Julian O'Dell becomes the second of our guest bloggers today. He is the driving force behind the well respected estate agency training firm, TM training & development and offers decades of experience in the industry. 
“With instructions hard to come by in recent months, the start of 2010 is a crucial period in which to increase levels of quality stock. My recent journeys around the UK have already revealed pressure on fees as weaker agents cut commissions in a panic measure to get instructions on their books.
However, a number of my clients have grown their market share while simultaneously maintaining, and in some cases increasing, their fee levels.
This objective could be regarded as essential in 2010, as most predictions suggest that transaction levels will remain at far lower levels than we have enjoyed in the past. The CML's forecast for 2010, made towards the end of last year, stated that the number of likely completions would be around 0.85 million, compared to the heady days of 2007 when it was approximately 1.6 million.
So, with a smaller amount to go at, how can an agent ensure that they grab a big enough slice of the action?
Much of our recent training and consultancy assignments have centred agents' instruction processes, breaking them down into the key component stages and then assessing the quality to which each of those stages is carried out.
In simple terms, the key stages are:
- Generating valuation appointments
- Booking the valuation appointment
- Preparing for the appointment
- The appointment itself
- Follow up and Closing
These stages vary massively in terms of how well they are undertaken and it is a useful exercise to benchmark them against other agents around the country that we work with. To keep things simple, we rank the key stages either ‘Poor', ‘Fair', ‘Good' or ‘Exceptional'.
The whole premise of our current estate agency training is that “good is no longer good enough” – most agents who survived the last two years are probably at least ‘Good' at what they do. I'd argue that to really thrive and make good profits in 2010 and beyond, agents need to be ‘Exceptional' at all that they do.
We find that establishing these performance standards instantly reveals a company's training needs. Weaknesses can then be addressed through coaching, or group training sessions where applicable.
For example, one agent we worked with was getting plenty of enquiries and appointments but had a conversion rate to actual instructions of less than 35%. This revealed an issue with the valuers' ability on the appointments themselves, particularly in terms of closing and overcoming resistance.
On the other hand, a different company had a high conversion rate (60% plus), but were simply not getting called out to enough properties. Our main job was to look at the marketing and, in particular, the staff's ability to gain valuation appointments from the opportunities that presented themselves.
In the latter case, it was alarming how the staff were sorely lacking in the skill of promoting their company's USPs and differences to local applicants with property to sell. The staff did not fully understand the benefits of their own firm's services and even less so what their competitors offered.
As a result of identifying this issue, the staff were trained to ‘benefit sell' to an ‘Exceptional' standard and to mystery shop their competitors to understand exactly what they were selling against. Almost immediately, the number of valuation appointments went up, as did the number of instructions, ensuring that stock levels for the new year are at an encouraging level.
Take a critical look at your instruction process. What weaknesses can you see?
There is a raft of further ideas that can be introduced to an agent's culture to increase the number of instructions. To discuss how I might be able to help, please feel free to email me, follow me on Twitter or pick up the phone!”
Julian O'Dell
http://www.tmtraininganddevelopment.co.uk/
Telephone 01480 405583
PropertyADD provides all sorts of statistics and key performance indicators for estate agents to help with analysis such as this.
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