Inspiration

Accelerating your Reputation

How you can take pro-active steps to harness the power of your reputation, rather than waiting for it to follow years of good service.

Many Estate Agents think that their business will be judged on its level of service, or assume that their excellent sales record will in itself attract more business. Whilst not altogether incorrect, these are dangerous assumptions. New vendors, by definition, have not experienced your service before. They are therefore attracted not by the actual service you deliver, but by what they perceive you will deliver. In the quest to drive business forward, perception is as important as reality.

Whilst reputation is not necessarily an accurate judgement of your service, a good reputation is the platform from which your sales will happen more easily. Sadly, estate agents start with a disadvantage – their collective reputation! We all know that much of this generic dislike is probably based more on the frustrations and anxieties associated with the emotive business of moving house, and the misdemeanours of a small minority, than a collective will to upset our clients.

When Gerald Ratner famously described his stores’ jewellery products as “crap”, he proactively mismanaged his reputation and created a perception shift without any actual change in the products he sold. The public perceived the products to be of inferior quality and, even if they had been made of the finest materials, it was the perception, not the reality, which kept people out of Ratner’s stores for a decade.

Too many Estate Agents work hard for years in the hope that a good reputation will follow by default. For most of us, our business targets are measured in months or even weeks – not years, yet we fail to be proactive in the management of our reputation. Progressive Estate Agency businesses go out of their way to ensure that their reputation precedes them. Once this has been achieved, new business can be secured more readily stimulating expansion and prompting organic growth.

Reputation is a source of significant competitive advantage, and in a crowded marketplace it is often the single element that differentiates one agency from another. As the market tightens and Estate Agents aim to reduce risk, it is reputation that will see companies through the leaner times. Swift action now can rapidly augment your reputation as perceptions can be proactively engineered in order to “fast-track” your agency right in front of your prospects’ noses. In marketing terms, your reputation can never die of exposure.

The biggest problem that most Estate Agents currently face is a lack of decent instructions, and it is instructions that attract applicants, not reputation. More instructions = more ads and boards; more ads and boards = more applicants; more applicants = more sales.

Paradoxically, the problem has been exacerbated by the efficiency of the Internet, which in one respect has been counter-productive in promoting Estate Agents to their target audience, which should be vendors, not applicants.

This is because potential vendors used to see the agent’s advertisements in the press, and this played a significant part in the agent’s marketing efforts. Today Estate Agents who simply post their vacancies on line forget that, whilst this is great for buyers, it is useless for exposure to prospective vendors – the people who actually pay your fees. If you have fallen into this trap, you may now be suffering from under-exposure to prospects, and only have cold calling and your reputation on which to rely for new instructions.

So we have to look at other ways of generating meaningful exposure that will get clients knocking on your door, rather than you on theirs.

One of the best-proven ways of doing this effectively is to secure relevant media coverage. In other words, get your business regularly mentioned editorially in support of your press or on-line advertising. This does not just mean advertising properties “for free” in the “advertorial” coverage you receive in return for your regular ad-spend with a publication. It means offering innovative advice and newsworthy opinion, and can be incredibly powerful.

Firstly, the right publication can position you precisely in front of your target audience. Secondly, unlike advertising, the tacit endorsement of the publication conveys instant credibility and positions you as an authority on property sales. This can make major inroads into positively moulding your reputation around your aspirations. A car manufacturer may spend hundreds of thousands of pounds advertising a vehicle in the glossy Sunday magazines, but how much more valuable would it be if Jeremy Clarkson were to rave about it in just one column centimetre? PR such as this can instantly boost your business like a shot in the arm, and provide lasting direct and indirect benefits to your reputation.

However, a word of warning before you go knocking down the doors of your favourite journalists or local newspaper editor. Press coverage can be extremely profitable, and should be embraced, but Estate Agents are often ill-prepared when the time comes and do not maximise their exposure. There is little point in getting your name in the press if it has no meaning or relevance to your business. You need to consider exactly what your business stands for; identify your core values and carefully define those key messages that differentiate you from the competition.

A good starting point is to prompt a creative “round table” discussion of junior as well as senior employees about the personality of your company. Each should make contributions about the values, ethics, methods and processes that drive your agency. Consider the weaknesses of your competitors and strengthen your own attributes. How can you add other dimensions to the buying/selling experience? Why are your staff proud to work for you?

This personality platform provides the base from which a distinctive approach can be defined. If an agency is not distinctive, it is simply average; and in terms of reputation, average is simply not good enough.

These core values and key messages now need to be refined and developed into a few meaty phrases (or “soundbites” in PR speak) that encapsulate your agency’s distinguishing style. These can be integrated with any announcements or comment on newsworthy property and lifestyle issues which you should offer editors, or be articulated whenever a journalist asks for your views on the housing market.

Editorial coverage that includes your comment on the issues of the day can help develop your reputation as an authority in your market, as your news and views will appear credible and important. By providing editors and journalists with advice and opinion that will be of interest to their readers, you are likely to secure frequent and meaningful coverage, and it is this regular, relevant exposure in addition to your advertising that is the key to managing and accelerating your reputation.

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© Richard Rawlings 2010
Richard Rawlings is the founding director of Estate Agency Insight, which specialises in helping estate agencies harness opportunity through innovative method, marketing, publicity, and training. He can be contacted at or on 0845 838 1354.

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