Be a better letting agent by becoming an expert

You will spectacularly improve your credibility as a lettings agent by writing, speaking and publishing quality information on your field of expertise.... no not s8 vs s21 but your local property market.

Doesn’t it make your heart sink when going to see a landlord when you know deep down that he really thinks you’re wasting his time because matey boy down the road is charging half the fee and fee is everything to this guy? Don’t you hate being knowledgeable and sincere about your local property market but not being understood or trusted? Isn’t it frustrating to be thought of as “just another letting agent who sells collects the rent and whacks a board up and chucks it on Rightmove when the tenant hands in their notice” when deep down you know your service is really superior? Surely Mr (s) Letitng agent, you want to be an expert problem solver, not an annoying peddler of estate agency and letting wares. You want to be a respected authority, not some suspicious car salesman in an ugly 75% manmade fibre shiny suit.

So how you can gain extraordinary credibility? Well, that is what I teach and coach as it is one of the greatest secrets to lettings success that you can possess. I warn you it’s a pretty simple concept, it will change your letting agency life forever. This one principle will give you an edge over every other letting agent.....

“You become the No.1 Property Guru in your local town by writing articles about your property town, writing research documents on your local property market (research document is posh word for newsletter), get yourself to the Rotary Club with a talk about the local property market, do workshops on the local property market. Make sure the Editor of the local newspaper calls YOU when they need information on the local property market.”

Most letting agents have never thought about this much as you might have assumed that if you want to be an expert then some large institution in ‘That there London’ has to bless you with that title. Maybe you thought you could only earn that status after years and years of relentless toil in the back office, paying your dues, crawling over broken glass, and when you finally have gray hair and a walking stick, then they’ll know that you’re an expert and they’ll ask you what you think. This method of achieving infamy is way too hard and takes way too long. Not only is it difficult, it’s not even likely to work at all. It might work that way in university and scientific life, but not in the real world and especially not in lettings.

You can appoint yourself as the local property expert and just start acting like one. So what do local property experts do? They publish their views and opinions. They speak at Rotary Clubs. They write articles about the local property market. They get on the local radio show. They take phone calls from reporters and newspaper editors who want to know what’s happening in the local property market.

Now if you’re just another Shiny Suit who is the guy who lets property, knows the difference between a s8 and s21 notice and collects rent, it’s going to be pretty hard to find anyone who’s looking for an expert on those subjects in the first place. Who, especially landlords, wants to read about that?

No, you need to be an expert on something that your potential clients (landlords) want to be or want to know more about – ie What’s happening to the local property market? Not how many people are looking for property but why one housing estate over the last 10 years has risen in value by 34.1% but the next door housing estate has gone up by 56.7%. Why yields on terraced houses have gone up in your town but down on semi’s? Why over the last 15 years, property values always go up in Bolton a year before they go up in Bury?

If you and your lettings agency bring a special angle to some narrow category of your LOCAL property market (not the word local) .. most landlords buy local so couldn’t give a monkeys what is happening in the next town, let alone London. You, Mr(s) Letting agent can become a leading recognised local property expert in a fairly short period of time. You just need to publish and publicise like a whirling dervish. You need to do more of this than your competitors do.

Many times your letting agent competitors are not even doing it at all. But if there’s any place for creativity in marketing, it’s right here: finding angles on your solutions that create interesting stories about you local property market

Newspaper editors crave stuff like this, every day they wake up in the morning thinking “OK, how am I going to fill my magazine with interesting stuff this week?” Normally their budgets are thin and they can’t afford to have a platoon of reporters scouring the streets for interesting angles. No, they’re dependent on people to help them find interesting content.

Now let’s get something straight here: I’m not talking about thinly disguised infomercials that do little more than tell readers how great your lettings service is. Editors hate that stuff, and the good ones run from it like the plague. No, I’m talking about interesting and informative material that really helps landlords and which stimulates their own thinking process.

Writing articles about the local property market is quite difficult (but I can write them for you). They don’t have to be long; usually 350 to 400 words is plenty and even if it seems like a lot of trouble to do this, it always pays off in the long run. Why? Well firstly, it’s more believable than advertising, because it’s editorial content. That should be reason enough. Secondly, you can use it for a long, long time. You can get copies of the newspaper and show them to landlords as a credibility builder. You can use the same material in your own newsletter, and my system discusses many more ways that you can re-cycle the information and use it for other things, such as blogs and in social media. Yes, writing takes extra effort but it’s permanent. And you can’t have a marketing system that runs on autopilot unless you get your true sales story down in writing.

But please realize: you do NOT have to be a “writer” to do this. You can record yourself talking to a customer on tape and have your secretary transcribe it. You can hire somebody to write it for you. You can write it in your own sloppy, terrible English and pay somebody else to fix it later. You can appoint somebody to be your marketing and publishing person. You can occasionally outsource this to others; Many of my own consulting clients have come to me for this service. It doesn’t really matter how you get it written, just do it.

But it need not stop there ... here’s another tip: Give seminars on your local property market and you should consider charging good money for them, not just doing them for free. I have seen agents charge ￡250 for a seminar that some letting agents were attempting to give for free. Not only did he make a lot more money that way, we got a lot more respect as well. Landlords will respect what they pay for. Seminars are another way to package your knowledge and build your credibility. The process also helps you organise your knowledge so that it’s more effective in every other venue.

My full marketing system for lettings agents explains in detail and with multiple examples how this is done. I use this exact publishing and publicity approach to catapult our (myself and Mrs Watkin) tiny company with one employee (Joey the lettings dog) to national prominence in our industry. Our company is very small, with a zero advertising budget and very thin resources, yet we got a full page of editorial in The Negotiator Magazine, speaking at EA and letting agent conferences, guest blog spots on a number of EA websites, all in within 8 months!

How is this possible and how could it be possible for you? That’s the next blog post early next week https://how-to-grow-your-lettings-agency.blogspot.co.uk/

Photography by ~ Hameediii