Over the next few weeks I will be touring the UK doing a combination of flexible fee training and working with the Property Academy on their Millionaire Estate Agent Roadshow.

One of the topics I will be tackling is how estate agents MUST find way to generate more revenue from the same number of transactions. There are clearly many ways to achieve that goal. My focus will be on how agents charge. I believe that giving choices other than simply no sale, no fee is an important way for you to be able to increase your revenue by around 20% per transaction.

When I do work with estate agents, a lot of them believe that using Greenhouse OS to provide the technology to allow them to do this is all they need to do.

It’s an important piece of the puzzle but I train them on four things before we start selling flexible fees:

1. Why do customers pick the agent they do?
2. How do you use this knowledge to influence them before you do the valuation?
3. How do you position flexible fees?
4. How does the tech work to present this, do the contracts and take the payments?

In this article I want to focus on the first step using the Property Academy’s home moving trends survey.

The survey is taken from thousands of home movers each year. The results are collated by the Property Academy and this slide always interests me.

The brand gets you through the door the person wins or loses the instruction.

What are the top two reasons given by customers on a blind survey?

1. Confidence in the individuals marketing ability
2. Liking and Trusting

What are the top reasons that agents hear?

1. Valuation
2. Fee

Why is there a difference?

Most people aren’t cruel, most people don’t want to upset you. Telling you I don’t like or trust you as much as the someone else is personal. Explaining that the ‘deal’ you offered me wasn’t as good is much less personal.

Have you ever been sold to in your own home? Was there one person who came out who got it wrong? Maybe they didn’t listen? Maybe they didn’t answer your questions? Maybe you didn’t like how they were dressed? Did you tell them the real reason why you didn’t choose them?

I’m not saying that fee doesn’t matter, it does. It is often the way that people decide when you haven’t given them another better reason to make a different choice. If you say the same things, offer the same products as the competition then fee will be how customers decide whether or not to use you.

Whether you choose to stay with no sale, no fee or you choose to offer your customers choice in how they pay if you don’t work hard on a better process it won’t matter.

The conversation below was sent to me over the weekend. A young agent who has proved that the biggest barriers we have are in our own heads and if we try something new, we might be surprised by the results.