The former managing director of Countrywide brand John D Wood says his new job at the helm of Keller Williams will be about ‘translating’ the US concept for the British market.

Ben Taylor left Countrywide on the last day of November last year, after 15 years with the firm.

While he left amid a raft of executive departures as Countrywide stripped down layers of management, Taylor, 45, will only say “We agreed to part”.

He started at Keller Williams UK on March 1 as its managing director.

The business launched in the UK in 2014, but apparently failed to meet its targets. It has already undergone a relaunch, with the ownership of the master franchise changing hands.

It is now owned by Americans Matt Fetick, Diane Griffin and Ben Kinney.

Fetick said in an interview with EYE in January that the businesses would be recruiting a new managing director who would be a “top candidate”.

Yesterday, Taylor acknowledged that while the Keller Williams brand has been a major global success, there is work to do in this country.

Describing it as an amazing business, he said “it has not been translated into the language of the UK”.

He said that he first met Fetick and Griffin at the end of January. At the time he happened to be reading a book called One Thing, by Gary Keller – founder of the global franchise.

Taylor was then invited to spend a week with the business, which he says he found inspirational.

But does he think he has a big job ahead of him, given Keller Williams’ ambitious targets to open 50 “market centres” each with a minimum of 100 brokers, within five years in the UK?

He says he doesn’t want merely to build a good business, but an exceptional one.

Keller Williams has previously described itself not as an estate agency, but as a training business which happens to be in estate agency. It is also a franchise operation – so, will he actually be running an estate agency business?

He says: “What we have got is a platform on which people can build their own incredible businesses in real estate .”

With no plans for Keller Williams to have a high street presence – Taylor says he does not know who this benefits – he underlines that the business model is for a full service agency.

Of the likes of online/hybrid agents such as Purplebricks – where equally high-flying ex-Countrywide colleague Lee Wainright is now operations director –  he says there is room for all types of business model.

And of Countrywide? He wishes it well: “There are loads of good people in that organisation and for them I would wish it to work.”