I'm sat on the WatkinSofa up in Grantham, and Christopher Watkin opens the Letting Agent Podcast with a question for agents. "If you are an estate or letting agent, are you attracting or repelling the right sort of clients?" He wants to talk about magnetic marketing, so I start with an actual magnet.
"Okay, Chris. So think about a magnet for a minute."
I ask him, "What do most people think of when it comes to marketing?"
Chris says, "Attraction."
"That's one end of a magnet. What does the other end of a magnet do?"
Chris says it repels. "It pushes things away," I tell him. Then I put the real question to him. "Does your marketing make it really clear who your ideal client is?"
That was September 2022. Chris introduced me as an estate and letting agency performance coach, so every example we used was about property.
Your stock does the talking
I told Chris that in my experience with all the agents I'd worked with, "the properties you're most likely to attract are the ones that you're actually marketing."
People go and look. They see the fifteen houses you've just sold or let and they ask themselves if that's anything like the house they've got. If the answer's no, they go to an agent where it is.
So when an agency says "we sell houses, we sell flats, we sell homes" it isn't telling anyone whether they fit. I asked Chris, "But how specific are you? And how desirable do you make yourself?"
Some of the most expensive brands in the world have waiting lists. With certain cars you can't buy the new model unless you already own one of their others. I said straight away that's an extreme example. No agent should be refusing to sell your house unless they've already sold one for you. That would be ludicrous. "But what you can do is make yourself desirable."
Saying what you don't do
That means having criteria. In lettings especially, there might be properties sat right on the threshold that would be a fit with a minor amount of work. Without that work, they're not. It takes some nerve to say, "This is what we work with and this is what we don't."
And if you want more than one market, I said, "If you're going to go for different markets, have different brands." I went back to cars, because most people get them. Some people buy a car as a statement and care what it says about them. Others buy one for purely practical reasons. Sellers are the same. Some want a certain board outside the house. Chris called it "The Savills effect." Others just want to move.
It isn't only about property either. It can be the type of landlord. So "if you don't want a let only service, tell people." Say you no longer offer it. "And stick to it."
You don't even have to announce that you do nothing else. "Because guess what? Occasionally you might." Tell people what you specialise in, and anyone too far outside that will be pushed away on their own.
I used Chris's content writing as the example. A message saying that if you want a competition war, having a go at all your local competitors, you're with the wrong people, but if you want to educate vendors and landlords about the local property market, we can help. That one message does the sorting for you.
Turning work away is scary
Chris asked if you could be that blunt about who you won't work with. I said it's a brave move, and fortune favours the brave. "But sometimes it can be scary to be brave."
Almost every young business does the same thing. It goes, "Here is some business. Let me take it." Then a bit further in you realise it was the wrong fit, and you're stuck working out how to manage it or how to get rid of it. Talk to any established business owner and they'll tell you "the worst mistake of all is taking business that's wrong for you."
"But if you take every bit of business that shows up at your door and it's the wrong business, you won't have the capacity to deal with the right business." I've written more about that side of it in the power of no.
Watch the full chat
Run the numbers on the wrong job
I finished by saying it comes down to knowing your numbers. What's the right property worth to your business? How many of the wrong ones does it take to get there, and what do they cost you in time and people?
Pick one client or job from this year you wouldn't take again and work out roughly what it cost you. Then write one plain line for your website saying what you specialise in, and leave the rest unsaid.
First published September 2022 on Christopher Watkin's Letting Agent Podcast.
