EYE can exclusively reveal that Chris Beckwith, recently appointed as Purplebricks’ chief sales officer, has left the company.
An estate agent for more than 25 years, Beckwith has previously held senior leadership positions at Dexters, Currell (part of Savills Group) and until recently at Foxtons, where, as a director, he led M&A.
Beckwith joined Purplebricks just over five weeks ago with a remit covering all aspects of Purplebricks’ sales in the newly created role of chief sales officer.
His appointment followed previous additions to the Purplebricks leadership team, with a chief people officer, chief digital officer and chief marketing officer all joining the company’s executive leadership team over recent months. But now he has quit.
A spokesperson told Eye: “Chris Beckwith is leaving Purplebricks with immediate effect, due to personal reasons.
“He has decided he can’t give the role the focus it requires – and we fully support his decision and wish him all the best for the future. “We will be working with our divisional sales directors to ensure continuity of leadership across our field operations.”
Comments (15)
PB is on life support.
The cult like following they had on here, linkedin and social media sites a few years back has disappeared (as i and others knew would happen). This has been replaced by the bedroom agents / pyramid selling agents.
If PB cannot sustain / grow market share where lets face it, its never been easier to sell property they never will.
Beckwith was Foxtons M&A man He was probably enticed in by the prospect of having a great chunk of that £60m to spend wheeling & dealing only to find out that Vic wanted to buy more gadgets
As I said at the time the Douglas and Gordon deal was very significant indeed.
They have 10,000 properties on Zoopla!
Keeping tabs on their scattered franchised remote working employees must be like herding cats, it probably scared him off?
I worked remotely for 4 years at PB. Really got into PC gaming and Netflix during my time there as zero monitoring. IT rules
Let’s be honest, the lack of supply that is starting to bite across the market is a challenge for lots of agencies, but it is a total killer for PB whose low fee income is completely dependant on volume listing numbers – maybe the chap saw the forecasts/pledges to shareholders and thought better of his decision!!
I’m afraid Mr Beckwiths integrity has just dropped through the floor. Unless of course its due to family/health reasons in which case it is wholeheartedly understandable
Will PB survive the next year?
Off to Rummage4?
thanks for the suggestion, I’ll follow that up. Chris is someone who has been a significant part of one of the most impressive organic growth stories in the industry. Not afraid of hard work. Someone with integrity who can be trusted and respected.
Not sure you could afford him 🙂
Thing is I demoed to Chris when Dexters hardly existed at all, I watched him, Jeff and Margaret build that business from next to nothing to where it is today, I helped where I could and was able to. When you’ve done right by people without expecting anything in return, people remember a kindness.
I don’t expect I can afford a wage but it is nice for me to express my respect for one of the industry’s achievers when others are just being cowardly and unpleasant
Off To Boomin’ ?
“We will be working with our Divisional Sales Directors to ensure continuity of leadership across our field operations.”
Oh dear. The “field” seems to be diminishing into something more closely resembling a cabbage patch…