Call to industry: Trumpet your negotiation skills before it is too late

| Rosalind Renshaw

High street estate agents are under-selling themselves because they are not stressing their biggest strength – negotiation skills.

Richard Copus, an industry veteran of 35 years, said it is time that the industry stands up for itself and blows its own trumpet.

He told Eye: “In the light of everything that is going on at the moment and the industry going through a major period of soul searching and navel gazing, I really think we need to market far more the fact that we estate agents are NEGOTIATORS and it is probably the most important thing that we do.”

Copus, a director of Wood’s Distinctive Homes in Devon, says in a comment piece especially written for Eye: “As estate agents, we are seeing the most important change in our industry since surveyors lost their hold on property sales over half a century ago.

“Whatever the outcome, there is little doubt that the current model will be vastly different in a decade than it is now.

“Online agents steal the headlines nearly every day in the press and passive intermediaries are beginning to make their presence felt. The one thing we rarely read about is ‘negotiating’.

“The huge strength of high street agents is in our role as negotiators. I have always believed that is the most important thing we estate agents do.

“Anybody can advertise a house for sale and introduce a buyer to it, but attaining the best price for the seller and dealing with all the hassle between agreement of sale and exchange of contracts is an art all of its own.

“Most agents would agree that around half the time they spend on each individual property is on negotiating.

“Liaising and chasing the solicitors, helping the valuers/surveyors with comparables, renegotiating price, holding the hands of stressed-out buyers and sellers, chasing up and down chains, etc., etc.

“As high street agents we are in a unique position to be able to provide a full negotiating service to both seller and buyer.

“I can hear online agents saying ‘Wait a minute, we do that too’.

“But they cannot provide the full service that we can and do, and passive intermediaries are not permitted to negotiate.

“High street agencies are the only estate agents able to deal with clients and applicants face to face.

“Buying and selling property is as stressful as bereavement and divorce.

“We all deal with people on a regular basis who come into our offices in tears or so worried they want to throw in the towel and withdraw from the transaction.

“Only direct personal contact can ease these problems, and this is where estate agents can use their skills as counsellors and mediators to the full.

“Now is the time to trumpet these strengths of the high street agent.

“Let’s take advantage of the flaws in the English legal system which mean that nothing is certain until contracts are exchanged, and use the fact that we have premises where buyers and sellers can come and go as they please and meet the people who are acting for them to our advantage.

“We should all be adding the word ‘Negotiators’ to ‘Estate Agents, Valuers, etc’ to our shop frontages.”

Richard Copus

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19 Comments

  1. Farnaz
    February 5, 2015 at 07:40

    Couldn't agree more. As it is in USA , all about negotiators and they charge 6 percent in that model. Property is the largest investment people make and the proposal is to do it without seeking professional help! What would make sense is make sure negotiators are all licensed. Another question I have for online agency models is how do they propose to get valuations right? Land registry is 3 months delayed before sold prices appear. Interesting article in the times yesterday and it referred to travel and insurance being changed by the Internet revolution. It asked why finance and real estate haven't? These comparisons are vastly different. One involves 1000's of pounds and the other 100,000's of pounds or millions! Why would anyone want to make these investments or disposing of assets of these vast scales without professional advise ! I wouldn't and would certainly want the service I use to protect me further by having indemnity insurance in case they are wrong. Here is the times article:

    http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4342328.ece?

    Anyone remember a central London agent being sued by a seller for under selling for over £100,000? I do and that agent's indemnity paid up! It became apparent when the land registry data was updated 3 months later.

    Good luck to buyers and sellers using online agents and then trying to hold databases responsible that says " we are not agents " when things go wrong!

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  2. clarky46
    February 5, 2015 at 07:45

    100% agree! The other area is trust. Negotiation for a client, then having them trust that you have achieved the best outcome possible. Local reputation is the added extra that keeps people who trust you coming back.

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  3. Robert May
    February 5, 2015 at 08:11

    With every respect to Mr Copus and not wanting to disagree at all with what he is saying about the skills of a good Agent I would have to recommend NOT telling anyone let alone publicly divulging trade secrets, USP's and your tactical advantage over the competition. A magic show isn't magic, the children at the party don't sit there quietly and the parents don't book Marvo the Magician to come back if everyone can knows the rabbit has been rather cruelly juice pressed into the bottom of the op hat. This story is spot on as a summary of some advantages a traditional Agent has over the un-skilled, much cheapness end of the industry but crowing about your advantages tells the competition what they are failing to do, where they need to improve. Don't knock the competition is the most widely mis-understood business quotation; it is not about appearing churlish and superior it is about not telling the competition what they are doing wrong. Do what you do, do it well and make it look easy but don't, for your profit's sake, let on how it is done. I can fully understand why Mr Copus would publish this article to the EYE audience but steering an industry to success has to be far more subtle than this.

