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Thriving in a tough market

The residential property market is an excellent indicator of the mood of the real economy. More people move home when confidence is high, less when it’s low and at the moment, as the numbers of sales across the UK are about 20% down on this time last year, we can conclude that confidence is very low indeed.

Not that you’d get that impression from many leading estate agents – there’s no way this hardy group will let something as trivial as the market get in the way of growing their businesses!  I asked some of the most successful estate agents in the UK, Australia and New Zealand how they are managing the tougher market conditions – I think their replies can be applied to many other sectors too.

“Pete, I love tough markets,” says John McGrath (JM), founder of Australia’s top estate agency, “the tougher the better. It allows the best businesses to shine while the rest batten down the hatches and delude themselves that things are too tough.  I believe the market is firmly between your ears – if you have what it takes the market always fluctuates between exceptional and better.”  It’s no wonder that John has built a multi-billion dollar business from scratch but you’d expect this sort of attitude from all but rugby playing Aussie’s wouldn’t you? However look at what some of our finest have to say on the all important aspect of business attitude:

“I’m actually pretty excited about the tougher market – I think good businesses will really shine out and pick up market share” says Peter Rollings (PR), Managing Director of Marsh & Parsons, and this from Mike Bidwell, who heads up the 250 offices of Fine & Country – “this is probably blindingly obvious but it’s the power of PMA” (Positive Mental Attitude)  and this message is reinforced by Jonathan Handford (JH), Managing Director of Newmans, winners of The Estate Agency of the Year Awards: “we ban negativity in the office – if people continuously talk about a tough, bad or down market it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; instead we talk about a different or changing market as there’s no such thing as a bad or good market for that matter, there is just a market”.

So the right attitude is the first thing needed – next is focus.

PR: “Deep understanding of what the customer wants is even more important in this market – managers must check that everything possible is being done and not just take it on trust”.  Richard Palfreeman of Northfields also makes this point well: “Agents must be much more focussed. Preparation is the key. Do we really know our customers? Do we know their motivation, needs and ability? Does each office know who their top 20 buyers are? Are we creating a brilliant first impression whether face-to-face or on the phone? Are we asking the right questions – are we really getting to the bottom of NEEDS v WANTS?”

Of course the key focus needs to be on ways of making more money – as Tony Lynch of Lynch & Co in Woking suggests, the emphasis must be on “getting more from less”.  He suggests: “look for every opportunity to increase your revenue”, which echoes the view of Michael Stoop, Managing Director of Xperience – the franchise network owned by Legal & General - “do not put all your eggs in one basket; you must adapt very quickly and change your business model to maximise every income opportunity and believe me, there are plenty about!” Western Australia’s leading agent Milton Rendell offers this thought: “we have worked our database well – too many people ignore their current and past clients in the search for new ones and yet many of your future deals are in your existing database; the people you’ve already met.  It takes a lot of time and effort to try and build new relationships – your past clients are often becoming your competitor’s new ones because you’ve forgotten them”.

The third factor is what I call “back to basics”. JM suggests “there are two key factors that need to be addressed – pricing and marketing.  If you price them right and have access to the right buyers the job is all but done”.  This straight forward advice is echoed by JH who suggests: “all offers should be put forward in person rather than over the telephone: eyeballing the client makes it much more difficult for them to say no!”

So in a nutshell what’s needed to thrive in a changing market is a positive attitude, a total focus on what makes money and a back to basics approach that concentrates on selling to existing customers – all makes sense to me.

Peter Knight is the founder of Phoenix, a privately owned marketing agency, and author of HEMP – The Highly Effective Marketing Plan. Email Peter at pk@phoenixplc.com