How To Get More People To Use Your Lettings and Estate Agency Blog

Last week I was on the train up to Newcastle, when one of my clients,  for whom I write the articles about his local property market, rang me ... ‘Bloody hell Chris, I made a cock up a few days ago. You know that list of 300 landlords I had, the ones I had captured over the years via referencing, the ones I have been emailing the newsletter for last couple of months about the local property market with the articles you write for me’.  ‘Yes David' (not his real name!) ‘Well I sent the newsletters, but for the third one I thought I would send a paper version, on the nice thick paper you suggested, instead of emailing it’,  ‘Great’, I said, ‘Where’s the issue?’ ‘ The mail merge address labels cocked up and moved the postcode on one record, so Landlord A’s name and address got landlords B’s postcode and so on and so forth’ ‘ Oh, dear’, I replied, ‘No Chris, it’s the best thing ever!’, to which I replied, ’How?’ ‘ Over thirty landlords rang me today, not

....  the first thing a landlord will think is this ... Is there a problem with my current letting agent? .... and if there is, do I like the solution this new letting agent is offering me  ... can he or she (the letting agent) guarantee it, will my problem be sorted in a flash with ease by this letting agent and it doesn’t want to cost me anything or anymore for this letting agent to sort it ...and even if you, as the letting agent, can overcome those three issues (guarantee it, sorted quickly and the cost issue) .... are you the right man/lady for the job? ... and even then, is your solution to my problem the way Iwould do it, if I were a letting agent? ... and even then, is this problem a pressing problem .... or can it wait? Think I am talking rubbish ..... You just about tolerate your bank, but you don’t love them and most certainly don’t swap banks... why?   .. for the same reason landlords don’t swap agents. Most landlords, especially those who use the chains or th

How many times have you thought, I could do this better, I could run my own estate and lettings agency, but I haven’t the money to get me going .. fine I say. That’s a big risk .. but you are only here once in this theme park called life. So why not play the long game? ... You are only here once, so a couple of years is nothing on the whole scheme of things, is it?  The problem of starting your own estate/lettings agency isn’t being an estate/letting agent, its finding people who trust you to be THEIR estate agent or letting agent. So why cold start an agency with a millstone around your neck of a mortgage, rent for the shop, £1k a month portal charges etc etc .... you are leaching money whilst building up that trust.. and trust takes time. You hope the money doesn’t run out before time does! But what if there was another way? Stay in your own job and build the trust up in YOU. It won’t cost you any money, just time ... lots of time .. you just said you were in this ga

Are you sure? .. Really sure, do you really want to be the BIGGEST agent in your town? . .. ... or .. ... .. . Do you want to be the BESTEST agent in your town?     (Ok, wrong use of the word ‘bestest’ but you get my drift and who cares?) I tell you this .. there isn’t much mutual ground between being the biggest and the best. Whatever you look at it, no matter how you evaluate or measure 'best'; be it refinement, impact, productivity, expressiveness, how memorable you are or how profitable it is, it is never ever present in the thing that is the most hip or popular at that time. The best restaurant in Grantham, which came in the No.8 in last week’s Sunday Times Top 100 restaurants, is certainly not McDonalds, which is the biggest in town. The fancy £4.75 Hand Crafted Lager from Poland isn’t the most popular – Fosters at £2.50 in the Chaavscum pub up the road. The biggest supermarket in town is Morrison’s, but it isn’t Waitrose. Jacobs Creek

I was talking to a letting agent the other day who told me he was really down, as he had been going three or four months and was finding really hard to get off the ground. He started his lettings agency because he knew he could be different, he knew what landlords wanted. He said to himself he could create something great, to make something magical and he thought that to make it special and magical, he needed magical events to occur to get there. Cold starting a lettings agency is hard, a Herculean task and something I have a lot of experience with, helping open 26 cold start letting agencies in the last few years. It was quite obvious his intent was pure and his goal to create magic in his local letting market, by being the landlords champion, he in fact fell for the most common mistake cold starts make. He believed that the towns landlords would agree with his good intent and support him. More specifically, that local newspaper would clearly, noisily and accurately t

" I will care for your property as if it were my own" ... you have to mean it, REALLY MEAN IT , you have to look the landlord in the eye when you say it ...... and he or she will know if you are lying . .... Estate Agents, that phrase can also be used by you

Influence is a funny thing. Thirty years in Grantham, there were three big estate/lettings/surveying practices, William H. Brown, Goldings and Escritt and Barrell. People thought all the Directors   all walked on water and the unclean of Grantham dothed their cap as they drove   by in their fancy cars. They were Grantham Property Glitterati, the gurus of property their town. To get to that point, they had worked 25 years rising up the ranks, sweeping floors, working under the boss as a slave until they retired and they took the reins .. it had been like that for 100 years and it would continue like that for another 100 years .. wouldn’t it?  However, the world has changed, technology democratises anything it touches, and now, thanks to internet and social media, you can have followers even if you haven't done the sorts of things .. you can be your town’s guru, the go to man or lady, the No. 1 influencer in your towns property market .. I am not jesting here and   no bull eith

If you are a letting agent, you need do something that will make landlords initially aware of you and what your company offers .. but awareness and attention won’t get the landlord to pick up the phone. Why? Well just like everyone one is aware of all the other banks on the High Street but indifferent to their own bank .. people still don’t swap banks. Just like landlords, obviously not your landlords Mr (s) letting agent, but the landlords of other agents who offer indifferent/rubbish service, those landlords are   aware of the other letting agents (including you) on the High Street, but still those landlords don’t swap from those agents. Awareness is one thing, but if you are not interesting,   you don’t stand a chance. Now when I say interesting, I mean interesting to the landlord, not YOU Mr(s) Letting Agent. ‘Property of the Week’ is as interesting as watching paint dry to a landlord, every landlord knows they are wanted, so why keep banging on about it. I have a degree in

Yet another estate agent opening in Grantham, that is the third in the last twelve months. Small one office estate agents and small letting agents rule estate agency row .. and some want to get bigger by opening new offices in neighbouring towns. Many successful businesses are easily scaled. The owner has created something that can be repeated, a service that can be mass produced, a method that can be franchised (like McDonalds). Scaling up serves more customers and benefits the original founding business owner  But some businesses, maybe yours Mrs Letting Agency or Mr Estate Agency, are built around you and the decisions, new ideas, new thoughts and new work you do on a regular basis. You might be the top dog agent in your town, so also feel under pressure to scale and open another office and then another office, and that might be, in my humble opinion, a huge mistake. To get bigger, how can you replicate your one office lettings or estate agency business to another office when