Even a small subscriber list, if you nurture and manage it effectively, can produce an income most agents can only dream of. And as you’ll see in just a second, if you follow my model, you’ll also be doing less work.
Less work…. more money? Nice…..
This is a lonnnngggg blogpost. At a reading speed of 100 words a minute, you’ll probably spend around 28 minutes reading till the end. But it’s going to be SO worth it for you. Here’s what you’ll get:
- My 6 step marketing system to get you through more doors
- The secret marketing tactic 99% of agents are not using
- How to create value your clients won’t be able to resist
- How to get maximum results from minimum marketing spend
- Your implementation plan to get things done!
- Still reading? Great! Let’s dive in.
Here’s why this is important RIGHT NOW
Competition is brutal
I speak to estate and letting agents, every day, from all over the country who tell me that they have a back-bedroom 0.5% guy touting for trade, or that Purple Bricks just rode into town, or even that all their previously ‘professional’, long-standing competitors just broke out into a playground fees war.
Is this you?
Pressure on fees is higher than ever
Higher than I’ve known it in twelve years, in fact. Even the corporates are doing it. One agent I know has a competitor with this script:
“Whatever anyone else quotes you, we’ll beat it by 20%”.
Nasty……
Clients think they can do it without you
With Purple Bricks, Tepilo and the rest all telling homeowners how easy it is to sell, why do they need a traditional estate agent? Why wouldn’t they just go the DIY route? How can the public tell the difference between the service they will receive with an online agent, and the one they will get from you? And if they can’t see a difference, why would they pay so much more?
Stock is down year-on-year
The headlines are telling us there’s been a spike in stock recently, but on my webinar last month, I asked how stock levels compared with the same month last year, and heard answers from 10% lower, to a staggering 60% lower. What can you do if your shelves are empty?
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The problem, simply put, is that you’re not getting through enough doors.
Here’s the challenge most estate and letting agents have:
Too few market appraisals in the diary.
Which leads to very low fee quoting
Which leads to tiny profit margins
Which leads to no money for marketing
Which leads to too few market appraisals
Less than 1% of agents have a system for generating MAs
Let’s be clear here: canvassing is NOT a system; prospecting is NOT a system; advertising in the paper every week is NOT a system.
But a system can incorporate all of these activities.
Without a marketing system you are spending way too much time on marketing that may not be working for you
You need to sharpen your axe
Spend some time and effort NOW to create a system to bring you in sales and lettings market appraisals on a consistent, predictable basis, and you’ll be able to reap the benefits for months and years to come. A marketing system makes everything else work better. Very few agents have ever gone out of business with a diary full of valuation appointments…..
Kevin’s big ‘AHA’ moment
I recently had a call from Kevin, the owner of a three office agency in Staffordshire.
“I’m fed up”, he told me. “I don’t want to be an estate agent any more; I’m thinking of selling up.”
Kevin’s the same age as me (40-something…) and has been an agent since his early twenties. He used to love it.
“I love getting out and about, looking at properties, hearing stories, and helping people move on with their lives. I’ve always found that so rewarding.”
So what’s changed? I asked him.
“I’m sick of spending all of my time, effort and money on marketing that isn’t making any difference,” he moaned.
We made a list of everything he was doing, marketing-wise. It was a long list and included sponsoring the local football club, to sending out 10,000 canvassing cards a quarter.
I asked Kevin, how would he feel about his business if his listers’ diaries were chock-full of valuation appointments?
“I’d love it!” he exclaimed. “I’d skip to work every day”. (That, I have to see.)
And that’s when Kevin had his big AHA moment. Because it wasn’t agency he was fed up with, it was marketing. And that’s because he was trying to chop down a tree with a blunt axe. He needed to sharpen his axe, or in this case, create and implement a marketing system that would get the phone ringing, and get his listers through every door, for every valuation.
An agent client who has implemented ONE ELEMENT of my system has generated a new, hot, local enquiry EVERY DAY since she started, and 7 instructions in the first month.
The right system will bring you consistent enquiries from qualified homeowners and landlords, every day, without you having to chase for scrappy leads.
Can you say YES to these 5 questions?
1. Do you have a successful system for generating market appraisals CONSISTENTLY?
2. Do you have a documented marketing PLAN to bring in new clients every day without you?
3. Do you have an inbox full of NEW enquiries every week?
4. Do you leave the office before 6pm every evening?
5. Do you get a good night’s sleep EVERY night??
5 yeses? Well done! You don’t need my help. Go and put the kettle on and pat yourself on the back.
