Countrywide’s long-term recovery plan, set to be revealed with its interim results on Thursday, should be eagerly awaited by estate agents across the country.

For it is in all our vested interests to ensure this behemoth stops lumbering towards self-destruction and gets its business back on track and turning a decent profit.

This giant beast still has a £200m debt mountain – with its six lending banks breathing down its neck.

The company is said to be planning a rights issue to raise £100m to help it trade out of its problems – though why anyone thinks it would be a good investment is beyond me.

Its shares have been dropping like the proverbial stone after four profit warnings in eight months.

They are now around 50p – down from a 700p high. Hardly the thrill that its management team needs right now.

But even a wounded animal like Countrywide still has its claws into a number of chains and still does one in five mortgage surveys, so if things went pop, many of us would also be affected in some way too.

Chains would take longer to go through and there would be an unseemly scurry for their stock.

Suppliers wouldn’t get paid – and might well have cause for concern if Countrywide tries to write off its debt in any way.

Lenders may well be worried about Countrywide undertaking its surveys. After all, if anything goes wrong, whose insurance will they be claiming on?

All eyes, therefore, will be scrutinising the detail of its new action plan to see whether ‘Back to basics’ really is making a difference in the digital world we now live in.

Is the company still blanket bombing neighbourhoods with spray and pray leaflets or has it embraced and invested in technology and social media, improving its back office systems in the process?

It’s no small investment: I’ve just earmarked £6m over the next three years in new technology and systems, which will ensure that every member of my team has their office in their pocket!

I believe the only way that Countrywide can get back on track is to consolidate its brands, focusing on those that have the most potential, including Hamptons, Slater Hogg in Scotland, Taylors in the midlands, and Mann & Co/Bairstow Eves in the south-east.

It needs to close or sell any branch that isn’t profitable.

It still has a good property management book and it is being kept afloat by its financial services, but its lack of stock and under-investment in marketing has become self-perpetuating, illustrating how businesses such as ours need to be run by estate agents, not accountants.

As for its staff, surely that’s its most important asset? So wouldn’t you invest in your staff and their training and development if you want to hold on to them?

I’ve heard that Countrywide has laid off all its trainers, so that regional managers have to do the job. It’s the worst thing you can do: surely now is the time to bolster up staff training?

I’ve said all along that estate agency is a people business. Instead, Countrywide focused on looking after their acquisitions.

If you look after your people, the business will take care of itself.

Online sales still not making money

I remain intrigued by the ongoing trumpeting by internet hybrid agents about their success while their business models remain flawed and they continue to make a loss.

Surely the main marker of success is profit, not how many properties you have sold?

And how, by growing the business, are they going to achieve economies of scale when they will still have the same costs associated with selling each property – particularly when they are throwing huge sums of cash at mass marketing advertising campaigns?

If these agents would be more transparent over their figures, we could then collectively assert how many sales claimed by them had actually been completed by other agents after their disgruntled sellers had switched allegiance.

I would expect these hybrids to have made real headway by now, yet they sit at supposedly just 8% of the market. But even that statistic I question.

* Paul Smith is CEO of Spicerhaart