Daily Ideas

Six of the Best Pt.5 & 6 

Parts five AND six on the similarities the best estate agencies I’ve worked with over the past 14 years share. 

5. Community Counts – The best agents realise their social responsibilities as businesses operating in local communities. In my experience, they are thoughtful and generous about getting involved with local groups, events, and campaigns.  

6. Good People – When I look at the shortlist of the best agents I’ve worked with, no one stands out as a d!ckhead. They are all good people, in my opinion. They treat others respectfully, are generous with their time (and respect other’s time) and stick to their word. The flip side is the lesser agents we’ve worked fleetingly with, who aren’t very good, are often self-centred, know-it-alls, poorly organised, greedy, and make false promises.
 

In summary of this week’s ideas, the top estate agents are curious, understand the power of reviews, take quick action, have finely tuned attention to detail, are community cheerleaders and, above all, genuinely good people. 

Next week’s ideas will focus on how to excel at content marketing for your estate agency. 

Six of the Best Pt.4 

Here’s the fourth of six similarities the best estate agencies I’ve worked with share. 

4. Attention to Detail – The best letting agency we’ve worked with is obsessed with seemingly the most minor aspects of the language and words they use when communicating.  

Attention to detail is a philosophy the best agents share, but it’s also added to a big-picture outlook. I’ve often heard elite agency leaders saying words to the effect of, ‘In the long run, it’ll be worth it / the right thing / the best thing.’  

They’re thinking in years, not weeks, months or quarters. 

Six of the Best Pt.3 

Part three of six similarities the best estate agencies I’ve worked with share. 

3. Act Fast – Many of the best agents are the earliest of early adopters. Be that realising the power of websites before their competition did. They were embracing content marketing while others thought it a fad. Or having a TikTok account up and running before their rivals had even thought about it. They implement ideas FAR more quickly than their rivals and aren’t afraid to stop doing stuff that’s not working. 

Six From the Best Pt.2 

Part two of six similarities the best estate agencies I’ve worked with share. 

2. Rave Reviews – All the best agencies score highly on Google Reviews. Several elite operators have high three and four figures (yep, 1000+ reviews) and 4.6-4.9 averages out of five, which is phenomenal. They have systems in place to ensure review opportunities are rarely missed. 

The best agency leaders understand reviews reward consistent effort and excellence, provide exceptional social proof and are marketing gold. 

An outstanding ‘category of one’ for any agency is to be able to say you are the #1 ranked estate agency in your area, according to Google Reviews. 

Since 2010, I’ve been lucky enough to work with some of the best agents in the UK. 

Over the next five days, I’ll share six similarities they share based on my experience. Let’s kick off.  

1. Curious Cats – One thing about the very best is they don’t act like know-it-alls. A great example was at an event we hosted in February 2023. Four of the best agents I’ve met were on one of the tables. I noticed they were all taking notes – pretty much constantly.  

Across from them was an agent who I know was (and still is) struggling and blaming everything and everyone for their lack of success. He was constantly on his phone and wasn’t paying attention to any of the speakers. 

Success leaves clues, right? 

Become Your Community’s Champion:  

Imagine donating 10% of your annual profits to local community causes. It’s VERY different, and if I owned an agency, I’d investigate this approach as I think it’d be worth it in PR and marketing returns alone – not to mention the generation of goodwill and how motivating it would be for staff and raising local profile. 

It also changes the narrative around your agency in a genuinely attention-grabbingly positive way. 

Next week, we’ll share six of the best things I’ve learned from 15 years of working with several of the best agencies in the industry.  

I LOVE this clever, original, and community-minded idea about agency boards I saw a while back. 

Could this be something your agency considers? You’d have to check your local council’s policies around this; it may even be a chance to partner with them. 

More details about this board idea in this news article-https://bit.ly/3ASaq04

Consider holding an event for your community. 

I remember a famous house DJ talking about how he broke into the ultra-competitive world of elite DJ’ing.  

His response could be taken on board by agents. 

“I started organising my own events, which were small at first but then got bigger. They were my events, so I literally got to call the tune and built my brand by creating my own platform.” 

There’s much to be said about being in charge of, rather than being, part of an event.  

Could your agency organise a community event?  

It doesn’t have to be a mini-Glastonbury, just something that draws your community together positively. 

Perhaps even identifying 5-10 local community groups and bringing them together for the greater good – with you being the host with the most. A win-win for all involved. 

Yesterday’s idea was about sponsoring training kits rather than (or in addition) playing strips. 

Another good way to get maximum exposure for your sponsorship is to see what opportunities local running or cycling clubs may have. 

Runners and cyclists are, by their very sporting nature, out and about in the community– and if your agency is on the back of their shirts, you’ll raise your chances of getting seen.  

This week’s ideas all revolve around ways you can support your local community while creating good PR for your agency. 

This is probably my favourite aspect of working in this industry, as the best agencies all do plenty for their local neighbourhoods. 

Let’s kick off, literally, with this.  

Ideally, if sponsoring a local sports club (especially youth teams), try to get your agency’s branding on their training kit rather than match-playing outfits.  

The training kit gets much more use and is often worn around town / the local area / down the park before and after sessions making it a much more visible sponsorship opportunity.  

Either way, it’s a fantastic community thing to do. 

We’re big supporters of girls’ football, and the charity/community side of our business, the Karma Club, recently sponsored Sussex County Girls U13s (training kits) but have also sponsored match kits in the past. 

This video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCJRIdpGwg0 follows yesterday’s idea, imploring agents to stop recording videos while driving in their cars.

We recorded it a few years ago when agents in car videos were at epidemic levels.

It’s a tongue-in-cheek way of poking a little fun at any agent who takes in-car video updates (or themselves) too seriously.

It’s a dead simple one today.

If you record videos’ updating’ your local property market while driving along in your car, stop, STop, STOp, STOP.

It’s not big, it’s not clever and most sane people watching it are thinking the same thing……’ why is this self-absorbed eejit not paying attention to the f’ing road?’

Pull over, park up and then press record.