Why do people slow
down when they see a car crash? We are all guilty of it, we see the car, the
flashing blue lights, the mangled cars .. they just can’t help gawping .. I dare say, especially if it’s local
to where we live, we want to reassure ourselves that it isn’t someone we know. But probably more importantly, Is it
because we want to remind
ourselves that it is not us in the car wreck?
So, let’s get this straight, we see
something really awful (life and death car crash stuff) and we can’t help but
gawp, to twist our neck more than 90 degrees... and all because we are
comforting (or reassuring) ourselves that it wasn’t us.
Ok, so far so good, but then let me
ask you this Mr(s) letting Agent, car crashes are life and death (obviously)
and all of us (including me) can’t help to look and analyse, but (and stay with
me on this, as I’m about to get a little heavy) ... why we do precisely the opposite
when it comes to the apparently hopeless and irreparable issues in our day to
day life. We gawp at other people’s life and death issues, reassuring ourselves
it wasn’t us, but when we have issues in our own life, we don’t rubberneck, most
of us just put our head in the sand, ostrich like .. why is that?
Denial
Denial is probably one of the best known
defence mechanisms of the human brain, when the brain seems unable to admit an obvious
truth, it goes into denial. People have denied for centuries, like those people
who denied the Earth went round the Sun or the Earth was round, and what about
evolution! It doesn’t matter what the denial is, the denials don’t come from people who are stupid
or who aren’t clever enough to understand what’s going on. They come
from people who won’t look.
So why do people go into denial? It's
a way to avert our eyes... (the opposite of rubbernecking)
I believe most letting agents are in
denial about their own businesses. They
think they have a good business, because they have been running for ten or
fifteen years or so, have 200 managed properties (although it’s been at that
level for a quite a few years now after all the corporates jumped on the
lettings bandwagon), they lose 10 to 15 properties a year because landlords sell a few, but they
get 10 to 15 new ones a year from recommendations or existing landlords adding
to their portfolio. Nice little business? Yes, but it isn’t growing is it? The
size of lettings market has doubled in the last ten years, but if you have
remained the same..your market share has halved!..... you have fallen back
Mr(s) Letting Agent ..
Now if you are in your late fifty’s, don’t stress, the Countrywide’s and
LSL’s of this world will be more than happy to open up their fat cheque books
in a few years time and buy your portfolio off you and plug it in to their
existing office...but what if retirement isn’t five years away, but ten,
fifteen, twenty, thirty years away? The
markets market is growing, and what are you going to do to get a bigger slice
of the pie?
Now, as everyone knows, I am an advocate
and disciple of a method of growing
letting and estate agents by instead of the agent banging on about themselves,
their services, their fees or etc, they talk daily about the local property
market to the local people of your town, thus attracting their attention, more
importantly their interest of landlords (and house sellers) so eventually, you
get inside their head and they consider you the local property guru of your
town. I have always wondered why I get between 1700 and 2300 people reading
each of my blog posts, but only a small percentage actually take up the process
Perceived wisdom in lettings is
getting more landlords is hard work, almost impossible and that the only way to
grow your business is through acquisition. Well, if you want to be saddled with
a £400,000 loan over 5 years to pay for that competitor’s portfolio, you can
wave goodbye to £7,900 a month in interest payments.
I am sorry, I disagree, it isn’t
impossible to get more landlords, its hard work but not impossible. You have to
work smarter, not harder. The system I advocate to get more landlords, i
constantly provide data, testimonials, statistics and insight to how it works
that contradict the perceived status quo.
Yes,
some busy agents ask me to do the hard part of the system (writing the
articles on the local property market) and yes for those who want to be taught
how to write the articles and how to implement it, I run two day courses (details
here http://goo.gl/NnreJa ) in the
writing of the articles and chair a self help group that helps those agents
afterwards ..... but you don’t need to do either. You don’t need to pay me one
penny to do it ... I tell you what to do on my blog over the 240+ blog posts (www.landlordfarming.com)
You might think it won’t work for
you. I tell you now, it works everywhere in the UK except in the WC postcodes
of Central London. So I ask, what are the risks of doing your own
research into the technique and being prepared to find yourself proven wrong? Or
is it often far easier to just look the other way, to feign ignorance or call
yourself a sceptic?
I think it comes down to fear in the
end.
Part of being our best selves is
having the guts to not avert our eyes, to look closely at what scares us, what
disappoints us, what threatens us. By looking closely we have a chance to make
change happen.
Are you going to change Mr(s) Letting Agent?