Estate Agents : One Simple Trick (thats free and takes 3 mins) To Improve Your Conversion Rate
Some Estate agents boast about having really high conversion rates of 75% to 85%. These listers consider themselves the daddy listers, the big cheese valuers, the mutts-nutts of Valuers. Other Estate Agents have really low conversion rates of 20% to 25% of the free vals / mkt appraisals they go to. These listers/valuers wish their conversion rates were higher
Recognise anyone that fall into those two groups? Which group of those would you rather be in? Which group has the problems, the issues?
Both in fact, both of these groups of Valuers/Listers have a comparable problem… they both need to improve
The 75% to 85% Converters
You generally find one of two things to be true when someone has a conversion rate in the 75% or 85% range.
The first reason their conversion rate might be so high is because they only put the free vals/market appraisals they actually list on to the system. I know many agents whoused to do that! That is one way to have a nice high conversion rate, but it’s dreadful for improving your performance.
The second reason some Valuers / Listers have high conversion rates is because they never compete for any listing that is difficult to win. They cherry pick the free vals, charm the Neg’s into ensuring they get the cream of the crop of FV’s and Market Appraisals. If it’s going to be highly competitive, they dip out, make up a Doctors Appt and give it to a colleague to do.
The 20% to 25% Converters
Valuers with low conversion rates struggle to win listings. Bagging listings is difficult, and these Valuers haven’t yet developed the skills necessary to compete and win. For them, the opportunities they compete for are too difficult to conversion.
These Valuers need to improve as Valuers before they can improve their conversion rates. They need to develop the attributes of good estate agents, and they need to learn all the necessary skills.
Conversion rates is a single measure, and it does tell a story, but does it tell the right story?
Your conversion rate may be too high, in which case you should pursue listings that will stretch you. It may also be too low, in which case you need to focus on your growth and development… but , all this talk of conversion rates as judge of whether a Valuer/Lister is any good is something that is, in my humble opinion, a misnomer (ie a wrong or inaccurate way of measuring performance)
The Real Conversion rate
The real conversion rate that every Valuer should measure themselves on is this ..
Listings Won vs Listings Lost
The amount of times my Branch Manager hauled me into her office, to go through the last weeks FV’s to ask if they had listed, been lost or not gone anywhere
Its just that when we looked on Rightmove New Listings, I recognised properties I had been out to value not last week, but a few months ago. However, because the Manager never looked back at the old FV’s from a few months ago, I got away with it .. you get away with it
I was guilty and so are most Valuers guilty, of not keeping in contact with Free Vals that dont come on the market straight away. We are focused on the short term, when if we took 30 minutes out of our day’s to tickle all the old fv’s, tickle them religiously … I wonder if you would get the listings you deserved.
So what did I do?
One day, I admitted all this to my boss (tw*t .. I thought of myself at the time) .. but instead of getting a boll*cking, she thanked me for my honesty… and she changed just one thing in the office, one thing that even I didn’t have to do.
Whenever a Neg booked a Free Val, they went onto Rightmove and logged onto a ‘fake account’ we had set up, a normal account like the punters have to search for property … and the Neg uploaded the full Postcode of the property I was going to value as Rightmove Alert. That is all that account was used for, and if a property came through on the Rightmove Alert email that something came on the market in that full postcode , it would be sent to everyone in the office.
.. obviously, if we listed it, they already knew about, but if we lost it, the chances are it was a property I had been to visit.
Having the accountability of the team on your shoulders soon sharpened up my FV chasing and my conversion rate went up .. funny that!
Maybe you should try it?
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