If you are reading this, you
are either an employer or an employee.
Can I ask a question of the
employers – Why did you set up your own estate or lettings agency ? (Most of my readers are estate or letting
agents .. but it could just as well be another type of business … the point is
this) .. WHY did you become self
employed? Thought you could do a better job? Earn more money? Better life? Plan
for your retirement? More holidays? Etc etc
Some of you employees may
harbour a burning desire to set up your own business in the future … so again,
I ask the same question that I asked of the employers .. WHY? Why do you want to open your own agency in the future? Maybe
your answers are the same as the one’s mentioned above?
Everyone is different, so
everyone’s WHY is different. But before we leave the WHY’s …. let me ask you
another question .. if you have already
set up your own business or are thinking of setting one up in the future … Has
this ever been one of the WHY’s?
The reason I want to set up
my estate / lettings agency is because
I want to screw people out every last penny
Of course not .. don’t be
silly … everyone who sets up their own business, well 99.9999% of them did it (or
will do it) for themselves. All you dewy eyed self employed virgins, wanting to
change the face of estate and letting agency in your town, to make a difference
and earn a few pennies on the side… that is your WHY, not to screw over the
homeowners and landlords in your town .. you wouldn’t last 5 minutes ..
everyone knows that!
So if you are going to do
it, (set up your own business), to do that, as in all aspects of life, you
need to do the right thing,
because there is one fundamental that must happen if you are going to be successful
in running your own estate or letting agency business…….
You must do the right thing to yourself,
You must do the right thing for your family,
You must do the right thing for your colleagues,
You must do the right thing for your contractors and
You must do the right thing for existing and future customers
and from that you will have a successful and long established
business, which means you will also maximise your long term profit.
Sounds about right doesn’t
it? But you would be surprised how many
people are rubbish at that though. Let me explain …
The theory goes by doing the
right thing, you will build your estate agency or lettings agency into such an
awesome company, your standing in the town will rise, which will assist you in attracting
better staff, which means you can offer a better service, which will impress
all the landlords and homeowners in your town and all those impressed landlords
and vendors that will in turn use your agency … and behind all that .. you will
start to make a decent living, making shed loads of cash … no stress – job done
(you happy, staff happy, punters happy)
.. but its not like that is
it?
People set off with the
intention of ‘doing the right thing’ first, but something clouds their vision …
money and profit. If you start with the
thought of doing the right thing, the outcome will be money and profit …. But
if you start with the thought of let’s get profit/money … that is when it
starts to fall down.
If we are not careful, as an
industry, estate agency and lettings agency is starting to move towards the
cliff edge, like the travel agent or insurance industries ten years ago. Ten
years ago, the internet commoditised those industries, people couldn’t see the
difference between travel agents and insurance brokers …. So it was easy for
the business to go online and be sold by small fury animals called ‘Alexander
Merkaat’. .. and if we let online/call centre estate and letting agents take
the initiative whilst we as High Street agents offer a mediocre homogenous dull
service for our landlords and homeowners .. then we only have ourselves to
blame.
(the issue of low fees and how estate / letting agents are becoming
robot like and commoditised was discussed last week in this article https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/low-fees-estate-letting-agency-christopher-watkin?trk=hp-feed-article-title-publish )
The estate and lettings industry
as a whole is shorted sighted .. this is especially true with the corporates,
who can’t see past their next Quarter’s or Year’s Profit and Loss sheet, to
realise that if they played the long game, they should be able to take a lot
more market share than they currently do. You see In the article I mentioned
above (the Low Fee / Commoditised one), I asked if you, as an agent, were an agent that offered an out of this
world, remarkable, indispensably awesome service, that is 110% unique? I
am sure most corporates couldn’t answer yes – and can I ask all you
independents .. are you? Really?
Roll the clock back twenty
years, thirty years, life was a lot simpler, agents were part of the community
… people used to recognise them in the street and chat. Agents were in it for
the long term .. they played the long game ….You dealt with the main man or
their right hand person from Free Val to Collection of keys .. so you had to do
a good job. You sold your house in 1960 and when you came to sell it in 1970,
the same negs/valuers were there.. and the same negs and valuers ten years
after that.
