Happy New Year to all you modern estate agents out there.
So, it's 2011 already - a year of initial uncertainty where no one can quite predict the direction the economy is going to head in. A time for sensible and calculated decisions rather than unduly aggressive and optimistics ones.
But as with all new years, also a logical time to make a few minor adjustments to your day-to-day business to keep it on the right path.
A good first job is to weed out any over-valued properties that have gone stale, and where the vendors refuse to move towards a more realistic asking price. There are agents in my town consistently guilty of marketing properties at perhaps 20% over and above what they are worth.
If you're not going to sell a property and the owners are not sufficiently motivated to move, the time and effort you spend on it is completely wasted. In a tough market, probably the last thing you can afford is waste.
We all pick up these kinds of customers occasionally - those that expect something for nothing and cost you time and effort that could be better spent elsewhere. Don't be afraid to apply the 80/20 rule and drop the 'customers' that do not add up to a profit.
On another note, it's good to see Zoopla continuing their investment in reaching home-movers early on in the buyer cycle by acquiring HousePrices.co.uk (announced this morning). I've written before about how reaching an audience earlier in their thought process makes customer acquisition cheaper and Zoopla do an excellent job of this.
I haven't ever used the HousePrices.co.uk website if I'm honest - but it's a good fit for Zoopla and putting their brand in front of an extra one million website visits a month is not going to hurt.
Perhaps that might give you your second and third resolutions - to put more effort into a blog to help reach out to potential movers earlier on in the cycle, and to sign up to Zoopla and give them a try if you haven't already done so.
Whatever decisions you make, I hope 2011 will be a positive year for all of you.
Martin
That's where plenty will be focussing their attention.
With tools like Zoopla and Mouse Price, information these days is oh so more accessible.
Good luck in 2011 to all. Let's just hope its a rocovery, and not a further downfall.
Sam @ Greenhouse
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
Certainly no argument there - we're running online optimisation campaigns for several of our customers as a cost effective way of reaching more customers.
No doubt that's something we'll blog about in future!
Martin