Some thoughts about estate agents

(I found and saved this image a while back, but lost the credit info. If it's yours and you'd like credit, or want me to remove it, then just let me know. Thanks)

I've just moved house so got to thinking about estate agents and the housing market in general. I rent a flat in South Manchester (Didsbury) and have done for the last 3 years nearly. Prior to that I rented in the city centre. In that time I've encountered a heck of a lot of estate agents. I've viewed dozens of places, been to a variety of agencies and rented from several of them. This experience has led me to the following conclusion...

Estate agencies are broken.

This seems counter-intuitive because they've been doing really well in recent years obviously, but I think it's fair to put 90+% of this success down to the unrelenting growth of the housing market, not their ability. Harsh I know, but I can genuinely say that I have never encountered what I'd regard as a 'good' estate agent. In fact it's rare to find even a competent one. Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest I'm not alone in my thinking.

This poor showing by agencies is surprising given their long history and traditions. What baffles me more though, is that not one agency (that I’ve heard of) takes advantage of the situation by acting differently, thereby building a stronghold in the market.

Maybe all that's needed is a spark to light the creative fires though, so should an estate agent be reading this and be ready to make some changes, here’s my 7 tips for future success.

1. Now that the housing boom seems to be tapering off you need to get back to focusing on people, predominantly your clients (and to some degree your employees – see point 4). From tomorrow morning, 9am, every person that walks through the door or phones you up is seriously important, because as things get worse, it’s going to start happening less and less. Consider everything from first impressions (hint – tidy up), to how you answer the phone to the comfort level of the chairs.

2. You used to create a lot of stress (convincing people to move house, one of the most stressful life events alongside divorce and bereavement). Now you should seek to minimise it, by ensuring their sale or move is painless. People are worried about the market and worried about the deal they’re making/getting. Be useful, be reassuring and most of all be honest and you'll have calm clients, ready to work with you.

3. Smarten up your act. It’s not okay to have a property list or pictures in your window that are weeks out of date. It’s not okay to promise a certain number of viewings and fail to deliver. You need to show your business in the most professional light possible because the gold rush is over and the people that still want to move house want to do so with someone they trust, not just the first agency they come to on the high street.

4. Get your people to smarten up their act too and give them the incentives to do so. I‘ve never been shown round by an agent who knew what council tax band a property was in. I’ve met some agents who didn’t even know what the rent was or when the place was likely to be available. From now on, this is unacceptable.

Make it worth their while to change their attitudes and habits. Bonuses could be paid on good feedback (see point six), or other benefits given (e.g. days off) if cash isn’t an option. Houses have sold themselves for the last few years, now your people need to learn to sell houses. Make up a ‘cheat sheet’ for each property on your books, with obvious information like rent and council tax and not so obvious stuff like good local bars, restaurants, schools etc. Encourage your people to learn this stuff but if they have to take the sheets everywhere and read them verbatim it’s still better than the standard blank stare they usually deliver when someone asks a question.

5. Change your tone of voice. Take a look at your sales and marketing copy. If it’s aggressive, outdated, or contains any jargon, then change it (or pay someone to change it). From now on you’re all about trust, transparency and expertise. Your copy should say “We know times are tough but we’re all in this together”. Reassuring clients is a priority.

6. If you don't know what it is that will reassure your clients, because you don't know what they want, then start asking them! Get permission to survey your clients before, during and after their move (particularly after; it baffles me that estate agents don’t contact people a couple of weeks after the move to see how things are going). Importantly, if you decide to ask for information from people and the feedback says changes are needed, then you’ve got to make those changes, even if they seem scary.

7. Be remarkable. This one is a winner no matter what business you’re in, but I think estate agents particularly could benefit from some good word of mouth. If you’re the only agency in town that focuses on people (because the rest of them are focused on what people carry in their wallets) then trust me, people will talk about you. Those people, the talkative ones, will be your salvation. Watch as they drive their friends, family and colleagues (all potential buyers and sellers) to your agency and then start the whole process again, recruiting these new folks to your word of mouth army with more fantastic performance.

If the market folds then it will be a scary time for estate agents, no doubt. I picture bands of them, roaming the streets, desperate for a house to sell, going feral due to lack of business. But remember, it’s an even scarier time for buyers and sellers too, which means it’s an exciting time for estate agents.

