I’ve worked with well over 30 firms now to help implement flexible fees and some have been very successful, and some less so.

The thing that everyone thinks success is about, is about location.

“It’s different in……”

It’s not.

Maybe it’s about the listers? Yes, and no. If you have a lister who is great at selling no sale, no fee I guarantee they can pivot and sell flexible fees.

If you have a lister who is willfully convinced it can’t be done, then I’m reminded of the quote

“There are two types of people. Those who think they can, and those who think they can’t. They are both probably right”

It’s 100% about mindset but even the most difficult lister can be brought around if the owner is determined. Fundamentally if a team member doesn’t want to do it, they will either leave or be exited if the owner is determined to make it work.

My approach with business owners is to use the IMPACT checklist to getting this managed in

Incentives
Maths
Process
Agency Agreements
Commitment
Tech

Incentives

These can take two forms, temporary and commission. If you read Mark Roberge’s book The Sales Acceleration Formula you will find that competitions are a very valuable way to get energy behind a new initiative.

A league table with a decent incentive (holiday vouchers / time off / a one off prize) will go a huge way in a multi branch business.

Even if you don’t change your commission scheme but you simply pay the lister their percentage of the fee at the point when the money is taken then this allows them to earn more with immeidate effect. With completion fees they will be waiting for 6-9 months to get paid.

I personally advocate paying a higher percentage for upfront fees compared to completion fees. This will help give them a reason to try and therefore improve adoption rates.

Maths

The significant mistake I made in 2021 was using my current fee and reducing for prepayments from that level. The solution is to increase your no sale, no fee charge by 20%. Then reduce your part prepaid / full prepaid fee level from this new, higher point. If you want to go through the maths with me, I have a spreadsheet which does the analysis which I do for free. If you get this bit wrong, this can be a strategy that ends up costing you a lot of money, instead of making you lots of money.

Process

If you can’t differentiate your proposition in the mind of the customer you are leaving them no choice but to choose you based on price.

If they can’t tell the difference between you and a competitor it doesn’t matter with you charge no sale, no fee or everything up front, someone will do it cheaper (maybe even free) and you won’t win the business.

The first half of the training day I do with companies is all about how you differentiate your proposition by understanding how customers really make decisions. Once you understand that, it’s important that you create a system that consistently delivers that.

Agency Agreements

If you are charging everything up front then your contract needs to be different to a sole agency agreement. A sole agency agreement basically says that if you introduce a buyer (or another agent introduces a buyer) during the period of your sole agency, then they are liable to pay your fee. If you are charging a non-refundable marketing fee, your agreement needs to pivot towards to charging for marketing

Tech

The things you need to have sorted from a tech point of view are:

1. How will your lister present the fees?
2. How will you set your commission scale?
3. How will you calculate your commissions?
4. How will you take the upfront fees payments?
5. How will you make sure your listers use the correct agency agreement?

Given that I’ve been working with this since 2021, we’ve created a solution in Greenhouse OS that does all of this. It can be used as a stand alone system or as a full CRM change.

You can answer each one of those five questions without Greenhouse OS but clearly it’s simpler and more comprehensive using the slider and the system we’ve built specifically for this purpose.

Whatever way you decide to go, the key is that before you have the training all of these questions need to have been answered. It’s vital that the team know the answers to all of these questions so that the next appointment they see after the initial training they can sell flexible fees.

One of my clients has now done over £250k in upfront fees since their training 8 weeks ago.

If you want to do some group training aimed at listers and business owners wanting to adopt this, my next course (which is nearly full) is in London on 17th September 2025.

If you are a new client, then I would recommend that you jump on a call first and we can start work on the maths side of things, to analyse the impact on the business as a good first step.

I’ve put a link to my diary below if you want to have a look at it together.