Do you know where your free vals / market appraisals leads come from?
Most Estate Agents I know want to believe that their success is 100% earned.
Everyone reading this works hard, you do the best you can, so when you get the listings and sales, it's because you are incredible, not because our property market is incredible, OK? Typically, that is the case, yet history tells us that business people (and therefore estate agents) are at their most vulnerable when the market is good.
When it comes to the existing residential property market, the market's universal success is really camouflaging individual agent's failures.
As Estate Agents, we have been on an exceptional ride since the early 2010s, yet I have a feeling things will change in the coming years. I'm not saying that we are going to have a property crash; this isn't 2008. The property market is healthy, yet the property industry is not.
Tough love time – many Estate Agents have a blind spot in their business model.
You are too reliant on the portals to get you free val leads.
The leads that you are effectively buying are putting you out of business, slowly, like death by a thousand cuts.
If the majority of your free vals aren't generated from a platform that you operate and own, then you won't be around in ten years time.
The industry has seen a huge change of impressions and eyeballs in the past few years; most agents have outsourced their business generation departments to the portals as 26% of agents in a recent survey said the main job of a portal was to capture them free val leads (sorry I thought it was to put the property in front of as many buyers as possible??)
If you want to know how treacherous that is, look at what happened with takeaway delivery services in the last few years.
With everyone downloading Just East and Uber Eats, they are taking between 15% and 20% of the bill for their services, meaning some restaurants have been losing money just fulfilling takeaway orders.
So why do takeaways still use them? Because they no other choice but to accept it because that is where the punters eyeballs are.
Buying free val leads from the portals, then you are in the same position as takeaway owners. 3rd parties are controlling your destiny as an agent, not you.
Thankfully, there are steps you can take to eliminate this blind spot.
Build the dominant Estate Agency brand in your town's property market
You don't have to take on the Rightmove's, OTM and Boomin's of this world, yet you do have to beat the other estate agents in your town. Who can remember the days in the 1990s with the newspaper advert arm's race .. with agents outbidding each other with the number of pages they took in the local rag?
Now it seems it's all about how portals you are on.
Trust me, drop all the portals and have one as a safety blanket as you move forward with increasing your agency and your staff's with the power of a personal brand.
You must build a dominant company and personal brand, and if you don't have the imagination and inspiration and know-how to do it yourself (which most agents don't), you need to hire somebody to help you do it. Trust me – that is one form of subcontracting that works.
I teach agents they need to create impressions and social media content that come directly to their agency, not through a 3rd party system
So many agents are going to look back at this time and said, 'I should have seen this coming. With the portals sucking up the data, Proptech firms bought out, acquisitions & consolidation. Also, as well as horizontal integration, agents and Portals are also vertically integrating, and it's not going to stop.
If your leads come from Get Agent and Portals, you will end up becoming the takeaway of your town .. giving (almost) all your profit away to others.
All agents look and act the same, yet things are going to change if you don't change.
There is no such thing as a shortcut to success in Estate Agency – it's bloody hard work and it takes patience. Many of you think things can be sorted by writing a cheque with your shiny object syndrome. I am not criticising, yet so many of you try something for a couple of months and then end up stopping because it doesn't work quickly.
Here's my challenge to you … ask yourself if you are willing to do what it takes in the next 12 to 18 months to own your brand, earn eyeballs and engagement and build the dominant estate agency and personal brand in your town's market.
If you are in your late 50's / early 60's – you don't need to both – you are going to retiring soon …Yet if you are in your 30's or 40's and your aren't prepared to change, then you might find that estate agency isn't the industry for you long term … (and that won't be your choice either)
If you want a chat on how I am helping many agents in the UK grow their profile and brand, lets chat. Or you can just download the raining videos for free below
Kind regards
Christopher
07950147572
PS I have 52 step by step videos, set in two playlists plus some downloadable templates and content , that tell you exactly what you need to do.
It need not cost you one penny to do .. you have no excuse .. none
- Playlist 1- 18 videos - 2,5hrs of free training www.bit.ly/landlordfarming
- Playlist 2 - 34 videos in all total of 5 hours of free training which shows you the kit and the types of videos with training how to do them) - www.bit.ly/VIDEOGREG
- The 20 free templates for writing articles on your own town that are required for the farming technique to attract landlords & vendors http://bit.ly/20freearticles
- 25+ Examples of Local Property Market Newsletters mentioned in the 18 part videos to attract landlords & vendors http://bit.ly/20bestnewsletters