Growing Your Business
As humans, we always strive for more; it’s a blessing and a curse all in one go. I’m yet to meet anyone in the world who's completely at peace and satisfied with where they are in their life and doesn’t want more for themselves or their loved ones. It’s a fundamental part of our nature to reach for what’s next, to seek out new challenges or greater fulfillment.
I’m sure you can look back at times in your life where you felt that if you got to a certain level or ticked a certain box, you would feel differently. The reality is that once you tick one box, another one magically appears for you to chase after, and the system repeats itself endlessly. However, in any business, it’s essential to take a step back and acknowledge what you have achieved along the way, even if only for a few moments. Reflecting on your progress can illuminate how far you’ve come and the trajectory you’re headed towards, provided you continue following the right steps.
With this in mind, it’s crucial to understand what’s possible within your business by looking at what you’re doing well and identifying where strategic adjustments can be made moving forward. In my personal experience, a lone operating estate agent working for themselves can generally handle 30 properties under their stewardship at any given time. This might include 15 properties for sale and 15 homes under offer, but 30 in total—a figure achievable with the best sales conversion strategies in place.
If you have less stock than this right now and feel like you’re hitting the rev limiter in your business, it’s likely that there are optimizations and time efficiencies you can implement to give yourself more bandwidth to grow. On the other hand, if you are well in excess of these figures and still deliver excellent customer service, then hats off to you. Keep up the amazing work.
It’s also important to recognize that business aspirations and priorities differ from person to person. I speak to clients across the country daily, and their goals vary widely—from achieving specific monetary targets within a year to simply being able to take a Wednesday off to pick up and drop off their children from school. While this book’s title emphasizes earning money, for some, financial growth may take a back seat to other life priorities—and that is absolutely fine. It’s your life, after all.
If the figure of 30 units seems daunting, let’s focus on changes that can help you and your business achieve that number comfortably. As you might imagine, success hinges on effective time management and focusing on the crucial aspects of your business that drive growth. In any estate agency, three primary cogs keep the machine running:
Lead generation
Listing and selling properties
Sales progression
These high-level activities encompass the essence of estate agency work. Lead generation, as covered in earlier chapters, is about bringing warm leads into your business to convert into future listings. For a new estate agency, much of this will involve manual efforts like leaflet-dropping, door-knocking, and similar grassroots marketing.
To streamline your business, it’s critical to identify sales funnel pinch points. For many agents, the bottleneck is often themselves and their limited time. When your business begins to pick up, investing in less hands-on marketing strategies, such as digital campaigns or outsourcing physical marketing tasks, can free up valuable time. Additionally, outsourcing professional photography can enhance the quality of your listings and improve the appearance of your online shop window, whether on portal pages or social media. Numerous companies offer these services, often including floor plan creation as part of the package. This is an easy way to save time while elevating the professionalism of your listings.
When it comes to sales progression, it’s worthwhile to initially oversee a few transactions from start to finish to understand the entire process. Once you’re comfortable with the workflow, consider outsourcing this task. There are companies that specialize in sales progression, and some even offer referral incentives when you pass properties to their solicitors. This arrangement can be a win-win, saving you time while potentially generating additional revenue.
By outsourcing effectively, you’ll be left primarily with the core activity of listing and selling properties. This allows you to focus on attending market appraisals, conducting viewings, and negotiating offers. For many estate agents, this is the most enjoyable part of the job—the thrill of matching people with homes and seeing deals come to fruition.
If these elements of your business are set up correctly, the sky truly is the limit. While I don’t want to jump the gun, my future plans include writing another book on this very topic—detailing how to expand your business from its current state to the heights you aspire to reach. Stay tuned for that one; I just need to finish navigating this book first!