I read the other day that Rightmove will be encouraging all their agents to upload their new instructions immediately. I question whether this is in the best interests of vendors, purchasers or estate agents. If you immediately put a new instruction onto the portals, you will lose control over what happens next. A buyer could ring up and ask to view the property immediately. They could offer 95 per cent of the asking price on the spot.

If this happens, what will you do next? If you advise the vendor to decline the offer, they may not get a better one. If you advise the vendor to accept the offer, they will spend the rest of their lives wondering if they could have got a few thousand pounds more. Worst still, they may challenge your fee on the basis that you did not do enough work to earn it.

A better way?

A better strategy might be to delay putting new properties onto the portals for a few days. This will give you a chance to ensure that you have time to let all your prospective buyers know that a new property is coming to the market. You might also delay booking viewings for a few days to ensure that all purchasers get a fair chance to see the property before it is sold. This approach has many advantages. Purchasers all get a fair chance to see the property. Vendors know that their property was properly exposed to the market.

To survive these market To survive these market changes you must show clients the value that a good estate agent can add to the selling process.

From your perspective, you get an opportunity to advertise the property to generate enquiries from new prospective buyers and you get an opportunity to tell prospective vendors about the property which can help you to get instructions to sell their property. It really is a win-win-win approach.

A full marketing process

Many agents, particularly those in London and the South East, take this process one step further and have a two to three week marketing process culminating in an open house or a whole day of back to back viewing appointments.

If more than one offer is made, purchasers are then asked to make their best and final offers in writing. In a buoyant market, this can be a very effective approach and it is of course the standard way that properties are sold in the many other countries such as America, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.

The process is transparent, fair to all parties and ensures that the property sells for the best price and that the vendor is reassured that a better price could not have been achieved.

Whatever approach you decide to take, it is essential to demonstrate a comprehensive marketing process in order to justify your fee. If all you are going to do is to stick the property onto the portals, arrange one viewing and accept the first offer that comes in, then you don’t deserve your fee. Your vendor could (in their view) have gone to one of the online agents who would do this much more cheaply. In order to justify your fee, you must be able to demonstrate that your sales process will generate a higher price, a price that is high enough to pay the extra fee and leave the client better off even after they have paid it.

Demonstrating value

I will go further. Unless your marketing process gives applicants on your register an opportunity to see properties before they are advertised online, then purchasers will start to wonder if it is worth registering with estate agents at all. If applicants stop registering with estate agents, then what will estate agents have left to offer their clients? Not only will you lose your market share to online agents, the estate agent’s role could become redundant altogether.

In order to survive the changes that are coming in the marketplace, you must be able to demonstrate the value that a good estate agent can add to the process of selling a property and an important element of this is a properly controlled launch of the property onto the market.

Adam Walker is a management consultant, business sales agent and trainer who has worked in the property sector for more than 25 years.
www.adamjwalker.co.uk