There are complaints that agents who achieve a listing in the forthcoming Best Estate Agent Guide 2018 are not being clearly told that in order to promote their attainment they have to pay a licence fee of £1,200 plus VAT per branch per annum.
The Guide, to be launched at the EA Masters event in September, replaces the Times and Sunday Times Estate Agent and Letting Agent of the Year awards which were held until last year.
Peter Knight, founder of the Property Academy which is behind the new Guide, has linked with Rightmove to get the new initiative off the ground.
Yesterday, he totally rejected claims that agents are not being aware of the costs of the licence to acquire marketing materials.
He said: “From launch, we’ve been very clear and upfront.
“There’s no cost to enter and there’s no charge to appear in the Best Estate Agent Guide. Only if an agent wishes to enhance their listing and have the ability to promote their achievement will they first need to purchase a licence agreement.
“Tickets to attend the EA Masters are £299+VAT which is also very clear on the website. Whether an agent attends or not has no influence on their being in the Best Estate Agent Guide – indeed, the process of identifying which branches were to be included was finished before the tickets went on sale.”
He said the EA Masters event includes nine world-class speakers, and that “there has never been an event like it in this country”.
There will also be an ‘innovation hall’ with 40 exhibitors, while the ticket price includes a hot buffet lunch, refreshments, a drinks reception, and the celebration dinner complete with wines and entertainment.
Knight also pointed specifically highlighted the cost of the licences back in March. It is intended to feature the top 20% top-performing branches in the country, and allow them to stand out from their competitors.
The new Guide will be promoted by both the Property Academy and Rightmove, while the rules state: “In addition, agents can choose to market their attainment by displaying a distinctive winners’ mark.”
Knight said that the optional £1,200 licence fee comes with a significant marketing package, including advertising templates; designs for brochures, stationery, etc; templates for direct marketing; a broadcast quality video promoting the agent’s achievement; a social media campaign with links to the agent’s profile pages; a SEO campaign promoting agents; and a training programme to help winning agents promote their success.
But agents who are receiving invitations to the new event and who are being congratulated on making it into the Guide, are apparently unclear that they have to pay for marketing materials to use in the branch, on boards, on websites including their own and Rightmove, and on social media channels.
One agent said yesterday that a competitor with whom they are friendly had had a letter from the EA Masters, but was unaware of the “large” and “looming” cost.
The agent claimed that the Property Academy had not mentioned the cost in letters sent to agents, or on the online payment page for buying tickets to the event.
The agent, who described the licence cost as “exorbitant”, said: “Even more concerning they say ‘The best agents will also be able to promote their EA Masters status and attract more valuation requests’ but conveniently forget to mention the cost.”
The agent said this was “misleading” and that agents could buy tickets to the event unaware of the cost of licences.
The F&Q section is here: http://www.eamasters.co.uk/faqs/
It says:
Does it cost me to be in the Best Estate Agent Guide 2018?
A: A basic listing in the Best Estate Agent Guide is free of charge. There will be opportunities to enhance your listing, should you choose to boost your presence in the guide.
Q: Why is a listing in the Best Estate Agent Guide important to me?
A: The Best Estate Agent Guide provides a way for agents who have performed in the top 20% of branches in the country to stand out from their competitors. The guide will be promoted by Property Academy and Rightmove (including on rightmove.co.uk and to home moving audiences registered with Rightmove). In addition, agents can choose to market their attainment by displaying a distinctive winners’ mark.
Q: Can I promote my attainment in my own marketing?
A: Yes, following the official celebration event, the EA Masters on 22nd September, winning agents can choose to promote their attainment within their own marketing materials (e.g. in branch, on boards, on their own website, on social media channels, on third party websites – such as Rightmove and printed materials). This is subject to paying a licence fee to the Property Academy. Using the winners’ mark, the Best Estate Agent Guide logo or referring to being listed in the Best Estate Agent Guide without paying the licence fee is strictly prohibited.
Q: How can I purchase a licence and how much does it cost?
A: The licence fee costs from just £1,200 +VAT per branch per annum and runs from September 25th, 2017, to September 21st, 2018.
