by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
Cora Johnston, division president of Mercedes Homes, loves her job.
You can see it in her face as it lights up when she talks about it and hear it in her voice as she describes her life.
“I’ve been very fortunate,” she said. “I grew up in a very large family. My father was a construction worker and he told all of us to never get into the business because he didn’t want the boys to follow in his footsteps.
“Unfortunately, he forgot to tell the girls.
“I can remember him driving me around town pointing to buildings and saying ‘That’s what I do.’ My mom loves houses. We lived in a very small house for the size of family we had. I used to drive around looking at houses with my mom and dream.”
And there are even more exciting changes on the horizon. Johnston is about to be promoted to a regional position of Mercedes Homes.
“I’m really not ready to talk about it because I’m not sure exactly what my job will be yet,” she said. “I do know that I will be doing growth of new markets for the company.”
That’s OK. As division president, she knows exactly what she is doing.
“I oversee all the aspects of a new home building company from the purchase of land all the way through the closing and warranty stages of the home,” said Johnston. “I’m responsible for getting the land to build the homes on, for the sales, construction, closing and all the way through warranty. It’s a big job.”
Even though Johnston, who stands an inch under five feet tall, is tiny in stature, she has no problem being the big boss at her company.
“If you ask any of my employees, they can tell you how tall I am,” said Johnston. “We have communication meetings and play games. One of the questions is always inevitably, ‘How tall is Cora?’”
Johnston has been with Mercedes Homes since the company opened in 1992.
She started out as a sales person for a year and then she was offered the position as outside sales manager.
“I worked for the vice president of sales for a year until my job was eliminated and so I went back and sold homes for about six months,” said Johnston. “In the year that I was outside sales manager, I helped start the new home sales training program for our company.
“I worked with that and I went to corporate and I helped train all the new sales people who came in during that year. I continued to do that even when I went back into sales.”
When the vice president of sales left, Johnston was offered the position and held it for about three years until the division president left and she was offered that position.
“I know our market very well,” said Johnston. “I’ve been here and in new home sales since 1982. I started out at Summerhomes by Charlie Brown. There is a large group of us that are still in real estate.”
Since Johnston spent time as a salesperson, it gives her a perspective to share with her employees.
“When you are trained as a salesperson, one of the things that you are trained at is to have empathy for others and to be able to walk in other’s shoes,” she said. “You have to be a chameleon. Even when I was an onsite sales agent, I was always out on the construction site. I was always asking my builder or the tradesmen questions because I wanted to know about the entire process.
“I wanted to be able to share my knowledge with my homebuyers. I wanted to take a very proactive approach and have them feel confident in me so when an issue would come up, they would know that I would take care of it for them.”
After Summerhomes, she worked for Prudential Network Realty until she joined Mercedes.
“I was very involved with the home builders association,” said Johnston. “Back in the day when they started the Sales and Marketing Council, I was right there in the beginning and was able to take advantage of all the educational opportunities.”
Johnston credits her education from SMC to helping her move forward in the building industry.
“I went to everything absolutely possible,” she said. “Through that I got a really good sense of the marketing side of sales and marketing. When I came to work at Mercedes, they really didn’t have a formalized marketing program or training program.
“So because of all the knowledge I acquired here locally, I was able to utilize all that education with this company that was a young growing aggressive company.
“I started training people, mentoring people and being a leader. That was valuable to our company.”
Johnston feels very strongly that education of her employees is the key to her business.
“I believe that all of our employees, whether they are a person in the field, sales, production or an office employee, they need to know about the sticks and bricks of our homes,” she said. “That way our customers will have the confidence in them that they can take care of any issues that might come up in the process of building their home.”
Mercedes Homes is a production builder that will buy raw land, develop it or buy pre-permitted land, but the preference is to buy developed lots from their development partners.
“We do a little bit of everything,” she said. “Today, our market is changing so we do whatever it takes to keep to be able to keep all of our employees in place. We build in Duval, Clay and St. Johns County.”
Mercedes Homes’ corporate office is in Melbourne and the company builds in Florida, Texas and the Carolinas.
“Someone once told me there is no gratitude in management,” she said. “All the gratitude is in sales because you have that huge adrenaline rush because you sold a home. I’ve found that that is not exactly true because by seeing my employees be successful, I still get that same adrenaline rush every day. As our company grows, its from all the efforts of my employees.”
Johnston credits Chris Shee, land acquisition manager; Donna Sadowski, vice president of sales and marketing; Dennis Ginder, vice president of construction and Rossy Mavety, controller as her right hand team.
Johnston started out her real estate career managing apartment communities in Illinois. When she moved here, she got into site sales because she was new to Jacksonville.
She has been married to Wally Johnston for 33 years. They have two children and two grandchildren.