So many agencies are working hard especially in these challenging and interesting times. Max Fuller has identified three essy ways to improve, not by working harder, but by working smarter.
No1. When instructed on the sale of a property – Provide the TR6 Form and offer to help the client complete it. There are several good reasons for an agent to do this; Firstly this will test the client’s willingness to sell, secondly, it will highlight early any potential issues that may need to be addressed, thirdly, it is the ideal opportunity to discuss and where appropriate recommend/refer a conveyancer instruction. All of which will lead to a fourth reason of reducing of the time between agreed sale and completion.
No.2 Sealed Bids – The use of this mode of obtaining a final sale price and winning buyer is deeply un-popular with the buying public. It is one of those estate agency practises that lacks transparency leaving the losing bidders with a sense that it was rigged. If this system needs to be used, then in my humble opinion it needs to updated with two improvements that would improve transparency reducing any thoughts of a rigged outcome. The two improvements I would suggest are that at the outset of requesting bids that a reference is given to all the bidders on how the bids should be tabled and on what criteria they will be judged. Secondly, that all parties agree to an anonymised summary of bids be made available to all bidders post completed sale.
N0.3 Improve the service to ‘Registered Buyers’ – all too often buyers are frustrated by agencies sending them information on inappropriate properties, inundating them with content emails and catch-up calls or the opposite where they have been over-looked for a suitable property or totally forgotten about completely.
If your CRM system brings up 20 or 40 registered buyers for a property it is incumbent on the agent to contact all of them, not doing so is clearly NOT in the client’s interest. Getting a buyer in the first 5 contacted does not mean you have discharged your obligations to your client or achieved obtaining the best price. When those non-contacted buyers see a sale board with ‘SSTC’ on a property that fit their criteria it sends out two messages and neither are good for the agent or the industry. Firstly you have disrespected a potential buyer, not giving them an opportunity your ‘service’ had alluded to and their perception could well be ‘bet the agent got a back hander’, Secondly, if they have a property to sell – you have just shown them you don’t contact all of your ‘interested buyers’, how damaging is that?!! How many potential instructions are you losing each year as a result?
As a property investor and developer I experienced this on several occasions, as a proptech innovator I have found a way to match an estate agency’s business objectives with the service level expectations of buyers that will automatically lead to more instructions for the agent!
If you want to find out how, check out www.mutualoffmarket.com
Max Fuller is Creator and founder of Mutual Pre-Portal Property Platform