Q: How can I purchase a licence?
A: Licences will be available to purchase from September 25th 2017 from the Property Academy at propertyacademy.co.uk. To find out if one or more of your branches will appear in the best estate agent guide and to receive a notification when licences become available, fill in the form.
How EYE covered the launch in March:
‘Best Estate Agent Guide’ to be published involving assessment of every branch in the country
The £1,200 licence fee agents have the option to pay to promote their being in the Best Estate Agent Guide comes with a significant marketing package and toolkit including:
1. A suite of advertising templates suitable for both online and traditional media
2. Designs for brochures, stationery, window cards and a range of point of sale materials
3. Templates for direct marketing including door drops, flyers, etc.
4. A broadcast quality video promoting the agent’s achievement of being in the top 20% in the country that they can use on their web site and social sites
5. The benefits of a significant campaign on social media promoting the Best Estate Agent Guide which will then have links to the agents’ profile pages and in turn generate valuable leads
6. Additional leads that result from a SEO/PPC campaign that will optimise for searches of “Best Estate Agent in…..(their area)”
7. A regularly updated training programme to assist winning agents’ frontline teams on how to promote their success to assist in being selected to sell/let properties and to charge a fee commensurate with being in the top 20% of estate agents
Can I emphasise that the license fee is optional and only those estate agents that see the benefit of promoting their success and receiving the marketing package will pay for it. Those agents that don’t see the benefit pay nothing and still will appear in the Best Estate Agent Guide for free.
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Are your carefully selected winners permitted you use your Property Academy logo in this way? https://www.facebook.com/lawsonsestateagents/photos/a.212948898754592.51249.192353454147470/1391947004188103/?type=3&theater
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More awards for vain agents to buy…
You know the public have no idea about any of these awards. Just buy a crystal trophy for 20 quid and presented to a staff member and call them award winning. Save yourselves a lot of time and money.
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Hi Again “Smile Please” (I’m still smiling!)
There are only two points that are factually incorrect in your posting – and those are the two points that you make…
“Save yourselves a lot of time and money.”
To stand a chance of being included in this guide requires absoultaly no time at all from the estate agent and the cost is totally zero.
Apart from those two factual errors – it’s an interesting post!
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Apart from all the add ons you are right costs nothing.
You obvioulsy believe in them i do not.
The awards means nothing to anyone except the agents that buy them (i note you have a few on your website).
If a Connell or countrywide win awards for “service” in my opinion says it all.
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HI Again Smile Please,
I assume that you’ve already decided not to accept your invitation to attend. That is your absolute right and I respect your decision.
Remember, you’ll still benefit from having your branch(es) included in the Best Estate Agent Guide at no cost whatsoever.
It’s a pity though, I’m sure that you would enjoy the event. The speakers alone make it worth the effort and cost in my view.
Won’t you re-consider attending?
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Simon,
Unless you pay circa £1,500 per year you cannot even advertise you have won it!
Add that to a couple of members of staff and their partners to attend a dinner with incredibly dull people boasting how great they are at a cost of circa 2k
No will not be attending. Enjoy it though sounds like you are a big fan of them.
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https://twitter.com/DaftestA/status/884690246859993088
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Hi there Smile, whilst it may be true that the majority of the public have no idea about these awards being that it is the innaugural year, the very fact as stated by The Property Acadamy, that they have carried out between 3 and 6 mystery shopping “visits” to every estate and letting agent in the country and also checked out an agents performance via RM stats at least adds some credibility to these awards and I am righfully proud that our little office has been deemed worthy of being in the top 20% in the country and best of all, it has cost me absolutely nothing. Could it be that many of those who belittle this as irrelevant are the ones not in the top 20%? Whether I go to the dinner or buy a licence is a personal choice but this kind of genuinely impartial recognition should be applauded, especially in light of all the misleading claims made by some.
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I am not having a go just at these awards but any to be honest, even the previous Daily Mail. ESTAS ETC – The public know and care nothing about them.
Can you not see what this is? – Its a way of taking best part of 4k off you.
You cannot even advertise the fact you have won the award unless you pay a lisencing fee.