People still need estate agents (everyone I know who doesn’t own a place still wants to buy, despite the predicted problems), they’re just going to be far more picky about who they do business with. The opportunities are there for agents going forward, but only those agents who embrace the changes in the market. If you're one those agents with a worried eye on the future and the above helps get your thinking on the right track, then I’m a happy camper renter.

[UPDATE: A few hours after posting this I was going through my feed reader (not done that for way too long, 1400+ new items, ouch!) and found this from Seth, with his advice for the US real estate market. Good advice and well worth a read.]

What am I doing?

What am I doing? is a question I ask myself with some frequency (virtually every day in fact). Usually that's because I've got a terrible attention span and find it's a good idea to remind myself exactly what should be getting my limited attention-allowance.

I'm finding recently though, that other people have started to ask me what I'm doing too. And they don't mean specifically at that moment in time. No, they mean what am I doing with my life.

This is a perfectly reasonable question really, given recent developments and although I've promised repeatedly to give everyone I know a heads up, I still haven't got round to it. So I decided to answer the question on the blog, ergo saving myself some time. Now when someone asks, I'll just send them here (although when my mum asks for the umpteenth time I'll have to first explain to her what a blog is, meaning time savings for that particular interaction will be negligible at best).

As I've hinted previously, I intend to pursue a new direction now that my time at Omni has come to a close. To be more specific, I'm currently setting up as a freelance consultant and will soon (as of next week, when my period of gardening leave finishes) be able to offer my services to interested parties.

The work won't be a complete departure from what I did previously as I'll be operating essentially as a marketing consultant. My focus will be on new marketing, branding and communications (fortuitously things that are both my passions and my areas of expertise).

I won't go into too much more detail than that on the blog, save to say that if you read some of my previous posts you'll get the gist of the direction I'll be taking with my consultative advice (communities, transparency, honesty, happiness etc all watchwords).

I intend to have a website dedicated to my new venture up shortly (details of which I'll post here). The blog, although obviously inextricably linked to my adventures, will hopefully remain somewhat separate. In essence, I'd like to talk about all the things that interest me here, have conversations with people and generally rant and vent as appropriate, whilst saving the more business-type stuff for the website.

I'm sure there will be some crossover, but basically what I'm saying is that I don't intend to start pimping myself out on the blog! I'll still be talking about things that are completely unrelated to my new business (or at least may seem it to people) and I'll still be looking to poke my nose into various conversations with my usual limited grasp of the facts and unlimited enthusiasm for a good ding dong. I think it's important therefore to have some demarcation of territory, if only so I don't get confused and start calling out my clients for a ruck and fawning obsequiously over my blog readers. (This is a joke, I will ruck and fawn in equal measure with my clients and my readers).

Right now, things are moving along, albeit a little slower than I would like. Pace should pick up soon I hope though. I need an accountant, a finished website and some other bits and bobs (including a bloody internet connection, which is proving problematic in the new place). Once I have those things the rest should fall into place fairly easily (or at the least I'll feel better about things so the other stuff won't matter as much).

I'm excited about this new venture because it's allowing me the freedom to focus on the things that are most important to me. I'm under no illusions about the amount of hard work that will be involved, but I'm sure someone famous once said something about the work you love being no work at all.

Thanks again for all your patience with things guys. I'll be back with another post as soon as I can get online again. Although if the internet people don't sort it out in the next couple of days you may see me on the 24 hour news channel before you see me back here, accompanied by the scrolling announcement 'Manchester man reeks bloody revenge on ISP'...

I'm still here...

...honestly!

I've been incommunicado for a while because I went on holiday (my wonderful girlfriend organised a surprise trip to Prague) and now I'm moving house. I'm currently without a landline in the new place therefore I'm sans internet. Plus my PC is in bits in a box.

So apologies for the continued slow running at the blog and for anyone who follows me on Twitter. I'm not going to speculate when normal service will be resumed, because I don't know really. I'll try my best to get things up and running quickly though.

What's in a name? (Or why 'Be Remarkable James')?

Pic credit: gapingvoid.com

Well things are moving at pace in my post-Omni career. At the moment I'm still doing the nitty gritty, detail-heavy stuff. Plus I'm still on gardening leave until March. When things are sorted though my plan is to be in business for myself, offering my services (which I'll tell you all about soon) to individuals and small companies. Exciting times ahead!

In the meantime though, I'd promised to highlight where the new name for the blog came from. So here goes...

