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

One of the best things about me meeting so many agents in my role is that I learned the best agents love the free val – not the listing The agents that give themselves over to the work of the free val (ie the input) that makes up the inputs that deliver what you want, the more certain you will create the output (the listing). Those agents who learn to love the work of the free val, generate the listings they want because they never avoid giving the inputs their attention, focus, time and their energy. When was the last time someone went out with you on the free val? When was the last time you recorded the audio your free val on your phone, and listened back to it, and this wills care you, with your boss or colleague? ‘I don’t need to do that Chris, I am a professional’ , yet isn’t it interest every professional (Surgeons, Lawyers, Accountants have to do 20/30/40 hours of Continued Professional Development a year… how many do you do Mr/s Valuer?”   Most of you ‘trust the proces

When Estate Agents start out, they are so focused on their business gen, nothing slips through the net. Yet after a few years, when are doing well and the FV’s come rolling in and the listings aren’t as tough, they stop prospecting and creating new listing opportunities when they have a listings on a plate.  Just because you are doing well should not avert you from chasing other listing opportunities or cause you to reduce the focus, time and effort you spend creating new listing opportunities. The last 9 months have been amazing for Estate Agents – everyone has done well .. yet soon, things are going to get a lot tougher for agents. The number of people moving in the next 18/21 months when unemployment goes into double digits will make a difference The Gods of Listings punish those Valuers who put off the prospecting work they need to do now & smile benevolently upon those who continue to prospect, even when the times are good.  I saw so many Valuers in 2009, only starting

The bottom line is this, the stamp duty holiday ending in March means you will lose some of your deals.   And whilst you will have some amazing commission cheques in Q1 2021, unless you do something now, Q3 & Q4 next year are going to lean months for commission.    The fewer SSTC’s you have in your pipeline, the more reliant you are on those sales for your commission. Yet when you have more than enough sales, you can have sales fall through without harming your commission.   You have to accept are going to lose sales. Whilst you can’t stop bad things from happening, you can incessantly create new opportunities.    It’s the business generation you do in Q1 that will get the listings in Q2 and the commission cheque in Q4 .. yet so many Valuers and Listers can’t see beyond 60 days.    The clever listers play the long game. Just because you can convert free vals doesn’t make you an awesome estate agent … to get that status, you need to create the vals   Q. How many of the last 50 free

If you are going to win your dream listings and landlords, you are going to have to pursue them over time.     You have to play the long game, working on them for months (if not years for portfolio landlords), and hence most agents dont do it This means that you have to communicate with them at a tempo and rhythm that keeps you top of mind, without being a pain the ar$e, annoyance or a time waster.  Here are a few ideas to help you persevere while preserving your professionalism. 1. Relationships with Potential Vendors & Landlords are More Important Than The Listing:   You have a choice to make as you persist in your business generation. If you choose to push hard for what you want (the listing), being overly forceful and pushy to gain the listing you want, you will be proving to the vendor / landlord that what you want is more important to you than the relationship. The do whatever it takes attitude is useful in your chasing, but it should not incorporate the absence of integrity

Everyone says Estate & Letting Agency is a people business. Yet, looking at most agent’s social media and marketing, nothing could be further from the truth   It can not be argued against that People connect with people, not with brands (unless you are Apple, Tesla or Virgin ..and there is an argument that they are there in some (not all) way because of their famous founders)   That is why I a suggesting everyone reading this should invest in their personal brand (and I am not suggesting that should be at the expense of you investing in your company brand)   The internet and social media intensifies and magnifies an outstanding personal brand many many times   So, having no personal brand and no social media / internet presence puts you in oblivion much faster than before.   If you don’t jump on-board with the ethos of personal brand you will get left behind, because building a personal brand is the single most prevailing marketing strategy you can have for your agency   The simple

ESTATE & LETTING AGENTS - You can’t afford to be camera shy anymore. So let’s talk the 3 big truths about you being on camera that I have learned. 1️⃣ Everyone believes they look awful on video.  2️⃣ No one else cares how you look on video. 3️⃣ Everybody’s 1st few videos are truly appalling . Acquiring new marketing skills as an agent is a learning curve. Trust me - please try and keep your expectations low, and trust in yourself that you will improve.

