Inspiration

Prospecting – The Rowing Boat Principle

Profitable strategic marketing initiatives for the taking.

Richard Rawlings

My column last month focused on “Decent Exposure” and the importance of influencing your target market’s perception of you using local newspapers in a more intelligent way than simply advertising properties for sale.

I would like to expand on the theme of strategic publicity, which I believe is one of the most powerful yet underrated forms of agency development , using the metaphor of rowing a boat. When you row, you put most of your energy into pulling the oars towards you, which in turn propels your boat forwards. However, you must also spend half your time pushing the oars away from you without any direct benefit. One activity without the other is fruitless, but together, especially when a rhythm has been established, the effect can be dramatic.

The rowing analogy reflects many agents’ attitude towards prospecting. All they do is push. I’m not just talking about “pushy” agents, but agents who, in the absence of anything smarter, simply promote features of their services to their prospects. Sooner or later your progress through the water wanes, as you never stopped pushing and recognised the benefit of the pull. Instead of pushing our services onto our prospective clients, we should equally be pulling them in. In other words, creating an environment where they will willingly choose to contact us, without our having to push ourselves upon them.

It could be argued that we shouldn’t be pushing at all, especially as our services are likely to contain almost imperceptible differences to those of our competitors. Free Valuation (really?), No Sale No Fee (gosh), Full Colour Photos (amazing – how do they do it?), Global Exposure Via The Internet (wow). These features seldom connect to tangible benefits, and do very little to encourage your prospect to pick up the phone and call you round for a valuation. Perceived service becomes a commodity, and then we wonder why fee level becomes an issue.

If spent 50% of our marketing energies working on the “Pull” our prospects would proactively want to do business with us. Why? Because they would see the value in what we do, and they could understand how it relates to them in context.

For example, many agents send out mail drops that are substantially features-led (the Push). Whilst this is OK for brand awareness, it does little to help your prospects relate to you. Believe it or not, some people actually get annoyed to receive yet another estate agent’s mailer through their door! We don’t want to annoy people; nor do we don’t want their indifference. We want their trust and co-operation.

A “Pull-led” mailer does not list all the features of your business that you think are impressive (unless they are extraordinary). A Pull-led mailer contains something of real value or interest to the reader. It might be a mortgage early-repayment chart, or advice about preparing your house for sale; how to work with removal companies, when to sell, how to arrive at the correct valuation, seasonal gardening tips or recipes, whether to extend or not, etc.. The list is bursting with possibilities.

Going several stages further, why not enhance your mailer into a fully-fledged newsletter delivered personally by email? This is the next dimension in estate agency prospecting, and I will be speaking about the opportunities presented by e-prospecting, at the (r)Evolutionary Estate Agency seminar at the Savoy on 8th October and the Property Computer Show at the Business Design Centre on 14th and 15th.

In a nutshell, we know that most of the buying public now uses email regularly. Whilst stats will vary from company to company, we also know that most buyers who register with an agency in an area are unlikely to buy through them. Yet the buyer certainly has some sort of connection with the area. Perhaps they have friends in the area; they work there, have children at school or sincerely want to live there, and will do so eventually, with or without your help. The minute they move in – they become your future prospects. Their house is sitting on a conveyor belt that will deliver it to you for sale in the months/years to come.

So why not start influencing prospects now by communicating your newsletters by email? You already have their email address (if not, why not?) It’ll cost you peanuts as email is virtually free, and you can as easily send 10,000 as you can 100. Just imagine, each month a significant percentage of the local population receives an interesting newsletter in their inbox about issues affecting them, from you. It could be the local school rugby results, what’s on at the theatre, local weather stats, etc. combined with a handful of properties sold and for sale. The email is of course branded with your agency livery, but can also be highly tailored to the prospect’s preferences and immediate district.

This may seem like a huge long-term venture. Well, it is. But imagine you had started this three years ago. Where would you be now? I believe the first agency in each area to harness this tool will be the agency that makes the greatest inroads into local market share, and they will retain a loyal and sustainable client base.

However, people are unlikely to want to receive an e-newsletter from more than one source in the same way that they tend not to buy all the local newspapers, but one favourite publication. So it is critical to be first mover in your area.

It is likely that progressive agencies will outsource the management of their data for practical reasons, and please feel free to contact me for assistance with this if you are interested, as there are also several indirect benefits that space prevents me from sharing here.

Most agents can capture applicants’ email addresses. Most agents don’t bother, and if they do, they don’t actually do anything with them. Progressive agents will recognise the huge potential to embrace simply technology in order to make major inroads into their market share.

If you want to score, you need to pull !

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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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