In early February, we teamed up with Plymouth University’s shooting society – who wanted to work with us on a student union event to which we gladly accepted. You may remember seeing this via our social media channels where we did a ‘spin the wheel’ and a walkthrough video on our stories surrounding the SU event.
We sponsored some of their away games and it has become a really unique but wonderful collaboration. In early March, some of the team here at Clever were given the opportunity to go on a day out to go clay pigeon shooting on exclusive grounds with the shooting society themselves which has resulted in us having a communicative and happy working relationship going forward.
Here is a low down on how it went, and why we believe its paramount for independent estate agencies like ourselves to take the time out of the corporate scenarios of our jobs to get to know the people we are providing services for:
We took one member out of each Clever department with us, just to diversify the conversation. We took one of our Operations Managers, Laura, our Marketing Manager, Jordan, one of our Property Co-ordinator's – Dan and our Administration Manager Abby. At around 10:30, we met the shooting society members and team Captain Julia just outside of Portland Café, and left around 11am when the minibus arrived, and we all hopped on eagerly.
When we arrived at the shooting grounds, we were greeted by fresh pine trees dewy grass and crisp air – further greeted by the groundskeeper and shooting instructor, where we were taught about licensing – who is eligible to buy pellets. It was interesting to know. Then off we went. We were all given our noise cancelling earmuffs and began aiming.
This was a fantastic opportunity for us to get to know one of Plymouth University’s most popular societies and blow off some steam and just laugh. Working in a broad catering independent estate agency, where we cater to residentials, working professionals, families, single people, property owners and primarily students, we feel its super important to build good relationships with the students of Plymouth, both as an independent estate agency based in Plymouth as well as an agency wanting to get to know what is important to students - which was one of our main motivations behind collaborating with them, and it was a joyful bonus to have ended up having a brilliant time bonding with these wonderful young professionals.
Towards the end of the day, we sat down and joked about how our CEO, Derek did not have a licence to buy pellets, which we found very funny – as he wanted to buy a packet for one of the members as a gesture. The light-hearted bantering continued throughout the afternoon, and soon we ate and went back to our offices. We are also very excited to be continuing our work with plymshooting by taking over their social channels next week, so please keep an eye out for this via Instagram and Facebook!
If you’re considering joining a society, just do it! You get a sense of community like no other in these scenarios, and if you’re an estate agent or a part of an estate agency company, please support your local communities and clubs – as you can learn a lot from them, and it can be a great community outreach opportunity for the business side of your job also. In office environments, especially, interactions such as these can be so refreshing and important to do to strengthen bonds between you and colleagues too!
Speaking of the benefits of our jobs here at Clever, and the great things about sponsoring local opportunities, why not check out our recent blogpost on the reasons in which we love our jobs?
By Caitlin Stimpson