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If we were to be included in the guide, does this mean we could not tell anyone unless we pay the fee?
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Of course not AgentV, you just cant use their logos
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Smile Please, the public may not know about these awardfs as yet but almost certainly will given time based on what is offered as part of the license. That aside, it is £1200 per year to get a license so where did £4000 come from? Genuine question as I may have missed something.
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The public will never know about them. Like all the previous awards.
Any agent that will pay the £1,200 (plus 20% VAT) – Has something missing in their life to need that attention.
Add in the license fee, add in you and a staff member and your partners to go to the evening and you are not far off 4k
This is not for the industry, as everything RM gets involved with its all about the very large profit margins that are being made.
circa 4000 agents have “won” an award. if only 10% pay the lisence fee alone its over 600k Not bad for sending out a few letters to desperate agents allowed to then use the logo.
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This is a ludicrous claim which says more about the lack of attention to detail by the complainant than it does about anything else.
Peter Knight made it perfectly clear at the presentation he gave in March that there would be additional optional costs should those fortunate enough to be included in the guide wish to promote their status further. He simply could not have been clearer.
I took notes at the time…I’ve just checked them and they read …” No-one pays to enter”…” there will be a licensing fee…starting at £100 per month.”
This is the confirmed in the FAQ section on the website…
“The licence fee costs from just £1,200 +VAT per branch per annum and runs from September 25th, 2017, to September 21st, 2018.”
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This isn’t a surprise to anyone surely? The property Academy is a business and as such exists to make a profit. Its not charitable fund set up to better the lives of Estate Agents.
In regards to the awards themselves, I think that they are more transparent than most and do have validity as based on customer surveys. However, the issue will always be, in a profession as maligned as ours, that should the public ever question it, it can not be escaped that if ‘ winning agents choose to promote their attainment within their own marketing materials’ they have to pay for it. As a result, all the attempted transparency in world becomes somewhat obscured.
All of this said, its not compulsory so, if agents do chose to cough up £1200 to promote their business (that is already trading successfully) that’s their prerogative.
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My my Mr knight is given a lot of column space.
in most areas of prize giving you’ll find that they cover the “top” 15-20% and like this they are called raffles and lotteries in the hope that at least half will be mug, sorry egotistic enough to want a gold star on their window, a window that Mr knight points out in another, earlier subject that around 70% of the public won’t see because they don’t visit high street agents offices!
lets not forget those carefully picked “top 20%” of agents are actually the top 3600 ish agents in the country, WOW but then the public wouldn’t know that anymore than they would know this “academy” from a high street trophy shop.
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Really not a story. There’s no bias whether someone pays the £100 against them winning the award or being nominated.
It simply gives them the extended benefit of additional marketing.
Its absolutely standard in many walks of life and I can’t for one minute see why people can’t seemingly understand.
Unless of course we don’t win in which case its a fix and then i’ll unleash hell.
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Once again anonymous contributors both to the story itself and in the comments that follow do themselves and the industry no favours. If you have a view then stand up and make it. If you want to throw rocks from behind your mothers skirts then please go and play elsewhere.
Peter Knight has been clear about his new initiative from the outset. If you didn’t understand then you weren’t paying attention. If you aren’t interested then pass by and go on your way. If you are then you can expect to find yourself in some pretty interesting company later in the Autumn and you will have an enjoyable, memorable and informative day.
It’s not compulsory to attend. If you don’t want to, please don’t worry, there’s no RSVP but the rest of us don’t need to hear from you – especially if you’re not brave enough to be yourself.
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Strange isnt it that the majority of posters on here that do not want anonymity are usual those looking for self-publicity or looking to flog something?
And when someone is trying to sell something, and others can see flaws in it the first thing the seller does is question the indentity of the person warning others? How odd?!
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whole heartedly agree smile
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“I need to know who you are so I can attack your character and not address your arguments arrghh!”
Nah you’re alright friend.
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I do agree with Henry about anonymous posting.
I always post under my own name because it feels the right thing to do. I have the courage of my convictions, which, has, on many occasions caused much upset amongst panel managers, civil servants and intermediaries.
