Here is a thought leadership article from Homesearch

We know that there's a lot of anxiety out there at the moment about the potential of business slowing down due to increased interest rates, cost of living pressure and the traditionally quieter summer period.

The good news is there are plenty of things you can do to minimise this! Just because it's summer, it doesn't mean things have to be slow.

Our partners at Homesearch have recently released a summer guide for estate agents, packed with lots of helpful advice and tips on how to ensure your pipeline for Q3 and Q4 is filled with motivated sellers. It's free to download via the link!

Make sure you take advantage of these free resources, so that you can set yourself up for success across the rest of the year!

Who is Homesearch?

Homesearch is a simple, data driven estate agency platform. It has the most comprehensive information on every home in England, Scotland and Wales and all the tools you need to stay ahead. Estate agents who use Homesearch say it gives them an edge. That it delivers outstanding ROI. And that it saves them time, energy, and money.

Click here to find out how Homesearch can help your agency 

The main idea of this e-guide is to highlight the fact (and it is a fact) that the Summer does not have to be slow. In fact, it’s the best time of year to put daylight between you and your nearest competitors. And it’s not hard to do. So, firstly, what do we mean by slow? Perhaps you’re not hitting your forecasts or you’re having difficulty with cash flow and secretly, you’re concerned that business, and the market, is slowing. This guide will identify key problem areas and give you practical, easy-to-action tips on how to build and maintain your momentum this Summer.

Symptoms of a slowing business

Reduced Revenue

This is the big one to check since it’s closest to your bank account. Compare your revenue numbers to previous periods: last month to this month, last quarter to this quarter, last year to this year, year-to-date to the corresponding time period the previous year. (Note: the second half of 2020 and all of 2021 were unique markets, so it would not be unusual to see reduced revenue now compared to then. Comparing a month on month analysis over 2022 is your best bet to see a reliable trend). This not only helps confirm a known revenue drop but also when the revenue drop occurred. If revenue dipped outside of regular seasonality, or if it dipped more than you expected, you’ll be able to find the cause — whether it’s business slowing due to your/your team’s efforts, the market tightening or something else entirely.

Reduced Profitability

On the other hand, if there’s no revenue drop, you’ll want to look at profitability as a culprit to confirm whether business is slow. Did you hire new employees, invest in new tools or equipment, or take on additional overhead in some other area that isn’t delivering reliable, predictable and consistent return on investment? If not, you’ll want to investigate the performance of your more profitable products against the ones that are less impactful to your bottom line.

Dry Pipeline

If revenue is down, the next step is to figure out why, and that begins by looking at sales activity. Check your sales team’s prospecting, valuations booked, instructions won and sales agreed against other time periods. Have opportunities and then the percentage of closed deals increased or decreased? A decrease may indicate an issue with sales or marketing performance rather than a slow-down of business. However, if the closing ratios are healthy, you may simply have fewer deals in the pipeline - which is a potential symptom of slow business and a lack of prospecting and marketing focus. Before you make this conclusion, you’ll have to ensure your team’s sales activity matches or exceeds that of previous time periods. If they are not prospecting or calling as much, this can also dry up the pipeline.

Business Trends Are Negative

Another symptom to consider is the broader scope of your market: • Is it being disrupted by innovations in technology or your competition? • Is general interest in your offerings declining? • Is there a wider economic downturn or crisis affecting consumer attitudes? (I.E. cost of living and inflation, War in Ukraine, etc.) • These are wide-spanning variables that can be hard to quantify, but you can start with Google Trends to gain some insights.

Slow down to speed up

Set aside time each week to analyse your data. New leads, calls made, emails sent and opened, marketing campaigns, click-throughs, vals booked, instructions won, viewings held, offers made etc…

It’s possible you’ll find that while you are collecting a lot of wonderful data, you don’t have a system in place to parse it and make it actionable. If you are swimming in data, consider taking the time to develop a team-wide, data-focused sales process.

This starts by identifying the KPI’s that are most important for your business and monitoring them religiously.

