I was talking to an estate agent the other day, when he
said, ’I really love what you say, about becoming the local property expert. I
want to become the local property expert, the property guru of my town’, to
which I replied.’ Great, tell me what you are doing to get that?’. He replied,
’Chris, I just had 10,000 leaflets delivered to my town’. ‘OK, Andrew (name
changed to protect the innocent), what did the leaflet have on it?’. Andrew
replied,’A5 leaflet, with our logo on it, saying free valuations, wonder what
your house is worth, bullet points on the services we offer, yeah, something
like that, primarily we have done it for brand awareness’ .
If you think your estate or letting agency is suffering
because you don’t have enough brand awareness, the solution isn't to drop
10,000 leaflets, because 99.999% of those will go straight into the recycling
bin with the pizza and kebab leaflets. True the law of averages dictates that you
will get one or two valuations, because out of 10,000 leaflets, a couple are
bound to want a free val on the very day your leaflet drops on their door mat
.. but a couple out of 10,000 isn’t a good use of your money, time and effort.
Ok, the telling thing here though, was his need for brand
awareness. I am going to offend some people now .. but only two people care about you, your estate / lettings agency
and your brand. Let me explain. If the only reason you print and deliver 10,000
leaflets or pay £1000 per month for a weekly page in the local weekly newspaper
is for brand awareness .. I am sorry to say, you are wasting your money, time
and effort Mr(s) Estate or Letting Agent
Next time you get invited the local Rotary Club, or the
local Chamber of Commerce or even that nice up market wine bar - all places
your where the sort of person who would be a landlord would hang out (most
landlords live local and are middle aged and middle class ie your target
audience) why don’t you start up a conversation with someone you have never
spoken to. Ask them if they live locally, where they work, and especially their
family. Within ten minutes, you should be able find out what makes them tick,
what things in life are important to them (eg work, family, hobbies, holidays
etc etc).
The conversation will come round to property (irrespective
of whether you are an estate
agent/letting agent or not ... remember, after the weather, it’s what the Brits
love to talk about), but I can guarantee
you, they will talk about house prices, the future of house prices, returns and
investing, where to buy, where not to buy, their mate has just bought one and
the trouble he had with (delete as appropriate (builders/plumbers/planners/architects/sparkies)
, but at no time will they mention the different estate/ letting agency brands. You may spend most of your
waking hours thinking about your estate / letting agency brand, as well as the
facts and figures that make your agency so much better to the competitor agents,
but your target audience really could not care less. The two people who care
about your firm, your brand is?? YOU .... and your Mum!
Truth hurts.. and sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.
Be honest, you don’t care about the all the solicitors, accountancy/lawyer
brands/companies in your town .. so why should others care about YOURS! It
hurts to think this way, especially when you consider how much time, money,
energy and hard work you put into your agency’s services that you're trying to
sell to landlords and potential house sellers. Bottom line is this kids .. Punters do not care about your estate /
lettings brand nearly as much as you do.
98% of agents think their job is simply to convince potential
landlords and potential house sellers that their estate / letting agency is better
than the competition. Agents spend way too much time (and huge amounts of
money) focused on letting potential landlords and potential house sellers know
what new services we have, (with gimmicky tv channels, the number of portals
they go on, guaranteed rent schemes), or
simply making the advert have more bullet points than the other competitor
agents in town.
STOP THE PRESS ... people are just trying to get to the end
of the day. If only 5% of property is on
the market at any one time, that means 95% people aren’t on the market.
(Obvious I know, but stay with me on this). That means 95% of people (who
aren’t on the market) are just looking at your advert to see if they can find a
property like theirs in their area, because all they want to know is ‘how much
is my house worth?’.They're just trying to get through each day and they don’t
even stop to think, ‘Oh, that agent opens until 8pm, the next time we sell (in
5 years time), I will use them’. Get real agents.. no one cares about your
brand.