First off I must state what is an ongoing debt I have to Seth Godin. It was his his work on Purple Cows, Permission Marketing and Free Prizes that led me to address my genuine interest in marketing (new marketing, branding and communications in particular). If I had never found Seth's work my current direction would likely be very different now. Sometimes you just need to read something wonderful to push you in the right direction.

'Be Remarkable' is essentially my way of turning the material that I began to learn about (via Seth and others) into as simple a premise as possible. These ideas about remarkability (the qualities that some people, companies and products have that simply 'make people remark upon them') led me to my own thoughts on the vary nature of business. 'Be Remarkable' became my mantra essentially (and something I would preach it to all who would listen). I first mentioned it on the blog a good while back and I will doubtless mention it again many times over!

So 'Be Remarkable James' was really my only choice as a title. This blog is somewhere for me to share my thoughts and make connections with people. It is somewhere discussions will start and grow. It allows me to externalise my thought processes, my beliefs and my passions, and even better it allows other people to pass comment on them. Therefore it's also the ideal place to remind myself everyday to practice what I preach and to 'Be Remarkable'.

As well as thanks to Seth and the countless others who have inspired me (and who will deserve even more credit if the endeavours I have planned lead me to any kind of success) I'd also like to ask people a favour...

Whether you read this blog regularly or are reading it for the first time, whether you love it or hate it or just plain don't care, if I'm not being remarkable I want you to call me on it! If I write a 'me-too' post, if I'm slcaking off excessivley, if I talk rubbish or get things wrong - tell me! And if you think what I'm writing, doing or saying is remarkable, then hopefully you'll be inclined to remark upon it!

Ongoing changes...

As the more keen eyed amongst you will have noticed there's been a few little changes around here recently. Ok, ok, there's been some damn big changes!

I'm in the process of updating things, learning a little HTML, pulling together ideas and generally getting myself organised. Some things will stay, other stuff I'll doubtless change over and over! Patience with my progress would be much appreciated as I tend to like to tweak and chop until I get things how I like them.

You'll notice that I've renamed already though. I thought that was important to do straight away. I'll let you all into the thought process that went into choosing the new name very soon.

I'll post updates about the state of play here in the coming days. I also hope to have an exciting announcement about my plans for the future, so don't change that dial folks!

Changes

Okay, here's an important post - sorry it's been nearly a week in coming...

The reason I've been quiet the past few days is because I've been trying to get myself sorted to some degree following some fairly major changes, or at least one in particular.

I'm leaving Omni.

This is something that has been a potential for some time. I (and the people I worked with) wasn't sure exactly how things would pan out but I have known for a while that some of the stuff I do (and want to do going forwards) doesn't fit in the Omni set up. No hard feelings, nothing bad. Just doesn't fit at the moment. So the question became how to manage the change.

Rob (the MD) and I sat down on Friday. Between us we came up with a plan that sees me take redundancy with the potential to continue to do some work for Omni (freelance etc) in the future. I'll then sort my stuff out and see where I go from there. I've got some ideas but nothing concrete. It needs some serious thinking.

I hope therefore that people will bear with me for the time being. There's going to be some changes coming. The layout and look of the blog will change for starters (I'll be taking off the Omni-related) stuff. Depending on how easy it is I may change the address (although I do worry about losing the subscribers etc I have. My readership isn't enormous but there's a few loyal fans out there. I don't want to blow what I've put up here the last few months, so I'll see what I can do).

I'll also rename the blog. I've got some ideas, but more on that later.

I'm genuinely excited about this opportunity that's now sitting in front of me. Pretty shit scared too. But more excited than terrified.

I'm trying to think of all the people I need to email about this stuff too, I've made some great contacts/friends the last 3 and a half years and really don't want to lose touch. If you think I might have missed you though then drop me an email. I've 2 addresses I check regularly jparr81 at gmail dot com and jparr81 at hotmail dot com.

Like I say, exciting times! I'll have my head more sorted in the next few days and will be back up to full speed here (with all kinds of crazy plans no doubt) by next week at the latest I reckon. Before that I'll try and update and stuff, but apologies in advance if I'm a bit sporadic or rambling.

Thanks to anyone who's been with me through my time at Omni, I've loved all of it (the ups and the downs equally) and hope I can go on and meet many more cool and interesting people here and in my career going forwards.

Take it easy all you good, good people.