The heading may seem contentious, however first let me explain. I am not advocating that estate agents ditch their databases, merely rename them!
It may sound a trivial notion, but perception is everything and renaming creates a different perception and with new perceptions, new thoughts and new behaviours follow.
Taking inspiration from Rory Sutherland, a renowned marketing guru, I suggest renaming it as a ‘Registered Seller Database’, a 180 degree turn of description that more accurately reflects the relevance of the database to the estate agency. Hear me out on why this is such an important change:
60% of your current (hot box) database will contain next time movers who will be selling their property in the immediate or short term.
35%+ will be first time buyers or property investors/professionals who are likely to sell during the medium to long term.
5% or less will be tyre kickers, dreamers, or voyeurs.
Approximately only 3% of your database buy a property you represented and yet you call it a ‘Buyer database’!
Most agencies receive their fee income from vendors, so doesn’t it make sense to view your database from a potential seller’s perspective?
Agent behaviour is currently typified by:
Concentrating effort and manhours getting to know what a buyer wants and then informing, cajoling, and arranging viewings in the effort to sell them your existing stock. In other words, most of your effort is spent trying to create a purchase rather than concentrating on creating your new pipeline of listings!
There are between 4 and 8 times more buyers than sellers in the marketplace at any given time, compounded by easy access to sale stock via search portals. This enables buyers to effortlessly reach out to agents on a whim creating a ‘service me now’ culture stoked by 24/7 contact channels.
The result is agents struggle to deal with the weight of numbers of enquiries, leaving many database buyers serviced un-equally, if at all. The majority of potential buyers at some point, usually within 2-4 months are forgotten about entirely or palmed off with a drip feed of ‘content’ material. Bad experiences cut deeper into the memory than good. Imagine you dine at a restaurant where the food was excellent, but the service was slow and rude – would you be itching to go revisit, or would you be tempted to try elsewhere next time?
Changing how we see our database allows us to think of those in it differently, to see them as future prospective clients rather than a means to an end of collecting a pay cheque on existing listings. It becomes obvious that if you want to attract those prospects you need to improve your service today, so they come back tomorrow. The question is how?
Fortunately, I have created the solution in the form of a Pre-Portal Platform. Treating your ‘buyer’ database as a ‘seller’ database! Improving their perception of your service as we enable your database access to your own market appraisals (instructed or not!) that may soon to be coming to market.
Providing more control to your prospect is empowering, it immediately creates an improved ‘buyer’ experience, and they are unable to ignore or forget themselves either! They are responsible for curating their own ‘Registered Buyer’ experience rather than relying on sporadic agent contact. In turn we utilise your database for a prospective seller’s benefit.
Estate agency is a reactive environment, however, by controlling the controllable’s you can free up staff time, saving you from spurious ill-timed enquiries and chasing poor quality leads.
Instead, agents can have quality conversations and untap more of the 95% of prospective sellers in your database.
Interested to know more? Direct message me to request a demonstration of how a change of perspective changes outcomes.
Max Fuller max@mutualoffmarket.com
Max Fuller is the Founder of Mutual pre-portal property platform