Why did you become a LETTING AGENT?
I think you are a letting agent, not because of the money (although that’s nice), you are a letting agent because you honestly believe you are the best in your town, that you will look after the landlords’ property, as if the property were your own? I think you’d like landlords to join you in your crusade in improving the lettings agency scene in your town and do things right by all parties. If you’ve got employees, I bet you’d like them to do more of what you’re hoping they’ll do. Go the extra mile, care more, be more professional.
But if you want to do that, you need to market yourself, your ideas, your beliefs, your passions to every stakeholder in the lettings process (you, your staff, your landlords, your tenants, your future landlords and anyone else that might cross your path). If you want to be a good letting agent, you need to market.
Some of you are really lousy at it, and worse, believe the reason for your failure is some sort of built-in shortfall in our DNA .. Trust me .. it’s not. You, Mr(s) Letting agent are just not good at telling good, honest stories. Yet.
Why do you read this blog? People read newspapers (millions of them every day) without knowing what’s inside. People buy books, some a lot (Mrs W is Amazon’s No.1 client in the East Midlands) In fact, the only way people know for sure if they’re going to like a book is to read that book, at which point it is unnecessary to actually buy the book… but we still buy it. It’s not just books, of course. Landlords buy a car or a stove or a house after just a cursory run-through. We vote for a Local Council candidate without saying, “Why not run the Council for a month and then we’ll see…”
Everyone who buys something from someone selling something pretends that they are rational and careful and thoughtful about the products or services they buy. Actually they’re not. Instead they rely on stories… so landlords rely on stories. That’s why I keep banging on about them. Stories matter you see and they have been told and handed down since time began. It was the first communication method and remains the best.
You read this blog, not because you had already read it and liked it. You probably saw it on Linkedin or Twitter and thought, this guy is interesting. I will have a look. Or it was recommended by a co-worker or you typed in to Google…. ‘How to attract landlords’…. and found it.
It doesn’t matter how you got here but I am honoured hundreds and hundreds of agents come to my blog day in day out, irrespective of whether I post or not on social media, each day to see if I posted something on my blog .. I am truly humbled…. thank you. You come to this blog because of a story you were able to tell yourself. Some of the stories are fiction (does walking under a ladder actually curse you with bad luck?) while others are based on fact (a car with fancy Bluetech-BlueMotion-Ultra engine with 50 MPG is going to need fewer fill-ups than the 4 litre petrol head V12 monster).
A BMW X5 or Audi Q7 isn’t a safer car than a Fiat 500 (we had one of those on our holiday in Italy a couple of weeks .. roller-skate or what … loved it!), but the story the car tells sure makes us feel that way as the driver climbs on board and sits way up high in the German beast. And that young guy you hired as a negotiator, the trustworthy one with the firm handshake and the great references—you’re not really certain he’s not going to embezzle all your profits, but he looked you in the eye and it made you feel good to hire him, didn’t it?
Up until 15 years ago, the letting agent (and estate agent) with the biggest newspaper advertising space, biggest office on the High Street were the biggest agent in town .. but now people (and thus landlords) can skip the adverts, on Sky+, on the internet and ignoring them in the newspaper. In an Internet world, opportunity for letting agents has nothing to do with recreating mass marketing and creating commercials that can’t be skipped. Instead letting agents can use the many dimensions of our media culture to tell more complex stories faster and more effectively than they ever could have using television commercials. Now we know thatmarketing = storytelling, and everything in your lettings agency has to support the story. Everyone is in the marketing department and a letting agency either tells a story that landlords care about, or their story disappears.
Think about it .. how would you like hundreds of landlords visiting your property blog every day to see what YOU had posted? How powerful would that be? .. Very Powerful .. but all you banged on about was what your fees were, how ace you were, how other landlords trusted you, how long you have been open, how long you keep your offices open, how many branches you have, how ARLA registered you are .. my I am even falling asleep typing it … and for heavens sake .. how boring is s8 vs s21?
Landlords don’t care about you, what the name of your firm is, how swanky your offices are, how ARLA registered you are .. all people (and hence landlords) care about is themselves … They aren’t interested in all the rubbish 95% of agents bang on about .. but they are interested in their BTL property and what it’s worth and what is happening in the local property market TO THEIR PROPERTY .. so just talk about that, tell them in a story … stories landlords want to read, tell the story as close to the landlord as possible, so talk about the local property market because 60% of landlords are local to their BTL property …
These guys tell stories to landlords ..
http://mkpropertyblog.blogspot.co.uk/
http://chelmsfordproperty.blogspot.co.uk/
http://www.lettingssimon.blogspot.co.uk/
http://theoxfordpropertyblog.blogspot.co.uk/
http://teddingtonpropertyblog.blogspot.co.uk/
http://crawleyproperty.blogspot.co.uk/
The results won’t be over night, but you will, after you have built up their trust, after a few months have 25, then say have 50 after six months, then hundreds and hundreds and hundreds local landlords hanging on every word you say after a year or so.. you have to admit that is powerful …. what you do with them and how you get them to contact you .. well that’s the easy bit. Remember my mate in the East Midlands, whose idea this blog was (I didn’t invent it and credit where it’s due) increased his turnover from £450k pa to £650k pa in a couple of years .. come on .. what is stopping you?
If you want a chat about all this, pick up the phone , the number is down the side of the blog. I can do the hard part for you (write the stories) if you and your team can do the rest ..
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