Otherwise, read on…
I know how you feel
When I first started my consultancy business, back in 2004, I struggled terribly to generate new leads. I’d spend whole days and sometimes weeks on marketing to get a few rubbish enquiries. If I made sales, I’d deliver to those clients, then I’d come back to an empty inbox and have to start all over again. It made me feel overwhelmed, overworked, and exhausted.
Something needed to change. And FAST.
And then the penny dropped
I discovered the key to magically bring my leads in on auto-pilot, daily was to have a SYSTEM
I spent thousands of pounds on coaching, masterminds and travelling to conferences all over the world, to discover the exact steps to the perfect marketing system, that would work like a well-oiled machine, without me as a bottleneck.
Now my inbox is always full of lovely new client enquiries
Now I never have to exhaust myself on marketing that doesn’t work. Plus I get all the quality clients I could ever want. Some of you know that I have a beautiful grandson, and I want to spend time with him, so I work no more than 30 hours a week, and last year, I took 10 weeks off to spend time with family, and travel.
Why you should listen to me
I only work with the very best, motivated and dynamic independent agents. I want you to get results, so I’m only going to work with you if I think you will. I need you to look good, so you make me look good. Then you’ll rave about me and tell everyone except your competition how great I am.
(I only work with non-competing agents so if you’re my client, they can’t join a programme.)
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Here’s what some of my lovely clients say about working with me:
The pitfalls – these are NOT the answers to a full diary of MAs
Spending a ton on Google Adwords
One independent agent in Wimbledon I spoke to recently, spends £800 a month on Google Adwords. This brings her in, on average, two enquiries a month, so £400 each. But these are not quality market appraisals. Anyone who has to type into Google, estate agents in Wimbledon, is probably not the best quality vendor for you. Of course, they could be out of area, but more likely, they are at best, looking for a third agent valuation to make up the numbers, and at worst, simply looking for a transaction at the lowest cost.
Keeping your Rightmove rep happy with expensive extra features
Unless you’re a shareholder, don’t bother. There are plenty of better places to spend those extra few hundred pounds a month, for a far better return on your investment.
Advertising every week in the paper
(Do people still do this??) Advertising your properties every week in the local newspaper to prove to vendors that you have plenty of quality stock so that they too will want to list their house with you, even though buyers do not read the paper and book viewings through it, is a very odd way of attracting new vendors.
Why not just market to vendors direct??
A beautiful and pricey website
One of my clients, Alison, from Bedford, commissioned a website from a local web company for £4,000. Within six months, she’d scrapped it, and built her own, for free, on WordPress. It looks better, and does exactly what it needs to do – capture leads from interested vendors and landlords.
Complicated customer relationship management software
Another of my clients – Peter from Aberdeen – was using the leading industry CRM software, spending £600 a month on it, as he had a large database. Within a month of working with me, he had cancelled the contract, and switched his email marketing to my recommended supplier, at £12 a month. It’s simpler, easier to use, and has features he needs, that the expensive version did not.
Sending out thousands of leaflets each month
Canvassing isn’t dead, but it does need the kiss of life. If you just keep sending out thousands of leaflets to every man, woman and child in your area on a regular basis, then of course you will get some valuations. Throw enough mud at a wall and it will stick. But whilst you’re getting 3 new enquiries from 10,000 leaflets, you’re teaching 9,997 NOT to respond to your marketing. Can you afford to burn out your audience in this way?
How much is it costing you right now NOT to have a marketing system?
Let’s do the maths:
Take your average fee and multiply it by your conversion rate. What figure do you get? That’s how much every new market appraisal is worth to you.
Here’s one I made earlier:
- Average fee £3000
- Conversion rate 60%
- Income per MA = £1800
- 5 new MAs per month = £9000
- x 12 months = £108k
Wow. An extra £100k for just 5 new market appraisals a month! Just imagine if you had a marketing system that could generate just over a new MA a week. You too could add an extra hundred thousand pounds to your bank account.
To generate an extra £100k a year, you need a marketing system
If you’ve been following my content for a while, you’ll know all about my six step marketing system to get you through more doors.
It’s simple, it’s proven, it works.
Step 1 – create a subscriber briber. Something valuable that will motivate a prospective client to exchange their email address for it. Try an ebook, or a checklist, but make it relevant for the target market you want to attract.
