I’m sat on a train to Manchester, having responded to emails, and I now find myself looking through social media posts about estate agency.
Reading comments about our industry and what the consumer wants.
Reading the ever-increasing number of comments advising businesses on technology and systems, and where they should focus; making comparisons about online, hybrid and traditional services.
Why over recent years do we keep seeing the same old rubbish just published in different ways?
Our industry has always had to adapt to change, just like any other environment. Yet the core basic principles have changed very little.
Change is inevitable: it can be embraced, offer exciting business development opportunities and improve customer experience.
However, to some, change is viewed as unnecessary and uncomfortable. People like to make change difficult, hard to understand and implement.
Our industry has continued to change in many ways, through marketing techniques, technology and most importantly our clients’ expectations.
I know many good estate agents throughout the UK, but equally I am aware of some very poor agents. The difference between a good estate agent and a poor estate agent can be the combination of many different factors.
In my opinion there are core basics that need to provide the foundation of any industry and this is especially relevant to estate agency.
Technology plays a key role in everyone’s life and allows a much more flexible way to engage and transact within any industry.
Our industry has many fantastic technology providers who all help agents to provide different services.
We need to understand the role both technology and property portals play in helping today’s estate agents engage and provide services to their consumers.
Our clients want speed, efficiency, transparency, and an easy flexible method to engage with our service 24 hours a day.
Today’s estate agent must embrace change and provide everything a consumer may require; your consumer could be young or old and prefer very different methods of engaging with you.
The race to the bottom on fees in my opinion is a huge mistake.
It is impossible to invest in and develop people, services and technology on fewer transaction levels and lower fees per transaction.
All the above is nothing that hasn’t been said before, but what we really don’t want to hear is that the reason an agent is struggling is simple – that they have lost direction, that they don’t want change, and more importantly that they fail to understand what their clients require and how to best deliver their service.
We are not all the same, we work in different communities, different markets, we face different challenges, and we offer very different skill sets across different areas of our industry.
It’s time we all stop blaming areas we have no control over. We don’t control our competitors, we can’t stop change and development. However, we can stop disrupting our own businesses, we can change, embrace all the best elements of our industry and understand our clients.
We need to diversify, engage with our clients at different times in different areas, provide more services, and have confidence in our business’s direction.
Be the estate agent of today and tomorrow.
Most estate agency businesses have been built on very solid foundations. These include excellent local knowledge and commitment to local communities and high levels of customer service.
The most important factor in any success, whether in sport, business or any industry, is having the right people.
We need people who live and breathe our industry, people who want to provide their clients with exceptional service, people who are proud of the brand they represent and people who have great business leaders – providing clear direction, transparency, training, confidence and support.
People are the foundation of our success.
If you build a great brand and culture, provide great service and adapt to change, invest both time and money in becoming the very best you can possible be, combining technology with personal service and re-establish your business to the market leader within your area, you will be the agent of choice.
We face continued change, more challenges within the industry and certainly a difficult period over the next 12 months, but there is plenty of good support and advice available. Just don’t allow yourself to be uncertain.
You need to understand your market, not someone else’s.
Be aware of competitors (but not afraid or reactionary to them), decide your company direction, and provide confident and transparent leadership.
Everything you do impacts each single thing you do.
Kevin Scrupps is managing director of Pygott & Crone, with residential offices in Lincolnshire. We are delighted to welcome him to the EYE panel of regular contributors
Nice one Kevin!
I totally agree with everything you say in this piece, particularly…
“Be aware of competitors (but not afraid or reactionary to them), decide your company direction, and provide confident and transparent leadership.”
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Welcome Kevin – a good article but I am really concerned by your first few words! “Since “I’m sat” is passive, it means that someone put you in a sitting position, but that someone was not necessarily you, yourself; whereas “I’m sitting” means that you ‘sat‘ yourself.” I do hope you are not being unnecessaily man-handled!!
(The winks and smiley faces have been removed!)
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Now that has put a picture in my head
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‘The race to the bottom on fees in my opinion is a huge mistake.’
Amen to that! Who’s listening though? I see agents under-cutting the likes of Purplebricks with NO SALE – NO FEE agreements – utter insanity. Agents pushing low fees and proclaiming ‘High Street service at online prices‘; err no, you’re deluding yourself and your clients if you think that’s true. The online/FSBO market has always been there, it always will be but it won’t expand beyond the historic 5% benchmark – why look to compete with a small sector of the market whose client’s you probably wouldn’t want in any case?
Only offer fees that can generate you a profit, any less and you’re on the way to oblivion. Be confident of higher fees, show prospective clients you are worth it and pack your sales offering with every sort of marketing not just online. Don’t be that person that insists on being the last valuation just to undercut the others on fee. If the vendor is so focused on the selling fee being as low as possible, you might not want them as a client.
Good businesses with great staff can still do well even in a slowing market.
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Completely agree Property Pundit. I’ve always said I’d rather have half the stock at twice the fee (work smarter, not harder!), although sadly managers and directors of the businesses I worked in didn’t see it that way, instead focusing on number of instructions rather than generating income, preferring the listers to overprice and slash the fee just to get the instruction. By going for a higher fee and sticking to your guns and selling your service rather than your fee, you can generate the same fee income with lower staffing overheads, therefore it is a whole lot more profitable. Interestingly the number one agent every month for listings and sales for well over two years in one of the areas I worked in also charges the highest fee by a country mile and always has, even when cold starting the business whereas others are scrapping over the other properties, in some cases for less than half the fee the top agent is charging (I’ve known some of them go as low as 0.4% to get the instruction!). Absolute madness! And in my experience the vendors you give an ultra low fee to always end up being the biggest pain in the a*se to deal with!
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We are a small one branch independent business and we did exactly this; Our competitors were racing to the bottom to compete with online only agents, lowering their presentation and marketing budgets and cutting staff / wages. Our plan was to hold / increase our fees with the emphasis being on quality and tangible results. Through a comprehensive rebrand, excellent online marketing strategy and some decent hires, have tripled our sales to an average 30 per month and taken market leader status in lettings for our local patch by quite some margin. It is actually quite astonishing just how much of an impact branding, marketing and a strong online presence combined with excellent staff can improve a business. The joy of being small is being able to react quickly to the market and implement necessary changes to get ahead of the competition. The corporates, multi branches and old school agents within our local area just seem content to fade into the background… and as for Purplebricks… 🙂 Good article, just hoping our competitors continue to do what they’re doing!
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Well done!
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Great article. The temptation to engage in the “race to the bottom” has contributed to the erosion in agents fees. Looking at some agents stock and fees it just cannot be viable.
I converse with many estate agents and I often find some are neither aware nor afraid of their competitors which is a dangerous combination!
Good article Kevin
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