What Successful Estate Agents are Doing Now

To help you to help yourself, we’ve compiled a list of thought provoking questions and suggestions that are aimed at encouraging you to explore the opportunities that the most successful Estate Agents will currently be exploiting

CALLING all of their clients
Yes, there are various options for getting in touch with your clients such as email, SMS, WhatsApp and Marketing Automation. BUT to build that relationship even further, the best estate agents are taking at least 20mins out of their schedule to speak with their clients and understand their concerns about how the services you offer may be affected by this virus.
- Be open, transparent, show empathy/advice and this will help you strengthen your relationship even further.
  - You may have to speak with clients openly about potential price reductions
- Calling all clients includes everyone, regardless of the client value to your business

Planning for the future
They are using this time to make changes to their business, changes that they have perhaps been putting off for some time. A few things that they will be considering could include:
- Staff requirements and performance
- Budgeting
- Cost cutting – Be very careful what you cut here, maintaining certain activity such as marketing is vitally important to come out of this successfully. Cost cutting may include finding cheaper suppliers for services, this also requires careful selection as sometimes cheaper is not always better
- Analysing clients, which clients are more hassle than they’re worth?
- Getting ready for virtual viewings
  - Video
  - Virtual Tours
Implementing more efficient processes
- Planning how to optimise processes, what takes too much time at the moment that can be made more efficient?
- What technology is out there that can save you time?
Working on their sales funnel
- What is your current sales funnel? Do you have one?
- What is your customer journey like and how can this be improved?
- What is your conversion rate when conducting property viewings?
  - How can you improve this?
  - What would make a lasting impression to prospective clients?
- What do you offer that other estate agents don’t?
- What do other estate agents offer that you don’t?

Updating or Upgrading their CRM
- Successful estate agents have a robust CRM system to manage client details and status
- What does your CRM offer you as a business?
  - Does it automate marketing messages
  - Does it allow you to interact with your website?
  - Is data driven to and from your website
    - Can you see the activity on your website through your CRM to hit hot prospects at the right time?

Training their staff
- Are you using this time to improve your team?
- There are various FREE and paid e-learning courses available to staff members globally
- Have you reviewed your staff and what improvements can be made?
- What performance management can you implement to get the best out of your team?
- Can they access this training through webinars, podcasts etc
- Which industry experts are providing free mentoring or content right now?

Getting involved with the community
- Are you getting involved with charitable work?
- How can you help people within your community?
- Who needs help in your community?
  - Can you help homeless people in your area?
- What advice and knowledge can you share?
- Do you have any community sponsorship opportunities?

Updating their digital presence
- Lots of estate agents are working in their online presence, how does your website work for you?
  - Does it actually generate leads, because it should!
- What improvements can you make with your marketing channels?
- Do you look professional online?
- Is your information up to date?
- Building up testimonials from past clients and displaying them online
- Setting up or improving all potential marketing channels online, including:
  - Google My Business
  - Facebook
  - Twitter
  - Company Website
  - LinkedIn
  - Instagram
  - Youtube
  - WhatsApp
  - Virtual Tours
  - Live Chat / Automated ChatBots
  - Marketing Automation
  - Email Marketing to your Mailing Lists
  - And so on…

Property portals analysis
- Which property portals provide a healthy return on investment to your business?
- Can you ask for a discount from the portals?
- What are the costs for each property portal?
  - What is it costing you per lead from Rightmove for example?
  - Can you get a better Cost Per Lead from other marketing channels, YES!

Working on client databases
- Finding opportunities within their client database of;
  - Historic Leads
  - Past Clients
  - Existing Clients
- Segmenting their data into segments for marketing purposes
  - Sellers
  - Buyers
  - Landlords
  - Tenants
  - Location of database entry
    - Send information based on an area that they may be interested in
  - Associated budget
    - Send information on properties within their budget
  - There are many ways in which to segment your databases and the better the database is segmented, the more accurate you can be with your marketing activity

Conducting virtual viewings
- Lot’s of estate agents will be conducting virtual viewings right now, but for this, you had to be ahead of the curve before the pandemic started. What will you put in place to ensure that you can conduct virtual viewings in the future?

Sending useful advice to clients
- Mortgage information, what can your clients do with their mortgage to save money now?
- Money saving tips
  - What other money saving tips can you come up with to help your clients?
- Free services
  - What service can you offer that will be free and will build your relationship with prospects?
- Free advice (home improvement)
  - How can you offer specific advice to clients to ensure that their property is fit for the market when things get back to normal?
- Tips for surviving lockdown
  - Generic tips that can help your clients be mindful and pass the time quickly. Mental health is something we should all be supporting

Marketing budgeting/forecasting
- What budgets do you have in place for the 12 months beyond the pandemic?
- Where will this be spent and what projections do you have for its success?
- What does success look like to your estate agency?

Analysing competitors
- What are your competitors doing now, all great estate agents will be monitoring their competitors
- Are they getting ahead of you?
- Are they targeting your clients?
- What can you learn from them? It’s great to have competition, as it makes you up your game.
- How do you fair against them digitally?
  - Do they appear above you in google?
  - Are they marketing through social media channels to your audience?
- What is their customer journey and how does this compare to yours?
- What technologies are your clients using?

Building networks
- What other services could you offer clients as a bolt on that can generate revenue?
  - An obvious one for estate agents would be mortgage advice or currency
  - How can you partner with 3rd party providers to generate more revenue?
- Can you strengthen your relationship with existing partners simply by giving them a call and passing on best wishes, and potentially chatting about future opportunities.

Marketing
- The first thing that an estate agent will do in this circumstance is look to spend less money. And with that the marketing budget is usually the first to go. There is so much evidence against dropping your marketing budget, but only if you can afford to keep it going.
- Successful estate agents are looking at ways to get more from their marketing budget, and there are so many options for this.
- It is paramount that marketing is key to your future success.
- You may feel that we are just saying this as we are a marketing company, but it’s true and don’t just take our word for it. It’s simply about changing your strategy. Here are some useful resources that explain the benefits of marketing through a crisis:

Conclusion

You have a great deal of opportunity and a huge amount of work to do!!

Get going now!!

What Successful Estate Agents are Doing Now

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