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  4. GregWood
    February 5, 2015 at 08:19

    First article I have read today and it's a really positive one! In most cases, online cheap alternatives will never truly compete on this ups and in my opinion it's the greatest tool to win a new instruction against the competition. How many times have we heard that people buy people? We as estate agents are employed to provide a service, not just to take photos and display them on portals. Let's boast about how good we are and what we can do for the client rather than continue to slash our fees and kill our own industry…

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  5. Yorkshire Agent
    February 5, 2015 at 08:33

    Spot on Richard, I could not have put this in better words myself. I hope this article is Tweeted and shared by all readers. Perhaps there is room for you to write weekly on PIE so we can all benefit from your pearls of wisdom.

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    1. Robert May
      February 5, 2015 at 13:39

      Surely this is the sort of stuff one learns and discusses at NAEA branch meetings, a very good reason to join and go to the meetings.  Learning from experienced agents is why I attended  Devon branch meetings even though they were  a good  hour and a half drive away. Richard is right in what he is saying but there is no need to tell those who really didn’t ought to be in the industry what they need to work on especially FOC via EYE or Twitter.

      Until very recently one of my old competitors for  WinMan then Jupix PM had a slight issue with  VAT calculations. Very often my team would lose the initial order to the cheaper offering despite offering a discount.  Strangely after a couple of VAT quarters we would pick up an order and sort what to us was a known issue.We could have pointed out our competitor’s failing and secured a couple of orders before news filtered back to the competition that  somewhere in their system was a hard coded 17.5% Vat rate, a super simple to fix once you understand the problem. Keeping quiet damaged the reputation of the competitor, enhanced our reputation and yielded many un-discounted orders.

      Agency  appears to be about good negotiation skills but  that really is an easy bit and a bit most can learn to imitate.

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      1. Robert May
        February 5, 2015 at 13:40

        That is me scuppered — EYE support/ Tech that is what happens when text is posted from word.

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        1. Nick Salmon, M.D. Property Industry Eye
          February 5, 2015 at 14:00

          We'll take a look at the issue Robert. Suggest that for time being you paste the Word text into Notepad (which removes Word formatting) and then copy and paste it onto the comment. Sorry if it is tedious, but it should work.

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          1. Nick Salmon, M.D. Property Industry Eye
            February 5, 2015 at 14:01

            Seems I have the issue as well! Shall get hold of IT right now.

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          2. Robert May
            February 5, 2015 at 14:12

            Thanks Nick, should be an easy one. I am using Firefox as a browser if that makes a difference.

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            1. Nick Salmon, M.D. Property Industry Eye
              February 5, 2015 at 15:27

              Robert (et al). We have the formatting working correctly now. However we can’t get round what will happen if someone copies and pastes a comment out of Word, so the Notepad route is the one to use. We are however looking to see if we can incorporate a spell check facility in the comment section. Watch this space.

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  6. David Cantell
    February 5, 2015 at 08:44

    A good article, the problem is all agents whether online or on the high street all make the same claims. In the real world there are simply those that do and those that do not. The internet is a source for gathering information, unfortunately the more internet research a consumer explores the more confused they're likely to be. There is a tremendous amount of misinformation and outdated information published. Get 10 valuations and you'll end up with 11 different prices.

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  7. RealAgent
    February 5, 2015 at 08:55

    It is difficult to disagree with Richard and what he says is very relevant for sellers to hear, but the bottom line is that estate agents need a wake up call. Many have been using the internet in a fashion for sometime, but the fact is if you take away a physical office, and staff in the locality, you only have the internet to market yourselves and this is what internet only agencies do better than many of us. Here's the rub though, cost aside (and many online only firms will struggle to make money at their current fee structures) it is more than possible to beat them at their own game. Take a look at your websites, are they truly interactive, do they allow clients to transact a certain amount with you before they are forced into dialogue? These are the things that Internet only firms offer that many estate agents don't. If you do that then all of the other things mentioned come into play.

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  8. smile please
    February 5, 2015 at 09:31

    Great article! – So nice to see traditional agency promoted in the right light, nobody can disagree with the piece. We all know this and Richard is right as an industry we need to promote this more. Good to see a story not about portal wars or a guest writers rather dull irrelevant view of the world / industry. More like this please Ros!

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  9. Trevor Mealham
    February 5, 2015 at 09:49

    Well said Richard Copus………. Budget models are normally budget for a reason. Most lack negotiation skills and cheap selling fees can be a very expensive costing vendors £1,000's

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  10. Property Ear
    February 5, 2015 at 10:09

    Mr Copus has hit the nail smack, bang on the head. The inability to provide this type of service for a few hundred quid will be the undoing of the cheapskates – pay peanuts you get monkeys.

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  11. wilko
    February 5, 2015 at 10:11

    It's nice to be reminded how important the skill of negotiation is in our industry.
    It is a very individual skill that improves with experience, training and time…..the 3 things that online agent employees lack, on the whole.

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  12. nevets61
    February 5, 2015 at 11:43

    What a refreshing and relevant subject as previously mentioned we are always looking for or being sold new ways of providing a better or different service to our potential vendors/ landlords while ignoring the the most important skills we possess.

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  13. Mark Scobey
    February 5, 2015 at 12:51

    There seems to be general agreement to high street estate agencies using negotiation skills as a differentiator against pure-play online agencies.  What I'd like from Richard et al is, how does the estate agent turn this into a demonstrable and evidenced advantage?  Whilst it may be true, is it a proven benefit?

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