Most letting agents focus so hard on the facts of their
offering that they forget to tell a story at all, and then wonder why they fail
at getting new landlords. I’ve spent the last nine months talking about why
telling stories about how you helped other local landlords with advice and
opinion on the local property market. Letting agents can no longer use adverts to
sell themselves and their services to landlords. Instead fellow letting agents, you can’t sell
.. you have to tell .. tell a story – that landlords want to listen to and
those stories, have to honest and believable .. you have to live them because
marketing matters. Marketing matters so much that you have an obligation to do
it right. Marketing has become more powerful than it has ever been before. It’s
not an overstatement to say that marketing changes the world on a daily basis.
There's a lot of pressure on letting agents to increase your
lettings book ... to constantly keep
their pipeline full of warm to prospects. On top of that, targets are ever more
challenging in an increasingly tight economy. Competition in lettings is hotter
and landlords are more sophisticated. Then you have easyProperty and other
online agencies commoditising the lettings industry - it’s tough out there being a letting agent. More and more letting
agents sound and look the same ... there is no uniqueness in the lettings
marketplace all backed up with some whippersnapper offering to do it for
peanuts all rounded off by the never
ending claims of your competition that they can do everything you can do - and
do it better and much, much cheaper. Any (or all) of this sound familiar?
While these are all common factors all letting agents are forced to deal with regularly, at the end of the day increasing the number of properties you let, and thus turnover and hence profitability is the job of every letting agent. 99% of letting agents are primarily ‘hunters’ typically look for their new landlords by successfully cold calling Gumtree landlords who work hard at finding sparks of interest in their letting agency services that they then develop through their sales funnels to close. They uncover landlord who have a need for their service and are willing and able to make a purchase now ie narked off landlords of properties that have been on the market six weeks with another (.... not because the other agent is rubbish, the property is either over priced or rubbish itself). Finally, they repeatedly respond to fee requests with little hope of engaging the prospect in an investigation of their true needs and wants.
These letting agency ‘hunters’ often focus their labours on meeting the lowest common denominator with their landlords. .. their fee. They accomplish this by limiting the scope of the purchase to single services (tenant find with no extras) that meet predetermined specifications or features. Their enthusiastic hope is for the service to deliver benefits limited in scope to a very narrowly framed need, problem or issue. .. ie just find me a tenant so I can pay the mortgage. In a nutshell, the deals these type of letting agents strike with such landlords, are often fee driven rather than value based.
Worse still, they don’t keep in contact with their tenant find landlords and other agents get the renewal in 12 months time. How can a letting agent see these type of landlords as just a transaction. This would indicate that the landlord doesn't have any particular loyalty to the letting agent and that any relationship that exists is very fragile.
Somewhere along the way to becoming less transactional, some letting agents have started to get a taste for selling their services in a more landlord focused, person focused, consultative manner. This yields better results for both the letting agent and the landlord. The most successful letting agents employ a landlord focused method of selling, very focused on the needs and wants of their existing and prospective landlords. They act as trusted business advisors working to bring strategic value to each transaction. These letting agents realise that to accomplish their goal of maximising value for their landlords they need to get out of the trenches and interact with their choice of what (or not to buy), not a rent collector.
While these are all common factors all letting agents are forced to deal with regularly, at the end of the day increasing the number of properties you let, and thus turnover and hence profitability is the job of every letting agent. 99% of letting agents are primarily ‘hunters’ typically look for their new landlords by successfully cold calling Gumtree landlords who work hard at finding sparks of interest in their letting agency services that they then develop through their sales funnels to close. They uncover landlord who have a need for their service and are willing and able to make a purchase now ie narked off landlords of properties that have been on the market six weeks with another (.... not because the other agent is rubbish, the property is either over priced or rubbish itself). Finally, they repeatedly respond to fee requests with little hope of engaging the prospect in an investigation of their true needs and wants.
These letting agency ‘hunters’ often focus their labours on meeting the lowest common denominator with their landlords. .. their fee. They accomplish this by limiting the scope of the purchase to single services (tenant find with no extras) that meet predetermined specifications or features. Their enthusiastic hope is for the service to deliver benefits limited in scope to a very narrowly framed need, problem or issue. .. ie just find me a tenant so I can pay the mortgage. In a nutshell, the deals these type of letting agents strike with such landlords, are often fee driven rather than value based.