But in today’s 21st
century, with the t’interweb, swapping of staff every ten minutes (“oh no, Bill has moved to our new office
because the Area Manager likes to change the Valuers every 18 months so they
don’t become stale”) the corporates, one size fits all marketing, email ..
everything is now at arms length, it's harder to see the long term given the massive
short term actions that are made, as estate and lettings agency gets less
transparent. If it’s all a mess, if you know you won’t be there in six months,
let alone six years .. who cares ..nobody takes responsibility, the theory of
doing the right thing starts to fall apart.
If you think about it, if
you have a property that will sell or let (which in this market – most
properties will), regardless of what a neg/valuer does or doesn’t do, the long term
consequences of a good or bad decision made by that neg or valuer today (no
matter what that decision is, be it a decision doing a great awesome job or
this will do rubbish job, cutting corners or completing it well, stopping until
6.30pm to get a deal sorted or sod this I’m off to the pub at 5.31pm – sod the
buyers, offering a poor service – even being unprofessional, sloppy, tardy,
doing a bit of arm twisting .. hell even slight dodginess), then it's difficult
to argue that maximising profit and doing the right thing are the same thing. Who
cares – you get the property away – irrespective of what you do – so it doesn’t
matter.
…. Because I know what you
will say … you need that money today, in the short term to survive, otherwise
you will be long out of business before the long term benefit kicks in. Yes in
the short term that will work, but in the long term, it won’t .. it’s the same
in all aspects of life.
So what is it to be?
‘Doing the right thing’ is
all about personal morals (one might even say ethics), being able to look
oneself in the eye and taking personal responsibility. Stop hiding behind your
company logo, stop hiding behind your colleagues, stop passing the buck. Whether
you are a Neg, whether you are a Property Manager, Sales Chaser, Valuer, Branch
Manager, Area Manager, Independent, Corporate, Franchisee, Employee or
Employer … take responsibility and do
the right thing because by doing the right thing for the your landlords, your
vendors, your team, even though it might not benefit you or your company
financially in the short term, it will help you and everyone in the long term…
and I’m sorry .. all of us aren’t in agency for a couple months .. but for the
long term.
Stop looking at those profit
and loss sheets, stop blaming the team, stop blaming the competition, stop
blaming cheap fees or crappy ‘call centre (online) agent’ .. all of those an
easy sanctuary for anyone because they blame everyone else and don’t take
personal responsibility.
You are either a
Neg/Valuer/Prop Mngr/ Boss who does work you are proud of, or you are a
Neg/Valuer/Prop Mngr/ Boss who does work to make the maximum amount of money
(be it commission or profit)… and don’t get me wrong, it would be nice if those
two types of work went hand in hand, 100% of the time, but they seldom do.
If you haven’t got the
passion when you wake up to go to work, I genuinely pity you. But blaming the
boss, your colleagues, your clients isn’t an excuse – it must come from within.
.. and if you want to know if you suffer from this, well if you feel yourself
thinking (or saying) "I just work here" then its time to take action.
To every Neg, to every Prop
Manager, every Valuer, every Lister, branch manager and every owner of every
letting and estate agency … Stop hiding behind your company logo, your company website,
your colleagues… it’s not about that .. it’s all about YOU and your interaction
with that vendor, that landlord, that buyer and that tenant, that colleague ..
take personal responsibility
Start taking responsibility
and whilst the hip phrase at the moment is corporate-responsibility .. that my
friends utter ‘b*llocks’ .. there is no such thing as corporate responsibility
.. all a business is, is a group of
people who turn up at a place of work between 9am and 5pm .. so instead of all
this corporate responsibility mularkey – which just allows people to pass the
buck, to think, oh don’t worry, someone else will cover that, speak to the client
or go the extra mile – take responsibility – even if it’s not yours to take.
Being an estate agent or
letting agent (in fact any profession) is too powerful nowadays for us to leave
our kindness, our passion, our sympathy, ourselves as a real human being, a
real person, at the threshold of the office door when we rock up at 8.55am.
Estate agency
is not property business, it's people business............
Lettings is
is not property business, it's people business
Everything is
a people business … otherwise you are a commodity (and if you read that article
– you will know what happens then)
…
and trust me if you do take repsonsibility, you will enjoy your job more, you
will become passionate, clients will like that, recommend you to others and
from that you will earn more money.