An agent took to Twitter to comment on a touting letter sent by Martin & Co, expressing unease that it named other local agents.
Andrew & Co was one of several agents in Ashford, Kent, named in the letter, which has a chart showing that Martin & Co apparently sell more of their listings than any other agent.
Andrew & Co tweeted: “Manipulation at its finest! Nice way to upset your competitors!”
At the weekend, Martin & Co had 58 properties listed on Rightmove, of which 16 are available.
Andrew & Co currently has 85 sales properties on its books, with 52 under offer.
Comments (12)
Their stats are baloney. I know. We are listed here too and they are massively incorrect and setting themselves up for a fall!
Ignoring the touting element of the letter and ignoring the bar graph who else read the letter and spotted a more obvious mistake and one that gives an informed vendor reason not to instruct Martin & Co?
Come on Peebee you have seen me go belly to belly with Peter Hendry on this subject before.
If I worked for the MAC (Ashford) competition I know I would be delighted rather than upset. Apologies to whoever wrote this letter and whoever trained whoever wrote this letter but this is down at the passive intermediary end of Estate Agency.
What ought to be a very proud boast has been turned into a bit of an embarrassment, not for the touting but the naivety and content of the letter itself.
I’m with you all the way, Robert – I just wonder how many others are.
I suppose it’s fairly obvious, in fairness. A glaring error, in fact.
That bright blue doesn’t go with the colour-scheme of the rest of the print on the paper at all.
I wouldn’t instruct them on principle if that was their best attempt at impressing me with pwetty colours…
Sorry but I don’t believe Haart in Ashford only sell 30% of what they take on…It just isn’t possible in this market. ANY agents can use stats to make their share/success seem better than anyone else eg if you you are the only agent to sell in a road you can claim to be 100% better than your local competitors.
In my view the “bar chart” “pie chart” touting is never 100% truthful.
Poor old Haarts – last again!!!
I’m a Martin & Co franchisee on the receiving end of a not dissimilar tactic – a competitor mystery shopped local agents regarding landlord fees, and has a table up on his website showing that (from the ones he surveyed) his landlord fees are the cheapest and mine are the dearest.
Fair nuff – that’s what competition is about. I don’t get upset by it.
Incidentally, my response on the rare occasion anyone comments on this particular agent’s survey is “Yup, they’re the cheapest, we’re the best, which would you like?”.
Tell Ian you should be in charge of training Steve!
If those percentages are accurate, then I don’t see what the problem is?
Bragging rights are bragging rights 🙂
That’s the bloody trouble with today- far to many statistics.
Note to Andrew & Co – need to explain “manipulation”.
According to the figures, M&C are only stating the truth – ish…
Afternoon Peebee, it is true they are telling one truth but are you overlooking the glaring mis-truth? The one I would certainly use to chop the legs off any competition who tried that on me.
I am well aware of the ‘mis-truth’ you are referring to, Robert – but I haven’t overlooked it. I simply stated the fact that M&C’s claim to have the highest ratio of sales to listings wasn’t a fallacy.
As you rightly state, however, an Agent worth their salt would not only have an answer to the claim – they would use this in such a way as to make them wish they’d never sent out the darn letters in the first place.
Interestingly, I’ve just had a quick look at the RM stats for Ashford. 910 properties in total (excluding ‘New Homes’); only 370 currently fully available for sale. That means that 59.3% of the entire market are Under Offer (or long-sold – who knows…). According to M&C, only five out of fourteen named Agents have in excess of that percentage – either they have more than 58.8% of the market between them or the figures might not be as accurate as they are portrayed to be…
… or, of course, my statistic above could be just as fictitious as the vast majority! ;o)