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

They don’t want to be interrupted by an estate or letting agent whilst they are getting on with their busy life – trying to earn a living. Why the hell would you want to be interrupted in a telephone call that they haven’t agreed to? Then there is the Social media equivalent. Individuals don’t want to accept your invitation to connect on LinkedIn .. then have a cut and paste your sales pitch one minute later. .. but at least with that interruption, all you have to do is hit delete .. its better than the ‘cold call’ interruption where you get unlucky and take the call – you have to politely tell the sales person to **** off – and that isn’t nice … and so that causes tension. .. but at least with emails and social media form of interruption better because it allows you to avoid tension. You see there is a reason your prospective landlords and house sellers allow their mobile calls to go to their voice messages. They don’t like the tension that comes with saying ‘no’ to y...

My thoughts on this 3min video on why newspaper advertising doesn't work for estate and letting agents  .. a twist in tale (you wouldn't expect anything else would you from me?) Link to the video here for people whom subscribe to the blog   https://youtu.be/Lm_m7G4YQgA   and for those looking at this on the internet .. embedded version below

For those that follow the blog, I always like to share my data so you to can write your own articles about your local property market. .. because its the data that makes the articles so different - takes you  up several steps to make you the local poetry expert, the local property guru. Today's spreadsheet is every postcode district  in England and Wales, with the total number of households, then split down into Detached, Semi Detached, Terraced/Town Houses and Apartments (in numbers and percentages) Here is the spreadsheet  https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0d59TaH3c33U0lzaXJ5SzFzQlE

30 landlords rang this one agent in one day. The day before he had sent out 310 pieces of marketing material in the post  to 310 competitor agent landlords ( gained over the years from land registry scraping or asking for details from tenants - you know the normal methods everyone uses ) and  exactly 30 landlords rang the very next day  ..  a response rate of 9.67%. Listen to the story (3 min video) of why 30 landlords rang this one agent in one day .. and  all of them were happy  to give their telephone number so the agent could keep in contact and... Some even said they were going to ask him out the next time the tenant handed in their notice. Below the video are examples of the marketing material used by the agent (together with examples from other agents)  https://youtu.be/Dxv9WMAaeAE Examples here ..  goo.gl/atJsML kind regards Christopher Watkin PS   It works even better for  estate agents ...

An estate or letting agent’s brand is the set of opportunities, recollections, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a landlord’s or potential vendor’s decision to choose one agent over another. If the landlord or vendor doesn’t pay a premium, make a selection or spread the word, then no brand value exists for that landlord or vendor.  A brand's value is merely the total of how much extra housesellers/ vendors or landlords will pay for those opportunities, recollections , stories and relationships of one agent over the alternatives. Years ago, your estate/letings agency brand used to be something else. It used to be your logo, your pantone colours, your font or a design or a wrapper. Today, that’ isn’t a brand .. that’s a silhouette of the brand, something that might mark the brand’s existence. But just as it takes more than a hardhat to be a builder, it takes more than a graphics designer prattling on about feel to make a brand. I...

Why is the joy of getting one, two, even five great listings doesn’t even compare impact to loosing one listing to the competition? Why does the feeling of that lost listing feel bad, really bad yet the good feeling of getting the listing or listings doesn't last as long as the bad? Not even close. Why have we, as agents, learnt to persuade ourselves that the feelings of joy and awesomeness of getting the business, getting the listing(s) aren't even close .. don't even match to those feelings of loosing a listing? Why?

I believe the vast majority of estate agents and letting agent are good decent professional people – who know their market – and even more importantly … who care…  REALLY CARE Most of us agents are nothing like the ‘sell your own grandmother’ types the papers and the public like to think of us. I fear if we don’t change that – we will sleepwalk into a Purplebricks style Hybrid online profession as the public see the shiny clean online / hybrid offering  from PB and others and suitable alternative I have set out to change that perception – to change the perceptions of the UK public – to make the profession looked up to … like it was up to the 1970’s before the wide boy 1980’s Estate Agents ruined our standing in the UK This isn’t the fantasy of some middle aged bloke from the East Midlands. This is an ever growing group of 200 individual estate and letting agents from around the UK. Its like being a club of 200 competitor agents – but they help and guide you on what to d...