You hate your job, yet the longer you stay in the job you don’t enjoy, the less time you will ultimately have to do something you do love. Courage is doing something you fear. You fear the unknown, will it work, will I look stupid? Yet the longer you put off that choice, the more difficult it will become to actually go through with it. Remember, people never regret what they did, always what they didn't. Believe in yourself, roll the dice, have a go. You have one life - make it count. Love you all x

  So, the UK is in recession, yet no one has informed the property market. Any Estate Agent who believes this market will last forever, when still 5.3m people are still on furlough and GDP still around 10% lower than going into Covid + the Brexit issue on the horizon and second semi lockdown, has to be mistaken. I am not a doom-monger, far from it, yet the simple facts are when uncertainty creeps into the economy, and all the above issues will cause that, there is going to be some form of contraction in the property market eventually, even if doesnt affect property values, it will certainly reduce the number of transactions of properties sold. Many agents are worried if property values drop that will affect their agency, yet the biggest issue isn’t property values, its is the number of transactions, the number of people looking to move home in 2021 and 2022. Even if property values drop by 20%, if you charge 1.5% instead of dropping your pants down to 1%, you would still be better by a

  Estate Agency on a shoestring ... There are many estate agents out there who hardly have two pennies to rub together, let alone spend 100’s of pounds on marketing themselves to attract homeowners to use their agency. Trust me, you do not need to spend any money whatsoever to attract homeowners to your estate agency now you have the power of social media. You as a person (not your firm) should join every Facebook group in your town. Then produce content that is fascinating to the people of your town. Yet don’t fall the trap many agents fall into by telling people what you have sold or what your agency does or market share... you might like it, but its not fascinating to the people of your town. You are the gatekeepers to the 2nd most interesting topic in the world to the local people of your town (The property market), so just talk about the local property market in those FB groups... What’s happening to property prices, rents, which area seem to be selling better than others. This is

  Over the last 20 years in Estate Agency, slowly as each year goes by, why have we as an industry allowed the estate agency profession to become a shadow of its former self?   Where the combined and accumulative effects of the portals homogenising us, blackhole CRM systems where clicking a button has replaced the personal hotbox and telephone, cheap fee agents prostituting themselves on the altar of low priced estate agency, faceless corporates who sack loyal staff by text, a world where the listing is more important than the sale and a profession where some see their only weapon to get the listing is overvaluing ...    Why have we as an industry allowed ourselves to disconnect ourselves emotionally from estate agency business?   It’s like it’s only about listings, market share and craving to be seen as getting one over the competition?   Only a few days ago, a question was asked of agents on social media... would you prefer to be the only agent out or win the listing whenever a compe

  When was the last time a house seller Google, “Estate Agents that publish Rightmove Pie Charts” or “Estate Agents that post every listing on Facebook” or even "Why you should sell your home with a High Street/Online/Self Employed [delete as appropriate] Estate/Letting Agent" No, my intuition tells what people search for on Google are questions, or problems or things that they having issues with or stuff that is holding the back or getting in their way. Matters of life they are struggling with. I see so many Estate Agents focus their social media strategy around which platforms to go, when in fact if talked about the pain points of your potential house sellers or landlords, well tough love time, you have lost before you have even started. If you want your social media and the content within it to convey your true value, your value, your reason of charging the fees you do, if you want your social media content to attract an audience, and top of the tree, if you want your co

  You’re a small Estate Agency. You work a 7am–6pm (on a good day) to get the properties listed You are doing Ok, yet struggling You do a bit of social, yet your content isn’t working You aren’t growing your agency as fast as you would like You don’t understand why local homeowners & landlords seem to paying attention to your competitors, but not you? If this is you, you arent alone There are normally 5 reasons why this is the case 1. Who are you posting for? Before you can even start to think about what you are going to post, you have to 1st understand what the landlords & house sellers are asking for. 2. Your Social media strategy .. Running Facebook ads is not a strategy - its a tactic. A social media strategy is a much bigger mission. It’s what you as an agent stand for, your voice, your message, your truth ...because that is what brings in the punters 3. Wrong social media platform - just because Jess, your 19yo YTS girl says Snap or TikTok is where it's at, doesnt me