Does what your friends and relations think,say or do really alter what you think of the world? Does the fact they love one supermarket change
the shop you do the weekly shop at? Does the thought your mate banks with
Santander and loves them make you swap banks from HSBC to them? Would you buy a
Jaguar because your work colleague bought one make you change your mind on you
buying that BMW? Should you be also flying those little St.Georges flags from
your car because everyone else is. No .. not really. So if your friends and
relations can’t get you to change your mind, how the hell can a faceless (lettings/estate agency/airline/broadband provider) company
get you to change yours with advertising?
In this world, everyone
has choice, everyone has their own mind and most people are ‘set in their
ways’. Just because a mate or friend or a relation does or believes in
something, doesn’t mean I have to, unless it correlates’ with my own point of
view. Peoples points of view don’t change on a whim, especially 40 to 70 year
middle males (your landlord demographic). So adverts don’t stand a chance to
move those sort of people into action.
You see, I always say lettings is a
people business, and from your landlords (or potential vendors) point of view
... ‘its all about me’. Talking in the first person, It's my outlook on life
that matters to me (the way I act and believe and judge before I encountered you will make my mind up) and your story (the
narrative we tell ourselves about who you are and what you do) that drives
human behaviour.
We make two big mistakes
as letting agents (and estate agents). The first is we believe that everyone
has the same outlook on life, that every landlord or
potential vendor shares the same thoughts and expectations and dreams as us...
and we believe that the property market is all to do with us and about us and
it’s all up for grabs, and we ought to just get out there and sell our services
to all the lovely landlords and potential vendors alike ..’cause that’s what we
do .. we, agents, control the market. No Mr(s) agent .. its all about the landlord
(or potential vendor).. not you
That’s why agents who chuck
out messages about how cheap their fees are, how many properties they have sold
this month or year, how awesome they are, how ARLA registered they are, how
free their free valuations are and they are the free’ist in town ... utter nonsense.
It’s not all about you Mr (Mrs) letting .. it’s all about the client (landlord
or potential vendor). Look what we have sold this week or let this week is totally uninteresting. You would buy a car from a garage that told you what they sold last week .. so why expect the same in your industry?
Talk to the landlord or
potential vendor from their point of view, get inside their head, tell them
something THEY are interested in, NOT what YOU are interested in. Morrison’s
dropping their prices or winning a fancy ESTARRRRRS award equivalent award doesn’t
make you swap supermarkets. Lloyds banging on how friendly their call centres
and 5% interest (the two biggest grips of dealing with banks) doesn’t make you
swap banks, so why think that landlords would do the same?
So why do you agents
keep banging on about cheap fees and how brill and (insert other adjectives of
your choice from ace/fab/professional/friendly/focused etc etc) you are, as an agent. Like I say, it’s not about you, it’s about the client. You need to get
inside their head, so it’s on their terms, it has to be interest to the client. The best way to get inside any clients/persons head is .. yep, you guessed it .. a story. Tell a story to the landlord
(or potential vendor) that they can empathise with, enjoy and relate to and you
will unlock their head to you.. which will in turn lead them to you.
Your customer has two
big motivators in the property world, two big buttons or switches, which if you
can flick these, you will have them listening to YOU. First, what is happening
with the property market in relation TO MY PROPERTY (you could say that about
every homeowner in the UK - ) and secondly, especially for portfolio landlords
which are the cream of the cream, where is the next BTL property I want to buy.
By telling a real and
crafted story that your ideal customer (landlord or potential vendor) actually wants
to read, at the most emotional and primordial level, you will engage with that
landlord and their beliefs.. and there is nothing more powerful than that.
This stuff works for
lettings and sales. Remember, where ever we have done this, it has doubled
market appraisals within 9 months and quite often tripled them within 12
months. This isn’t bull either, look at my Linkedin profile, see the testimonials. Just follow what I suggest in previous posts, it won’t cost you a penny to do that and you could do some serious business as a result.
So, could you cope with a tripling of market appraisals? Answers on a postcard ...
For more stories like this, please visit the How to get more landlords to use your lettings agency .. http://how-to-grow-your-lettings-agency.blogspot.co.uk/