in a short time.

“They are already number two in Australia and the marketing manager for the South Pacific region predicted at the conference that they will be in the top slot by Christmas,” he says. “It will be the same here, they will just follow the formula that they have achieved stunning results with world wide.”