Threatening Estate Agents
The reason it’s so difficult to have a considered conversation about Estate Agency in the 21st Century is that estate agents feel threatened
.. but I am not talking about being threatened by online agents, nor am I talking about overvaluing nor a lack of free valuations and instructions – no it runs deeper than that – a lot deeper than that .. estate agents feel threatened because it feels like the whole world is criticising of our convictions, our beliefs .. our faith in estate agency as a whole.
Convictions, belief and faith are the foundations that keeps our estate agency career together (be you a boss or employee), in fact those attributes keep our families together, our relationships together .. because without them – what the hell gets you up in the morning?
Whilst convictions, belief and faith are the keystone of humankind; we can’t live without them. …Estate Agency is very different from convictions, belief and faith.
Our convictions, belief and faith are what makes us human .. estate agency is not human… it’s a job. We can bring our values, our convictions, our belief and faith to our job, into our job .. but aren’t the job itself.
We can always replace you as a Neg or Valuer or Branch manager .. but we can never replace you as a person.
Put plainly, estate agency is just a set of procedures and rules to do a job by (for now).
Those procedures and rules are quite simple…
- Get the proper certificates from the Govt regarding Money laundering and a Redress scheme + all the legal paper work
- Get yourself on a portal
- Get a website / boards / email address / camera / tape measure
- Do some marketing to attract people to your agency for free valuations
- Turn up to the free valuations,
- Which turn into more instructions,
- Which in turn, turn into more sales
- Meaning more exchanges
- Thus more profit/commission for you
- Go to No. 4 and Repeat
So when I said in my last article, 80% of Estate Agents deserved to be made extinct .. I wasn’t criticising you as a person, I wasn’t questioning your values or convictions, nor was pulling down your beliefs or slagging off your faith in you as a person ….. all I was doing was being harsh on point No.4 (of the ten) procedures / rules above
…the rules you (currently) live by, the job rules, the estate agent rules and procedures .. nothing to do with your values, your convictions, your belief or faith.
You see, I have an issue with Point 4 – “Do some marketing to attract people to your agency for free valuations” .. that’s all I bang on about.
I am non-conformist on the way most estate agents work and I set out 3 years ago to challenge just one of those procedures/rules (Point No 4 in the list above), I set out to challenge the status quo on how most Estate Agents have marketed themselves by since the 1980’s (ie Point 4) .. because I believe the old 1980’s ways of attracting new homeowners and landlords to your agency (i.e. marketing yourself), which are still being used to today are from the last century and should stay there.
People (and that includes potential house sellers and landlords) don’t like to be sold to. People – they don’t care about you, your estate agency firm, your services, the awards you have won, the number of offices you have, the fact you have been open since 2BC … and if you don’t believe, if a new solicitors practice rocked up into your town and started talking about their solicitors practice, their solicitor services, the number of offices they had or they have been solicitors since 1860 .. would you care – no of course not .. so why should anyone care about your estate agency?
Of course, your Estate Agency procedures and rules (i.e. your job) go together with your own values, convictions, belief and faith as a person (i.e. you) go together . … hand in hand .. but they are different. (i.e. you and the job role)
Men especially, judge other men by their job, their job title, company car and perceived earnings … and my beliefs on Point 4 and the way I rant on, standing on my soapbox, is from position that isn’t the normal view of most Estate Agents.
But with my soapbox articles, I am not judging you as a person, I am not criticising the person inside, …. All I am doing is this, as a fellow human, sharing my beliefs, that we as an estate agency profession need to change the way we market ourselves (again – Point 4 of the rules above). With a passion, I believe we as an industry need to change one small element of the rules and procedures in the way we operate to make ourselves more relevant to the 21st century… more relevant to our potential clients (the homeowners and landlords)
.. but change is scary.
No one wants to look at prat or stupid by bring the first one.
I know, I was derided and ridiculed at the start. I left a well paid, well respected job because I believed what believed … but you don’t need to be alone nor the first one. 400 fellow estate and letting agents have done the same .. changed .. not a huge change .. just changed the way they do Point 4 of rules/procedures above …
They haven’t changed their convictions, their values, their beliefs or faith… but have used those very same attributes (values/convictions/ beliefs/faith in themselves ) to be open to a new idea. (the idea that there is another way to market yourself to get more free valuations ie Point 4) because ..
When you fall in blindly in love with the estate agency system itself, you lose the ability to grow, you lose the ability to see the bigger picture, and that bigger picture is you. Values, convictions, belief and faith is what you are, whilst estate agency is what you do.
Surely, if you are the person you think are … a free minded, open minded person, with values, convictions, belief and faith … who just happens to work in estate agency instead of an estate agent robot, following orders .. then you have to open to new ideas on those rules and procedures.
If Estate Agency comprises the rules you follow (i.e. the job) .. then your values, convictions, faith and belief (i.e. you as a person) is demonstrated by the actions you take .. and one of those potential actions means questioning the rules and procedures of the job, doesn’t it?
That’s all I do .. question the way us estate agents market ourselves
Question is .. Are a robot that follows the rules and procedures because that is the way we have always done it .. or are you a open minded person, with values, convictions, belief and faith?
If it’s the second .. open your mind to this 21st century way to marketing yourself as a Estate Agent .. watch these videos and tell me your thoughts.
By watching all these videos, I hope you can see why the 400 other agents who have adopted the new way of marketing themselves are substantially growing their estate and lettings agency businesses using the technique.
kind regards
Christopher Watkin
UK’s No.1 Teacher of Business Generation for Estate and Letting Agents
christopher@christopherwatkin.co.uk
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