Step 2 – take them to a dedicated page. There’s no point in driving website traffic to your home page; there are simply too many distractions on it for them to notice your freebie, and click on it. Create a distraction-free zone, called a squeeze page’, and your conversion rate will skyrocket.
Step 3 – connect an email service provider. This lets you collect email addresses and organise your mailing lists, and keeps you legal by offering subscribers a way to unsubscribe easily.
Step 4 – add an autoresponder series. Write a series of emails that your readers will love to receive. Add it to your email service provider and you have an automated ‘touch campaign’ to keep you top of mind.
Step 5 – drive traffic. Make a list of all the places you can drive traffic from, so that your squeeze page always has fresh leads to convert.
Step 6 – implement! A system isn’t a system until it’s documented and resources allocated. Create a spreadsheet of the daily, weekly and monthly activities, then delegate and monitor progress. This system shouldn’t rely on you to implement it, otherwise you remain the bottleneck.
How do subscribers convert to instructions?
Marketing has changed. Instead of trying to find new clients, you need to look for responders. In any given group of people, anything from 5 – 30% can be responders, depending on what you’re asking them to respond to, and how. Add this to the fact that you need to get someone on the phone before they can book a market appraisal (MAs booked by email are often really low quality), and you now have a new marketing objective – to generate a phone conversation. Therefore, the aim of your ‘funnel’, is to motivate a subscriber to have an email conversation with you that in turn, results in a phone conversation.
Calculating your subscriber worth
Let’s say you get 500 subscribers on your list, using a variety of methods I’ll teach you (if you become a client….).
50% (250) of them may engage in an email conversation with you, and then 70% (175) of those may agree to have a chat with you on the phone. From those, let’s say 50% agree to a valuation, and half of those instruct you. If your retention rate is 19/20 sales, and your average fee is £3,000, every subscriber is worth £250 to you. Even more impressive, is that your list of 500 subscribers is worth a potential £125,000!!
Can you answer YES to 5 these questions?
1. Do you want to dramatically increase your income?
2. Do you think your agency has huge potential for growth?
3. Could you handle double or treble the number of market appraisals?
4. Do you see the need to systemise your marketing?
5. Do you want to take the next step with me?
What’s stopping you?
It’s usually one of three things: time, skills or money.
Time – the time commitment for my Add £100k Programme is around 30 hours. Ongoing time needed is 2-5 hours a week. Can you afford not to invest this in adding £100k to your revenue this year?
Skills – some of my clients come to me with zero tech skills. I am self-taught, so my methods to teach you are simple, effective and easy to understand. And once you too have the skills, you will be way ahead of your competitors, who won’t be able to catch up without me to help them.
Money – how much would you pay to add £100,000 to your top line this year, without any additional marketing spend? In fact, for most of my clients, my programme saves them money and earns them revenue, before they even begin the programme. My client Peter I mentioned before, saved £3,000 on a new website, and earned 5 new market appraisals, before the programme began!
(If you’d like to hear what some of my clients have to say about my programme, here are a few short videos.)
How much did you invest in yourself last year?
Here’s what I invested in myself in 2015:
Mastermind group £18,000
Personal coaching £ 6,000
3 x conferences in the US £ 7,500
Online programmes £ 9,000
Marketing and self-development books £ 900
Total investment in Sam 2015 £41,400
I invest in myself constantly. I travel to the best internet marketing and industry conferences, so I can pass to my clients the very latest and most innovative and successful strategies and tactics, so they don’t have to invest at such a high level. In fact, all they have to do is invest in themselves by becoming my client, and they get my investment for the price of theirs. It’s a no-brainer really.
What’s the next step to creating a marketing system that adds £100k a year?
In short, getting on a phone call with me. In 45 minutes, I’ll ask you about your business goals, and show you the exact steps you need to take to reach them. If your goal is an extra £100k this year, let’s work out exactly how you’re going to do that.
I give away a handful of these calls each month, and when they’re gone, they’re gone. At the end of the call, I may invite you to become a client, but I may not. Not everyone is a good fit for my programme. Until we figure that out, let’s just jump on a call and get your marketing on track to hit your goals. Either way, I promise you’ll find the 45 minutes insightful and motivating.
Just answer a few simple questions here and we’ll get your call booked in.
This year, I really want you to take massive action, to get your marketing sorted once and for all, and to take your business to the next level. That may be £100k to your top line, it may not be. My clients do this, and much, much more. And I want it for you too, whether you become a client of mine or not.
Book your call with me and who knows where our conversation will take you?