Maybe you find that deals where there was a phone call before a valuation end up instructing 50% faster than deals that go straight from an email to a val. In that case, you’ll want to keep a close eye on how many phone calls your team is making, and you can create processes that support a higher volume of calls.

Qualify your enquiry better

First off, you need to use friendly questioning techniques to determine which prospects are buying, renting, selling or investing (or more than one).

This helps you determine where to spend your time (and marketing pounds), helps you optimise re-targeting opportunities (the best re-targeting is a follow up phone call), and makes sure that your people are spending their valuable time serving the people who can offer you the best business in return (I.E. buyers with homes to sell).

And while it might be tempting to consider every inbound lead who filled out a form in the right way as a qualified prospect, that’s simply not the case. The best agent’s still qualify all enquiry, and often it makes sense for them to re-ask questions the leads already answered on the form, because forms don’t get the opportunity to ask follow up or two-part questions, and that’s where real relationships can begin to be formed.

This might seem tedious and unnecessary, but it’s a small thing they can do at the start of a relationship to really make sure everyone is on the same page and that no opportunity goes missing.

If you take nothing else from this e-guide, action this point today.

Respond to enquiry faster

The average inbound lead reaches out to 3 to 5 agencies when they want to buy, rent, let or sell and the majority of sellers and landlords choose the agent that responds to a request first. Despite that, nearly 50% of enquiry actually goes unanswered! You can set yourself apart so easily by touching base with inbound enquiry as fast as possible.

Interact strategically with prospects

While standardised sales processes are helpful, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to sales. Always aim to first understand and then solve the client’s unique pain points, build relationships, and work within the customer’s buying framework first (as this is more exciting, and a call, text or email - in that order - that they will actually want to engage with).

Ask better questions

This wouldn’t be a Homesearch e-guide without a paragraph on great questions!

In slow times, questions are your best marketing. In fact, questions are actually the answer. And they cost nothing to ask.

Ask more (and better…see bonus content at the end of this e-guide) questions earlier in the process that help you quickly drill into the client’s needs.

You might be surprised to find that the prospect is already familiar with your agency and service and is ready to instruct faster than you thought.

Also, don’t shy away from talking about price during your first contact with a buyer or seller, because despite what most agency trainers will tell you, most people want to talk about it on the first call.

A great question to ask at the end of every call is, “What would keep you from buying/selling/letting/ offering today?”

This gives the prospect a chance to explain exactly what they need from you, who can then build a custom plan of attack. This sort of clarity early on gets everyone on the same page and provides firm ground for negotiation.

Create urgency

Your prospects should always feel like they needed your solution yesterday. One way to create urgency is to ask probing questions about their current problems and the shortcomings of their current solution. Don’t be afraid to agitate, as long as you have a solution at the ready.

Present case studies of your previous success to drive FOMO (fear of missing out). This intensifies their pain (in a good way) by showing them the tremendous value you’ve driven for other clients – value that they themselves could be getting.

Offer strategic discounts

Note: this does not mean reduce your fees.

Agents, especially in slower times like the height of Summer, often want to offer a discount anytime a client is on the fence.

They think that if they sweeten the deal just a little bit they will be able to close. Unfortunately, offering discounts in that way can become a crutch.

Agents start cutting the price instead of deepening relationships, creating urgency, and solving pain points. This has the long term effect of creating lazier agents which doesn’t just hurt your margins, but the industry as a whole.

On the other hand, we don’t live in a perfect world, and it’s better to close a deal with a sensible offer rather than lose it all together.

This is where marketing packages come in. The best agents present vendor-paid marketing packages of values between £250 right up into the thousands of pounds.

If you’re not doing this, start today. Because this is where you can discount. You can maintain your fee, but absorb the vendor-paid marketing fee on their behalf, thus saving them £250-£5000 in the process.

If you offer discounts strategically, you can ease the fears of those particularly price-sensitive prospects and close deals faster.

Click here to download Homesearch's full e-book