Vision and support – meet Arizto's national managers

Having brought on over 150 agents nation-wide and recently introduced regional support managers to assist them, there is one other major query salespeople interested in joining New Zealand’s rapidly growing real estate company often have.

Just what kind of infrastructure is backing me up if I don’t have a day-to-day office to work from?

The answer is good people – national managers available who have innovated the digital platforms which allows salespeople to deliver great service to their home owners while also meeting all of the complex attributes and safeguards required under our property laws.

Over in Sydney, setting the tone for the sales teams is National Sales Manager Martin Towers , one of the company originals in 2017 who champions digital marketing, while down in Christchurch, there is a safe pair of hands in Brendon Pierce, the National Compliance Manager.

Both of them, with fingertip technology, are able to provide the same service that real estate salespeople would find in a traditional office setting, and they have found the best ways to minimise the red tape and cut down on the mountains of paper printout so agents have more time to get out there for listing and selling homes.

"We launched this company with the belief if we do what’s right for the clients, we will win in the long run," said Towers.

Coming from a background of sales with the large DHL company, entering their Top 100, Towers became interested in real estate through a friend and joined Barfoot & Thompson in Auckland.

Arizto’s founder Pernell Callaghan gave him a call in 2017, and with Towers also hearing from investors around the same time that the start-up company could make waves, he came on board for the launch.

After selling 100 properties in 18 months, Towers made a move to Ray White, but the level of automation, efficiency, and customer first attitude that the Arizto model deployed left a mark.

Towers had also shaken his head at how the industry gathered revenue through home owners’ pockets that weren’t necessarily to the benefit of the owners – companies giving out awards for agents who brought in the most money for marketing just coming across as self-serving.

It didn’t seem fair for a family needing every cent after selling their first home to buy something larger to have to pay $6000 up front, even before a substantial commission is taken at the end of the sale.

"The people, the customers, blindly lap it up because no-one said, ‘we can do it differently’.

"The way the [Arizto] model is built is simple in a nutshell – we just eliminated the overheads, deliver the customer a better experience, for better value and the agent puts more in their pocket, it's a win-win."

Having set up his own Digitial Marketing Agency, Towers came back into the Arizto fold, understanding the technical and sales side of the business so well, that he could provided support to the team across the business in these areas.

"The level of supervision becomes lower, so we can manage [agents] around the country, rather than one on ones."

"Literally, I have meetings with agents 2-3 times a day that want support.

"Where I add value with the tech, is training for the overall team."

Towers keeps the teams up-to-date with the latest events and tools they need from his Sydney base, finding the work is little changed from the days when he and Callaghan would work in Auckland and drive around the country 2-3 times.

"When we talked about me moving over here with the guys, I didn’t want to give this up, and we said, ‘what’s the difference’?

"There is a long term goal for the team to expand into Australia in the future, and it makes sense to be here when the time comes."

Still, not everything in real estate is easily automated, the traditional work of making a complex transaction come together or navigating a murky ownership scenario such as family trusts or deceased names on a title will still happen.

But again, agents are not alone – ready to help get them over the line is Pierce, only an email or phone call away.

Also having a background in sales, having become a top bracket performer for Farmers over 18 years before becoming interested in real estate after his buying his first home, the proud Cantabrian found his great skill lay in dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s.

He joined Arizto because after seeing how much double handling goes on with agency agreements, disclosure forms, open home registers sale and purchase agreements and many other documents – all requiring salary staff work that home owners pay for in commissions, there just had to be a better way.

"It seemed more up front and fair, and that really resonated with me.

"That attracted a lot of the people to the company - that and the tech.

"The way you stayed compliant was very different to how I see compliance now, moving into a role as compliance manager."

Pierce champions the Arizto dashboard system, which means all documents, electronic and manual, are uploaded in the same location, rather than scores of print-outs and copies being held in different offices.

"It was very easy to let something fall through the cracks. [Here], it’s held together on one dashboard."

On behalf of salespeople, he can look up property information for them, draft more difficult clauses for their sale and purchase agreements, and make sure the legality of the sale is protected through the in-house Anti Money Laundering (AML) system.

And he can do it in just as efficient manner as if you were scheduling time with a staff member two doors down.

"As terrible as the pandemic was, it showed a lot of the way of doing business was outdated.

"The company works to do best by the salespeople.

"The salespeople are not putting the time in effort sitting in an external office, reading the paper, and having a chat – they’re doing what they do best, getting out there."

He knows from experience how tough a commission-based living can be, long hours and hearing ‘no’ a lot, and so values providing these services to make the transactional side of the business just a little easier.

"They still have that person they can come through; it’s exactly the same here, just on a bigger scale.

"As long as the processes are in place, that peer system, there is no difference to sitting in an office ten feet away from them – they can pick up the phone and call me."