Worse still, they don’t keep in contact with their tenant find landlords and other agents get the renewal in 12 months time. How can a letting agent see these type of landlords as just a transaction. This would indicate that the landlord doesn't have any particular loyalty to the letting agent and that any relationship that exists is very fragile.
Somewhere along the way to becoming less transactional, some letting agents have started to get a taste for selling their services in a more landlord focused, person focused, consultative manner. This yields better results for both the letting agent and the landlord. The most successful letting agents employ a landlord focused method of selling, very focused on the needs and wants of their existing and prospective landlords. They act as trusted business advisors working to bring strategic value to each transaction. These letting agents realise that to accomplish their goal of maximising value for their landlords they need to get out of the trenches and interact with their choice of what (or not to buy), not a rent collector.
Evidence indicates that selling at this level has an abundance of positive implications for all parties. Just getting to this level takes solid planning and research by the letting agent, but even in smaller or even ‘one man’ bands, using this approach positions the letting agent to become a strategic partner with their landlord, wherein the landlord relies on the trusted advice offered and the results achieved through the relationship.
Landlord loyalty arises naturally out of the deliberate and planned partnership, which is created when the letting agent takes a genuine interest in helping the landlord meet the landlords strategic goals (ie Why have you bought these BTL properties? What do you want from your investment,? When do you want to leave the property market ?What is your end goal?). The existence of a strong, landlord focused, strategic relationship effectively locks out competitors, thus lowering the cost of doing repeat or additional business with that landlord. Letting agents who employ this method of selling are "farmers" sowing seeds of trust and harvesting increased properties to rent, higher and more fees, higher profitability and landlord loyalty. ... that is why I call the method .. landlord farming.
So stop banging on how bloody wonderful YOUR letting agency is, stop wasting your hard earned money with leaflets and landlords wanted services and stop ringing Gumtree landlords, that’s all hunting. I guarantee this will work in any part of the UK lettings market (apart from most of London’s areas covered by the Underground Zone 1 but it works in Zones 2 and above) .. and I have testimonials from many agents who are beginning to harvest landlords from starting the farming technique earlier this year .. What are you waiting for? Landlord-focused solutions, increased lets, higher profitability . . . everybody wins! You decide what kind of letting agent you would rather be, hunter or farmer?
Here endth the lesson .... ;-)
Before I go .. bit of housekeeping.....
1. Sorry about the outage of the blog in the last two weeks of September when those of you who subscribe (you get every post emailed to your inbox - doesnt cost anything) - didnt receive them. This has now been sorted (there were too many posts on the blog). It went down on the 19th September, so you missed these posts ..
- How to boil an egg (and get landlords) http://how-to-grow-your-lettings-agency.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/letting-agents-how-to-boil-egg-and-more.html
- Landlords dont care about you Mr(s) letting agent http://how-to-grow-your-lettings-agency.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/landlords-couldnt-care-about-your.html
- Be a lettings guru http://how-to-grow-your-lettings-agency.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/dont-be-letting-agent-be-property-guru.html
If you want to subscribe, go to the blog on a PC (but not a tablet or mobile as it takes that function away as it mobile opitmised -what ever that crap means ????) and above the picture of me is a box to input your email address in. I dont get to see the emaill address .. its a google thing.
2. I have some dates for the landlord farming course at the end of October. If you want to know what the course is about, have a look at this old post. Obviously the dateson the old post (below) have been and gone, but it has some videos of other agents who have been on the course and it shows the agenda of the course http://how-to-grow-your-lettings-agency.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/landlord-farming-courses-update-new.html
Email me on christopher@christopherwatkin.co.uk for October and November dates
3. Joey is on STAR form. (for my new readers - Joey is our dog - a rescue dog from the DogsTrust) -We went to see him at the pound one year ago this weekend! He was a bag of nerves but a year later he is doing well .. anyway earlier in the Summer we did this video about him .. only play it if you have sound (its the dramatic music that makes it) .. its funny and only 65 seceonds long. Many of have seen it .. but for a newer brothers and sisters who have just joined the landlord farming clan .. its always good to share the good stuff with them .. if you are having a $hite day ... 100% guaranteed to cheer you up .. it does us! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRv5yoLdiXc
Shalom my friends and have a good weekend. We are full of colds .. caught in Italy of all places.
