.... because the other agency will do it for 1% (sales fee)
or 5% (managed fee). What do you do at
this point Mr Estate Agent or Mrs Letting Agent? I am sorry to say it, but
obviously you haven’t proved why you are worth it on your free val / appraisal
.. truth hurts but you know it is the case.
Let us all be honest,
it is easier to lower your fee than it is to make the alterations and
modifications in your free val / market appraisal pitch than improve your
performance. If you don’t prove you are worth it prospective vendors and
landlords can only judge you on your fee.
But before I start banging on about improving your fee, lets
turn the tables Mr/s Letting / Estate Agent .. in most aspects of your life, it
is always easier to find a seller of a product or service based on price alone.
You don’t have to think because by finding the cheapest, it’s a tick box ‘no
brainer’ exercise, just like you go to the cheapest on Amazon or ebay or a
hotel booking site .. and why, because they are commodities?
Are you selling a commodity Mr/S letting / estate agent? No
of course not you will reply, but when the property industry is continually
promising to deliver better, faster and cheaper – you could fool me that we are
selling a commodity.
Real change requires that you first believe that a lower fee
doesn’t deliver better results and the real issue is something else. From the
landlord’s or potential vendors point of view, finding a lower fee is easier
than investing time and effort in muddled and complicated conversations in
their head to prove its worth paying the extra. It’s easier for a landlord or
potential vendor to not to have to justify the greater expense with your higher
fee. It gets even harder when you only speak to one part of a couple having to
make a decision about which agent to go
with. Try putting yourself in the shoes of a wife, trying to explain to her
husband why you are charging 2% selling fee / 12% management when everyone else
is charging half that. The wife (in this scenario) is taking the risk by
recommending they deal with you, the expensive agent .. and if it goes wrong,
who is to blame? Exactly .... that is why cheaper is easier.
It is easier to charge a lower fee than it is to change the
way you do business Mr/s Estate/Letting Agent. It is a damn sight easier not to
change any of the procedures that make up ‘that is the way we have always done
it around here’. Just because you have done something for as long as you have
is proof positive that what you’re doing isn’t broken. It’s easier to believe
that someone or something else needs to change. A new listing or landlord with
a lower fee isn’t change.
A lower fee is easy. Better fees are difficult. You, Mr/s
Letting/Estate Agent are defined by which of these you choose to sell... you
need to up your game, you need to choose to improve, choose to change the way
you work, so you can charge what you are worth, not what the lowest common
dominator agent charges down the road.
... but before you buy some self help books, read stuff like
this on the tinterweb, watch YouTube videos on charging more, even go on a
courses designed to improve your fees, run by such excellent estate agency
trainers as Julian O’Dell, Richard Rawlings, Stephen Brown or Sam Ashdown, let
me say one thing before you do. If you are not going to take action nor apply
those ideas that you read or see or get trained in, then there is no reason to
spend your time reading , training or surfing the web, because you aren’t
learning, you are just reading and watching. If you never act on those ideas,
then you may as well have done nothing.... or done something better with your
time.
Charging more is hard work, before you can charge more, you
need change more .. are you prepared for the hardwork?
