You will
spectacularly improve your credibility as a lettings agent by writing, speaking
and publishing quality information on your field of expertise
Doesn’t it
make your heart sink when going to see a landlord when you know deep down that
he really thinks you’re wasting his time because matey boy down the road is
charging half the fee and fee is everything to this guy? Don’t you hate being
knowledgeable and sincere about your local property market but not being
understood or trusted? Isn’t it frustrating to be thought of as “just another letting
agent who sells collects the rent and whacks a board up and chucks it on Rightmove
when the tenant hands in their notice” when deep down you know your service is
really superior? Surely Mr (s) Letitng agent, you want to be an expert problem
solver, not an annoying peddler of estate agency and letting wares. You want to
be a respected authority, not some suspicious car salesman in an ugly 75%
manmade fibre shiny suit.
So how
you can gain extraordinary credibility? Well, that is what I teach and coach as
it is one of the greatest secrets to lettings success that you can possess. I warn
you it’s a pretty simple concept, it will change your letting agency life
forever. This one principle will give
you an edge over every other letting agent.....
You become the No.1 Property Guru in your local town by writing articles about your property town, writing research documents on your local property market (research document is posh word for newsletter), get yourself to the Rotary Club with a talk about the local property market, do workshops on the local property market. Make sure the Editor of the local newspaper calls YOU when they need information on the local property market.
Most letting
agents have never thought about this much as you might have assumed that if you
want to be an expert then some large institution in ‘That there London’ has to bless
you with that title. Maybe you thought you could only earn that status after
years and years of relentless toil in the back office, paying your dues,
crawling over broken glass, and when you finally have gray hair and a walking
stick, then they’ll know that you’re an expert and they’ll ask you what you
think. This method of achieving infamy is way too hard and takes way too long.
Not only is it difficult, it’s not even likely to work at all. It might work
that way in university and scientific life, but not in the real world and
especially not in lettings.
You can
appoint yourself as the local property expert and just start acting like one. So
what do local property experts do? They publish their views and opinions. They
speak at Rotary Clubs. They write articles about the local property market.
They get on the local radio show. They take phone calls from reporters and newspaper
editors who want to know what’s happening in the local property market.
Now if
you’re just another Shiny Suit who is the guy who lets property, knows the
difference between a s8 and s21 notice and collects rent, it’s going to be
pretty hard to find anyone who’s looking for an expert on those subjects in the
first place. Who, especially landlords, wants to read about that?
No, you
need to be an expert on something that your potential clients (landlords) want
to be or want to know more about – ie What’s happening to the local property
market? Not how many people are looking for property but why one housing estate
over the last 10 years has risen in value by 34.1% but the next door housing
estate has gone up by 56.7%. Why yields on terraced houses have gone up in your
town but down on semi’s? Why over the last 15 years, property values always go
up in Bolton a year before they go up in Bury?
If you
and your lettings agency bring a special angle to some narrow category of your
LOCAL property market (note the word local) .. most landlords buy local so
couldn’t give a monkeys what is happening in the next town, let alone London. You,
Mr(s) Letting agent can become a leading recognised local property expert in a
fairly short period of time. You just need to publish and publicise like a whirling
dervish. You need to do more of this than your competitors do.
Many
times your letting agent competitors are not even doing it at all. But if
there’s any place for creativity in marketing, it’s right here: finding angles
on your solutions that create interesting stories about you local property
market
Newspaper editors crave stuff like this, every day they
wake up in the morning thinking “OK, how am I going to fill my paper or magazine with
interesting stuff this week?” Normally their budgets are thin and they can’t
afford to have a platoon of reporters scouring the streets for interesting
angles. No, they’re dependent on people to help them find interesting content.
Now let’s
get something straight here: I’m not talking about thinly disguised
infomercials that do little more than tell readers how great your lettings
service is. Editors hate that stuff, and the good ones run from it like the
plague. No, I’m talking about interesting and informative material that really
helps landlords and which stimulates their own thinking process.
Writing
articles about the local property market is quite difficult (but I can write
them for you). They don’t have to be long; usually 350 to 400 words is plenty and
even if it seems like a lot of trouble to do this, it always pays off in the
long run. Why? Well firstly, it’s more believable than advertising, because
it’s editorial content. That should be reason enough. Secondly, you can use it
for a long, long time. You can get copies of the newspaper and show them to landlords
as a credibility builder. You can use the same material in your own newsletter,
and my system discusses many more ways that you can re-cycle the information
and use it for other things, such as blogs and in social media. Yes, writing
takes extra effort but it’s permanent. And you can’t have a marketing
system that runs on autopilot unless you get your true sales story down in
writing.
But
please realise: you do NOT have to be a “writer” to do this. You can record
yourself talking to a customer on tape and have your secretary transcribe it.
You can hire somebody to write it for you. You can write it in your own sloppy,
terrible English and pay somebody else to fix it later. You can appoint
somebody to be your marketing and publishing person. You can occasionally
outsource this to others; Many of my own clients have come to me for
this service. It doesn’t really matter how you get it written, just do it.
But it
need not stop there ... here’s another tip: Give seminars on your local property market and you
should consider charging good money for them, not just doing them for free. I
have seen agents charge £250 for a seminar that some letting agents were
attempting to give for free. Not only did he make a lot more money that way, we
got a lot more respect as well. Landlords will respect what they pay for.
Seminars are another way to package your knowledge and build your credibility.
The process also helps you organise your knowledge so that it’s more effective
in every other venue.
My full
marketing system for lettings agents explains in detail and with multiple
examples how this is done. I use this exact publishing and publicity approach
to catapult our (myself and Mrs Watkin) tiny company with one employee (Joey
the lettings dog) to national prominence in our industry. Our company is very
small, with a zero advertising budget and very thin resources, yet we got a full
page of editorial in The Negotiator Magazine, speaking at EA and letting agent
conferences, guest blog spots on a number of EA websites, all in within 8
months!
How was
this possible for us? Well in the just the same it will be possible for you .. That’s the next blog post on Tuesday,