W&F December 2017

www.wealthandfinance-news.com 22 Wealth & Finance International - December 2017 Established in 1923, Barfoot & Thompson operates in the Auckland and Northland regions of New Zealand, home to about a third of the country’s population, and the firm’s head office is in Auckland, the largest city, and economic centre. Auckland regularly features in the ‘top 10’ of the world’s most liveable cities in surveys conducted by international rating organisations. The firm’s core business is residential housing, and as such Barfoot & Thompson regularly sell 40% of all the residential homes sold in Auckland each year. Although residential sales are the firm’s main focus, it operates across all areas of real estate, including commercial, lifestyle and rural property sales, and in providing property management, body corporate and special project services to investors and the corporate sector. Peter discusses how the firm works to ensure excellence for every client it works with. “Here at Barfoot & Thompson, our mission is to assist our clients to achieve their financial goals and objectives in relation to the property they own, or are seeking to own. We achieve this through our focus on providing outstanding customer service, being professional and trustworthy, and being results driven. “To ensure exceptional customer service at all times, our culture is based around family values, and this is ingrained into every sales person who joins the company. Currently we employ some 1700 sales and property management people who operate from more than 60 branches. Every one of our sales team is interviewed by a family member who is a director before they are engaged. It leads to employees having a clear understanding of the culture of the firm they are joining. Additionally, our size enables us to employ specialists who are focused on human resources, on-going training, systems and IT development, and regulatory change. Our people are armed with the skills, knowledge and resources to make a success of their career with us.” As testimony to the firm’s success, independent market research consistently rates the Barfoot & Thompson brand as the most trusted real estate name in the market. Peter is eager to emphasise that this is a team effort, and the internal culture at the firm drives the company to success. “Key to our achievements over recent years has been the fact that a member of the two founding families has managed the business since its inception, and our internal culture of being a family business has never varied. Our culture is deeply ingrained and is part of everything we do. We encourage people to excel, to achieve and be the very best they can, and we recognise those that do. “Alongside this, we subscribe to the belief that we are part of the communities in which we operate, and encourage our people to get involved with local and city-wide activities. We support these activities financially and are major sponsors of large and small sporting, cultural and social activities. For example, we were not only a major financial supporter of the World Masters Games, the largest sporting event ever held in the country, significant numbers of staff competed and or acted as volunteers for the event.” Barfoot & Thompson is New Zealand’s largest privately owned real estate company, and is owned and managed by the same families that founded the company and have run it for close to 100 years. We invited Managing Director, Peter Thompson to share the techniques he employed to win MD of the Year- New Zealand in our prestigious Business Elite 2017. Keeping Success in the Family 1712WF20 Company: Barfoot & Thompson Contact: Peter Thompson Address: 34 Shortland Street, Auckland City, Auckland 1010, New Zealand Email: [email protected] Website: www.barfoot.co.nz “To ensure exceptional customer service at all times, our culture is based around family values, and this is ingrained into every sales person who joins the company.”