It’s not about self promotion but context. If I started rattling on about the marketing rights and wrongs of agents then quite rightly I should be called on this.
However, my comments about the trainwreck and consumer rip-off that is conveyancing is well within my remit. If someone makes a comment about “lazy and slow” lawyers, it carries far more credence if they are actually in the business.
In terms of awards, I can personally confirm from first hand experience ( no, this is NOT self promotion!) that industry awards DO work and are regularly used by our referring agents to demonstrate the credibility of their referral. And yes, a strong brand name like RightMove or Sunday Times really is important…
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“Once again anonymous contributors both to the story itself and in the comments that follow do themselves and the industry no favours.”
How’s that, Mr Pryor?
For daring to voice a differing opinion?
For stating their concerns/objections?
HOW?
Opinions – even those that differ from our own – are a legal right, Sir. Our forefathers fought and died for our right to have them – and to voice them, without fear of repercussion.
But of course you know that.
Concerns and objections are, according to every training manual I have read or written, simply points of concern; questions that require answering in the way that the person making the objection feels ticks that particular box of concern. If those objections are dealt with in the correct way, then you are one step closer to agreememt – part of the closing process which is so often overlooked, ignored or simply ran roughshod over by brash, know-it-all mongers of whatever product or commodity they happen upon as ‘today’s easy sale to make’… and who, when their ‘target’ walks away feeling almost soiled by the experience of interaction, the monger knows darn well that “they were just “timewasters/tin-touchers/tyre-kickers/curtain-feelers* in any case”.
(*delete those inapplicable to the unfortunate industry these people populate).
Surely, as I have stated many, many times before, who is asking the questions; making the statements or having the audacity to differ in opinion is irrelevant.
WHAT they say, however, is the golden egg. Or the 5h!t wrapped in Christmas paper.
Why do you and (very few) others seemingly have a mahoosive problem with that?
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What people are getting confused with is the legal right to an opinion and the absolute unequivocal need for their opinion to be correct and seen as fact. You of all people know exactly what I mean here.
Nobody ever fought for an opinion to be free from repurcussion either.
And who is having the opinion is absolutely vital. Not all opinions are equal. When you see a doctor and she gives her opinion that you have a rare case of something do you ask for a second opinion from your mate down the pub? Do you give those two equal credence?
Given that you regularly on here lambast young upstarts or whatever you call them for daring to have an opinion on estate agency, all you are showing here is further hypocrisy. You say “what do you know?” or “try working in this industry for more than five seconds”.
Why should your emboldened opinion of this matter count more than Henry Prior’s?
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Not in any particular order –
“Why should your emboldened opinion of this matter count more than Henry Prior’s?”
1. Who said it does?
2. What “opinion of this matter” are you referring to? Unless you can point otherwise to it, I have stated no opinion whatsoever of the matter Mr Pryor’s (please afford the man a bit of basic courtesy and get his name right – especially as you have a full 50 minutes left to edit…) post was pertaining to – but I have questioned his reasoning for the thrust of said post.
“Not all opinions are equal.”
Never have been; never will be. You’re simply stating the obvious there. But if this is one of those point-scoring exercises you’re currently running on empty with no signs of things improving – so go on – I’ll give you that one.
“When you see a doctor and she gives her opinion that you have a rare case of something do you ask for a second opinion from your mate down the pub?”
Depends what the “something” is, and which mate you’re talking about. If it was a cardiovascular abnormality that was the issue – then yes – I could have a chat over a coke with an eminent Consultant CV Surgeon I once helped with a move.
I have other friends as well.
” Do you give those two equal credence?”
I reckon my mate would top trump the GP – when FRCS is somewhere in the middle of near two lines of qualifications you tend to find that GPs roll over and let the big boys tickle their tummies – but you probably won’t accept that as a reasonable answer.
“What people are getting confused with is the legal right to an opinion and the absolute unequivocal need for their opinion to be correct and seen as fact.”
I don’t think they are – but of course that’s just my opinion.
But that statement begs the question what legal requirement is there for “the absolute unequivocal need for their opinion to be correct and seen as fact.” you refer to in the context of this debate?
