“Well practised” is one way of describing my approach to helping business owners change their charging model.

It’s the closest thing I’ve done to listing since I was a lister. It’s a structured process, where if you cut corners you don’t get the right result.

Think of it like baking, where if you don’t follow the recipe you can’t expect to have a cake at the end of it.

What’s the prize? By the end of the training session of the listers in the room have the confidence to now present flexible fees to a customer on the next valuation.

One three branch firm on the South Coast where we launched in January has done £40k this month in prepaid fees and increased their no sale, no fee charge by 20%.

One client has now banked over £1m in upfront fees (albeit over a bigger business than most). I’ve now trained 30 brands and 500 individual listers and it would be fair to say that I’ve worked with lots of different styles of businesses from one man bands to some of the biggest in the UK.

From that experience I would offer these five lessons that lead to a really successful implementation.

Lessons 1 and 2 are in my view the most important, as the rest can be applied to literally any business.

Lesson 1: Get Full Commitment from the Leadership

This is the non-negotiable start. If the attitude is “let’s see how it goes” it’s a challenge. It will be a challenge because their will be individuals within the team who are against any kind of change. I often reflect that there are two types of people in this world, those who think they can and those who think they can’t and they are both probably right.

Commitment by you isn’t something that should be given lightly, but depending on how you make decisions there should be a proper process of working with me or my team to get comfortable on the results we expect. Most big businesses run some form of controlled pilot before going for a larger implementation.

Lesson 2: Culture of process and some kind of framework

My second big area is to look at how the company currently works. Are you a firm that has no process in terms of the listing? Do your listers have a blank script of “do what it takes to win”?

If so, it’s not impossible but I only have one firm where they have started and not had a successful implementation. This was one of the key features of the business and they are a very successful business.

It’s a huge culture change to go to a structured process from one where full autonomy for the lister in the lounge. In fact I would say that the corporate agents I’ve worked with, who are used to rules and process, pick this up well because of this.

Lesson 3: Analysis of the current business position

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.

Lesson 4: Training

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.

Lesson 5: Systems

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?

I genuinely believe that with the momentum away from no sale, no fee we will see large numbers of firms adopting these tactics in 2026.

The average improvement in revenue per listing is over 20% which for most customers doubles profits.