It’s All About Calibre

Getting the instructions you want in spite of your staff!

Arguably the most important function of an estate agency director or manager is to get the best out of your agency’s staff. You employed them as an investment, and that investment has to deliver a return - quickly, consistently and with minimum hassle. Employment is a huge overhead, but it is the one most likely to generate sustainable growth. Indeed, many businesses are measured by the number of staff they employ. Get it wrong, and you could go out of business fast.

Most agency directors and managers know that if they themselves went out on a marketing proposal meeting, appraisal, instruction (whatever you call it, but please never a “valuation”) they would probably be quite likely to win the instruction. Why? Because they bring with them authority, credibility, experience, seniority, gravitas, and understanding simply by being who they are. In other words, they are of the right calibre.

During the course of my work as an estate agency consultant and trainer, I am often asked how to get the very best out of agency staff. My answer is usually very simple - hire the best in the first place! This may sound trite, but the above adjectives that describe the attributes of an agency director simply cannot be taught. They are inherent in the person.

In the real world, or at least in the UK, where many agents remain “average” or even low-calibre, the alternative is to at least create an environment where these agents can flourish, because it would take a better trainer than me to make radical inroads into their inborn calibre.

For example, if I were thinking of selling my house, I feel pretty sure that I would have a better first impression of the successful 48 year old lady who runs her own agency and has been in the area for years and knows everyone, than I would of the kipper-tied, white-socked 21-year-old first-jobber who appears more interested in getting my business than in helping me to move house.

However, the lower-calibre individual would stand a better chance of impressing me if he represented an agency that was clearly outstanding in other ways. A highly distinctive agency that was my preferred agency of choice before he even walked through my door. Whereas the “high-calibre” individual might just fall into the trap of relying solely on their own personality (which may well have proved successful in the past) the progressive agency has a strategy that provides a foundation for all their customer-facing staff.

The strategy is based on having a systematic approach that wows the customer despite the quality of the actual agent (within reason). This would include innovative ongoing prospecting activity, powerful social media engagement, meaningful local visibility and radical client meeting methods. All these work together to create such distinction in your business that the client begins to view other agents as simply mediocre. It also gives the client far more to judge you on, rather than just your valuation and your fee.

Of course in an ideal world we would have both - an amazing instruction-winning system, combined with high-calibre agents. The system is easy, but if you can’t train calibre, how can you hire high-calibre agents?

The answer is probably to pay them a fortune! Yet with fees in this country being so incredibly low, this could be a challenge. So put your fees up! Double them. I know dozens of agent who have done precisely that. And amazingly (or perhaps not so) their market share has risen at the same time! The link may sound curious but it has been proven time and time again across all sizes and styles of agency. And it stands to reason. Look at these two scenarios:

Firstly, you have a cheap-fee agency - say 1%, and you seek to compete in a town where other agents also charge more or less the same. So on fees you have no particularly compelling advantage. You recruit average agents, advertise in an average way, and your office probably looks average (although you might think it’s amazing, believe me, most people are not really interested in estate agents’ offices)! Why would anyone do business with you as opposed to any other agent in town?

The second scenario is that you charge higher fees, say 2% or 3%. You employ experienced well-presented, educated, persuasive, high-calibre staff and can afford to train them to use the latest most effective agency techniques. You can afford to invest in the best in agency marketing techniques, you regularly use strategically delivered, professionally designed, prospecting mailers that deliver a 7% response as opposed to the usual 1-1.5%, and your pre-listing pack is mind-blowing.

You have now created such distinction that you are the obvious agent of choice in a sea of mediocrity. And just as people will pay more for what they perceive a Mercedes to be than they will for a Fiat, so they will perceive better value in your service and the fee is not the issue you might currently think it is.

Those sellers who are committed to sell will not let fees stand in their way if they are sufficiently impressed. Those who are not especially motivated to sell will probably want too much money anyway and will appoint a cheaper agent. Fine! Leave them to it. If it were my agency, I would only want committed sellers quoting a saleable price and paying a decent fee anyway. Surely that’s a healthy, effective, successful business! And market share tends to favour such businesses.

If you wish to discuss any of the issues raised in this article or would like to attend the latest 'Raising Fees Instantly” seminars around the UK, please contact me or check out the open seminars here.