Kim Wescott is Sales Manager for Barratt Southern Counties. She explains what her job entails and the variety of roles she undertakes in a busy region around Guildford
She says…
I started as a sales advisor at Barratt Homes more than 15 years ago, and I have been a manager for the past nine years. What I really love about the job is the variety; no single day is ever the same, and I have the flexibility to vary the way I organise the week to suit myself and my teams.
At least one day a week, sometimes two, is spent at the Barratt Southern Counties head office in Guildford. Much of my time there is spent in meetings; especially build/sale meetings where we discuss both the future building programme and what’s happening with current developments. It’s important that I have the most up-to-date information about how sales and exchanges are going, where we are with legal completions and, of course, any delays in building that will affect sales.
While I’m at head office, I take the opportunity to have telephone sales conferences with all the sites in our division , discussing any issues that have arisen during the week. I also make time to touch base with the marketing team to make sure that everything on our website is up to date and that we are organising suitable advertising to promote our latest plot releases.
There is routine stuff to take care of as well, of course. I have to make sure that health and safety rules are being adhered to on our sites and that all the lighting is working, and sometimes I just get stuck there doing the least favourite part of my job – writing reports!
For the rest of the week I am out and about on site, which is one of the aspects of my job that I enjoy the most – visiting and supporting my teams and helping them to find solutions to things that might not be going to plan. When I’m visiting a site, maybe at Chapel Gate in Basingstoke where we’re building a great range of properties in a town centre location, it’s an opportunity to get together with everyone who makes the business work – from the sales staff to the contract manager – and focus on working together as a team. We might be discussing sales and plot progressions, ensuring that the whole site gives a good first impression when customers arrive, or dealing with health and safety queries.
In addition to my regular site visits, once a month we also hold a project meeting at each site, which brings a wider range of Barratt staff together – technical and commercial experts, buyers, the contracts manager, the site manager and the senior sales advisor. This is our chance to really focus at what is happening on each site, now and in the future. I also attend what we call the FTQ (forward through quality) meeting once a month for each site, which brings senior staff together to focus on the aspects of the business which make Barratt Homes special – in particular, attention to details like health and safety and landscaping. We don’t just sit in the office for this one – it’s on with the wellies and hard hat and out on site to make sure that everything is perfect.
In fact, a lot of my time is spent in meetings – but there’s so much variety that it never gets dull. For example, I get together with other Barratt sales managers to compare notes on how we are doing with sales, discuss pricing and generally encourage each other. Because every site and the homes we build there are different, we have to be flexible and recognise that the clients who want to buy there are also likely to be very different and need different levels of help and support. And that brings me to the best bit about my job – seeing the excitement on customers’ faces as they get ready to move into their new homes. You can’t beat that for job satisfaction!
For more information on Barratt Homes, visit https://www.barratthomes.co.uk/