Do you deserve to be called out?
Do you ever drive to work in the morning or on your way to an appt, see a rival agent’s board and wonder why on earth you weren’t ‘called out to value that one’? It’s in your patch and you’ve sold other properties around the place. You even did a mailshot there recently, so why did that vendor dismiss your agency in favour of your competitors?
Do you really know why? Of course there’s many reasons why it may have happened, not least because that vendor was recommended, or they are buying through your rival. Maybe you’ve resigned yourself to the fact that it’s simply because the other agent has more marketing spend..?
Ok, but if it’s happening once too often it should be a cause for concern. More importantly, is there anything you can do that can minimise the chances of it happening too often in the future?
You’ll know that impressing vendors enough to make contact with you take time and money. The seemingly never endless arms race to stand out from the crowd means that you can’t win ‘em all – but there may be more simple solutions, easy and low cost to apply, that can be swiftly addressed to win extra business in your locale.
You may wish to start here. I’m frequently amazed when I speak to agents that many don’t fully utilise what effectively is their main shop window – the two main (possibly three) portals. It’s not only buyers who are viewing your property listings every minute of every day, but also prospective vendors. These are the ones who in the future will be making the call to value their home. Will it be you? Do you provide what your competition provides? Ultimately, ask yourself this tough question, given all the competition in your area, and what they provide for their clients to sell their homes, would you call yourself out to a valuation?
Or do you fall well short?
Adding value for little cost
Given the cost of the main portals, why is it that so many agents don’t fully utilise the freebies that they allow you to use. I’m thinking specifically of two small tabs underneath the main images: floor plans and virtual tours. We’re constantly being told that vendors value these things, so if you’re not providing them in your marketing mix, why not?
Cost is not really a consideration these days. The interweb has made providing both these ‘add ons’ a simple low cost operation. Take floorplans for example. Once the preserve of upmarket property, there is now widely available software (that you ill probably already know about) that allows you to create simple plans in minutes. They’re not full architect drawing of course, but straight forward illustrations to indicate the layout. Too hard? Well, you take the measurements anyway, and if you’re really disinclined to do it yourself, there are online providers that will, for a couple of quid, convert a simple sketch into a finished plan, all ready for upload to the portals.
Virtual tours can be even easier to produce these days. Prices have become very affordable in recent years and you can now order ‘pro voice’ tours for any home for less than the cost of putting a board up. ‘Video style’ presentations using the images you already have, are becoming much more common and are hugely effective at both impressing vendors and winning instructions. Many larger / corporate agencies offer these types of videos as a matter of course. Why? Because vendors like them and they win instructions. That’s a very good reason. And, like floorplans, they also show your prospective future clients looking on the portals that you do more to market a property. Their property!
So, as we draw to a close and head into 2016, before you spend a small fortune on a newspaper spread, invest £100s on boards to promote the local fete, or embark on a major leaflet printing & delivering campaign, that may or may not produce much if any results, it might be worth just stepping back, go back to basics and look at what you can do to help enhance the marketing of a client’s property, and get them the best price.
After all, that’s exactly what your future vendors are looking for.
Want to get great value additional marketing that wins business working for your agency?Drop me an email paul@realsale.co.uk
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