Yesterday
I was in Northampton for my sins in the Midlands giving some ‘landlord farming’
training to ten agents from the area. I stood up at the start of the day’s
training and said, ‘I guarantee that if you adopt the principles of landlord farming,
in 12 months time your turnover will be 20% to 30% higher’. You should have
seen their faces. Eyes lit up, shoulders back, beaming smiles. It as like
asking a child if they wanted a triple flake 99 with red sauce, when I asked if that was of interest. Those agents all wanted a piece of that
action
You could
see it in their eyes, they could see the end result, the extra business
and pound notes that went with it
... but I
said, ‘ .... you will only get that 20% to 30% uplift if you are prepared to
put in the many hours of work to get to that point with no immediate return,
because it will work (and it’s been proved to work time and time again and
you don’t need me to train you can see how to do it as I explain most of
techniques in this blog).
If you
are in the lettings game for the long term and you believe you are the best
agent in your town, because you care, then this will work, because most
landlords just tolerate their letting agent, just like people only tolerate
their bank.. they don’t love it, they just can’t be bothered to move (its the
same with landlords and their letting agents)
Lettings
is a people business and people do business with people they like. All landlord
farming is a way to make landlords want to come and talk to you BEFORE the
tenant hands in their notice .. its as simple as that. If you can then build a
relationship with that landlord over the following couple of months, that
landlord will say to themselves ’I like that agent, I think I will try him next
time one of my tenants hands in their notice’, and you know once you have one property
and you have proved you are brilliant and trustworthy, the rest will surely
follow.
But it
takes time and alot of patience. .. but I thought I saw you nod when I
suggested to you a couple of paragraphs back you were in the lettings game for
the long term? If you aren’t prepared to
put in the hours in (a minimum 150 hours over the first two first months
setting it up / preparing the foundations of the system (although an
apprentice/intelligent teenager can do most of that foundation work for you),
then when you launch; four hours a month writing, four half days delivering
something and 30 minutes a day doing something else and spend a bit of money,
it can be done for as little as a couple of hundred quid a month (although if
you want it turbo boosted, it needs to be a bit more) .. then if you aren’t
prepared to do all that,.. busting a gut to build the foundation of the system,
writing the articles, do the blog about the local property market, produce the
newsletter, send it out to all the movers and shakers in your town without any
new business to show for it in the first four to five months, then I ask what
are you willing to stand up for in your work life, drive forward, commit to and generally be unreasonable about?
Because that's what's going to actually get it done.
PS ..
although a lot of clients love to prove me wrong and ring to say they have had
business within a matter of weeks!... I tell them you have had an early crop ..
keep at it!
PPS .. I
found this article on internet about belief ... some might think it rubbish, I
thought it put across what it’s like being your own boss and running a
business, with the fear of the unknown ahead of you .. trusting and believing
in what others say ..
“A man is wandering through a desert with bottles of water on his shoulder. He conserves his water carefully until it is all gone and then he begins to get thirsty. That thirst gets deeper and deeper until he sees a pump and runs to it. He lifts the handle and pulls it down but all he hears is the sound of metal on metal. He starts to panic. Then he sees a tin can at the bottom of the pump and in the tin can is a message. “Dear traveller do not despair there is enough water here, just follow the instructions. Lift the handle of the pump, bring it down and when you hear the sound of metal on metal discouraging you here’s what you do. Under the pump in front of you there is buried under the sand a bottle of water. Do not despair. Pick up the bottle of water pour it into the cylinder and start priming the pump. The moisture will get the system to work. A rush of water will start gushing out of the pump. You can drink all of the water you want, fill all your bottles but do not forget to fill up the bottle again and leave it for the next passerby. Warning: you’re going to be tempted, when you see this one bottle of water, to drink it. But you’ll be so thirsty again and so will everyone else who goes by. Empty it out as instructed and you will have all the water you want and so will everybody else going by”….
PPPS .. If you are still
unsure on whether it works, why don’t you ask another agent who has been where
you are, wondering if system will work? Can I suggest you look at my Linkedin
profile. Now I know I am connected to most of you who read this blog, because
if you are connected up with someone on Linkedin, you get to see their Linkedin
Recommendations that other people have written about them (if we aren’t
connected, just send me a connection request .. I don’t bite!) . Recommendations are like mini
references. You have to scroll way down someone’s profile to find them. All I
suggest is you look at my recommendations from my current and past roles and see what other agents have written about
the process ... hell, why don’t you pick up the phone to them and ask
themselves yourselves? What do you have to lose?