“Given that you regularly on here lambast young upstarts or whatever you call them for daring to have an opinion on estate agency, all you are showing here is further hypocrisy.”
Sorry – you’re being selective for effect there.
I, as you wish to put it, “lambast” people regardless of age – or of their claimed/stated experience.
That’s me done for now. Look forward to what, if the consistency and substance of your first salvo is anything to go by, will be extremely sloppy seconds…
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Might have been nice for the industry if onthemarket and not RightMove had been chosen to partner up?
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Eah! I got an idea, you pay me a monkey and I’ll tell everyone I know you is the best bloke for selling ‘ouses!
Innit?
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The elephant in the room on this is not whether or what is being charged but the credibility of the process that is used to decide who is and isn’t a “Best Agent” Mind boggling numbers are being banded around to lend weight to what is ostensibly an online automated digital survey knocked up using RM’s data and PK’s commercial cunning to extract money from average agents that will grab at anything that they feel might give them a perceived edge regardless of whether it passes even low level scrutiny.
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like what I said above
Innit ?
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So the business plan for next year is to include the top 25% of agents, hence increasing the profits. Brilliant.
These awards are for outdated agencies whose chairman still enjoy sitting around the award dinner tables, while their staff work for barely minimum wage, turning thumbscrews onto potential buyers to see their in house mortgage experts.
Its the 21st century gentlemen, wake up ! Potential customers simple Google your name for reviews made by other real customers, 100’s of them. Not by Peter and his team pretending to be a customer, actual real life customers.
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If we were to be included in the guide, does this mean we could not tell anyone unless we pay the licence fee?
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Thank you very much to those of you who have posted positive comments and for those who have expressed their concerns/criticism can I point out the following:
1. The process of assessing which branches are to be included within the Best Estate Agent Guide has involved analysing 3 billion sets of data and conducting 30,000 mystery shops. All of this has been funded by the Property Academy and with the support of our Principal Partner, Rightmove. Its been herculean but hopefully will be seen as worthwhile – our overarching objective is to put the spotlight onto the best estate agents in the country and to give them an opportunity to shine out. We also hope that the Best Estate Agent Guide will inspire other agents to improve and to raise the overall standard and reputation of the industry.
2. The EA Masters event on the 22nd September has three components: first an Innovation Hall where our industry Supporters will be showcasing their latest products and services. Then we have a brilliant conference planned with 9 world-class speakers, some of whom command huge ticket prices to see them live. Just this week we have secured Matthew Syed, Times Journalist and author of ‘Bounce’ and ‘Black Box Thinking’ – you could easily pay £500+ to see him speak. We have two international speakers being flown in specially from Australia plus we have a further 9 industry leaders who will interrogate the speakers sessions and give their thoughts as to how their lessons can be applied to estate agency. Finally we have a celebration dinner to honour and reward the very best estate agents in the country. With three refreshment breaks, a hot buffet lunch, a free drinks reception and a black tie dinner with wines included and all of this in an incredible venue – (The Intercontinental – O2 is one of the most modern conference hotels in Europe), I think £299+VAT is excellent value.
3. Turning to the points made about the license fee, as already stated no one has to pay anything. We have funded the mystery shops and assessed all the data summaries at our expense and have taken a commercial view that a sufficient number of agents will wish to display the logo and therefore pay for the licence fee. But it includes so much more than just a logo as highlighted in my post from first thing this morning. The marketing toolkit is going to be very comprehensive as are the associated training resources. On top of all this will be a marketing campaign to highlight to the consumer the benefits of selecting an estate agent that has been independently assessed as being in the top 20% of the country. As stated before, no one needs to pay a penny – all the branches will appear in the Best Estate Agent Guide for free, the licence fee is optional.
I hope this goes some way to address the points several posters have made – if not then please get in touch, my contact details are on our websites.
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We’ve won one of these awards, don’t think we can justify the spend of attending the shindig it’s never been my bag anyway no offence to the organisers it sounds like thought and effort have gone into it, but that license though, 1200, in my part of the world we call that a little north of half a sale, half a sale to get on the **** of my competitors for twelve whole months all over rightmove…..the high street ones anyway
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