But that doesn't mean that you should not do your utmost to
develop the best estate and lettings agency you can, with attention to detail,
to make your agency perform outstandingly. Be honest, these finer points will
not do the job of selling a brand all by themselves though and might hinder the
potential punters (ie landlords or future home sellers) from connecting with what
you are trying to say about your agency. People don’t analysis everything to
n’th degree, people go with gut decisions.
Our heads prefer using intuition, making decisions based on
what feels right. The last time you bought a car, bought a stereo, and lets
bring it in to our sphere, professional services .. chose a solicitor, chose an
accountant .. real people don’t sit down with a tick list, comparing the number
of services, when someone opens, how many qualifications they have, and the
most certainly don’t judge you on which deposit scheme you use, which redress
scheme or whether you are a member of ARLA or the NAEA. People aren’t logical,
we aren’t computers. It takes too much time and effort to analyse one company,
let alone the 20 or 30 agents in your town and sit down for two hours and weigh
facts on each agent. Be honest we're more likely to choose car insurance based
on a television advert with a funny Dog or Meerkats, that we remember, than by getting a Which Magazine
subscription or spending two hours trawling the web (because they all basically the same .. which is what people
think of agents).
Your agency and thus your brand can most easily get to the
gut of the consumer not by proving it is better than the competition, but by
being relevant and interesting to the potential punter. As counterintuitive as
it may seem, all of us need to embrace the notion that we should ignore our competitor
estate and lettings agents and realise that the real challenger is not the
other agent, it is life itself.
The solution lies in becoming an agent that is worth talking
to. When you do that, your potential customers will do the work of getting you
more noticed. When you produce something remarkable, that people talk about,
then those people, who are taking about you, will do your job for you. You can
dramatically impact the ‘brand awareness' problem by investing heavily in a
story that's worth spreading.
That means, stop talking about yourself, stop talking about the
services you offer, stop talking about your company, stop talking about what
you have sold in their street (they know, they saw on Rightmove the second it
went SSTC), stop offering free valuations (everyone has done that since the
early 1980’s), stop listing bullet points about what you offer .... just stop.
Start talking about
something that does interest potential clients (potential landlords and
potential house sellers) .. and there is one thing that all homeowners are
interested in .... the value of THEIR own home, what is happening in THEIR
local property market, what will happen in THEIR property market in the next
few years; and for landlords, on top of all that, where should THEY be buying the next buy to let deal, what is
happening to yields and returns on THEIR
property.
Here are some examples of the sort things you should be
doing ..
Blogs ....
Newsletters ....
Tunbridge Wells http://goo.gl/JmuUb8
Tooting http://goo.gl/CFILub
Kingston Upon Thames http://goo.gl/DIoD36
Now, if this sounds like hardwork, yes it is, but I can
either teach you how to write these sort of blogs and newsletters on one of my
‘landlord farming ’courses (next course 23rd and 24th April 2015 as March's is booked up) or you can ask me to write them for you.
Does it work you might ask? Yes, I guarantee it works if you do as tell you and adopt, adapt and even improve the system for your own town. Here are over 40 testimonials on the system http://goo.gl/QVfVyE
Does it work you might ask? Yes, I guarantee it works if you do as tell you and adopt, adapt and even improve the system for your own town. Here are over 40 testimonials on the system http://goo.gl/QVfVyE
You see, all you need to do is talk about something they are
interested in, and you will have them. You won’t get them straight away,
because no matter how valuable they find what you say is of interest , they
wont use you until THEY need you. So once you start this process, this process
of becoming the local property guru, you wont get business straight away. It
takes months and months before you see anything (but if you are in the gane of
property for until you retire, what is is six months on the whole scheme of
things if it gives you an uplift in business.
There are a couple of catches though, Firstly, you have to
do daily. Its hard work, but if was easy, everyone would be doing it! Secondly,
there can only be one ‘Property Guru’ in your town. If you sit on the fence,
how would you feel if another agent become your town’s guru?
Anyway, back to work
kindest
Christopher
Anyway, back to work
kindest
Christopher
PS ... FOR 230+ OTHER ARTICLES LIKE THIS .. either click on the logo at the top or click on this link here http://how-to-grow-your-lettings-agency.blogspot.co.uk/