Built For The Harder Market (With Tom Turner)

The market has changed, and estate agencies can no longer rely on the momentum that carried many businesses through the post-COVID boom. In this episode, Tom Turner from Pendle Hill Properties shares how his family agency became more disciplined, more data-led and more confident in a harder market.

We discuss systems, follow-up, higher fees, buyer intelligence, accountability and why the old estate agency value proposition is no longer enough. For independent estate agents and agency owners, this is a practical conversation about building a business that performs when the market stops doing the work for you.

Follow the Estate Agency X Podcast and share this episode with other estate agents who are serious about building stronger businesses.

This episode is sponsored by Iceberg Digital, the AI Operating System for Estate Agents. They replace outdated CRMs, disconnected marketing tools, and manual prospecting with one intelligent, AI-driven ecosystem, built to increase revenue per employee and future-proof your agency. https://iceberg-digital.co.uk/

Transcript

Speaker 4: 00:00
Welcome to this episode of Estate Agency X. Today I'm talking to Tom Turner from Pendle Hill Properties. It's going to be such an interesting story for anybody out there that went through COVID, got to the other side, and suddenly scratched their head and thought, like, oh, what am I supposed to do now? Tom's background, he was working in his dad's estate agency when he was 13 years old. He travelled around to the other side of the world, experienced what real estate in Australia's like, came back to England, went through the COVID period, implemented AI operating systems into his dad's estate agency, and now they're charging an average of 2%, sometimes 3%. So this is the episode for you if you're trying to figure out where your estate agency should be going.

Speaker: 00:42
Estate Agency X, the UK's number one estate agency podcast discussing the future of estate agency, entrepreneurship and business. Host Mart Virgins and Rob Break.

Speaker 4: 00:54
Okay, Tom, thanks for coming all the way down. Tube strike and everything. Still managed to get here. So we always start off with the guests just giving the listeners a bit of a background how they got into a state agency, you know, what they're up to at the moment. If you could just give the listeners a bit of an idea as to how you fell into this, that'd be great.

Speaker 1: 01:15
Yeah. Um I started out in a state agency probably around the age of 13. Okay. Um a family business, mine and my dad's, uh, my dad always encouraged me on a Saturday to come into the company and sort of learn, learn the way. Um so that would just be answering calls at 13 and booking the nice for him and handling things whilst he was in a way. And at 13, did you like that or would you like, oh please no? I suppose it just it was only ever in the morning, right? Because we've got big cricket backgrounds, so we we tend not to do too much in the afternoons um for talk transparency, and then um I'd answer them calls and then he'd let me go off to my cricket game and and play from later in the afternoon. So it was a good introduction to it. Um the family side of it led on from there a little bit. I I hate school. Um didn't like being in a classroom, so leaving school just decided that I wanted to work and always enjoyed spending time with my dad and learning from him, so that led on to an apprenticeship through his business. Um at the time it was my dad had this crazy idea to put me in, he wanted me to be a mortgage advisor. Right. Tried to get me through my C maps at the time and trying to be this youngest qualified mortgage advisor that you'd ever seen. And as a sort of 15, 16-year-old lad, I just found it really boring. Yeah. I've always been a people person, like meeting people and getting to know people, and always found my way when I did that two-year apprenticeship with him. That sort of the best part of what I did was enjoying meeting people on viewings and then sort of like feeding my dad valuations. Um, and that worked quite nicely. So that that's sort of where he started. Um, the the business in terms of where it went on from there, I went abroad. So I finished my apprenticeship and decided to go to Australia. A lot of my friends had done that before and just went and worked in farms and in different industries. Yeah, for I love cricket, so that's like predominantly where I was going for is just to travel and and see cool places and sport. And that led on to an opportunity where I just emailed companies out there to try and see if it was an opportunity to do some some form of work in the industry.

Speaker 3: 03:21
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 03:22
Um, and then got into a company out there called Nicholas Scott Real Estate. Yeah. Um, whereabouts were they based? In Melbourne. Yep. Melbourne. Um chap called Nicholas Scapulos, who I'm still good friends with now, messaged me on my birthday every year. Um he basically gave me a job and it he he really like peached it up. It was called home finding. And uh what what that really consisted of was here's our white pages, the the yellow pages of Australia. Uh ring a hundred, you know, you had to get a hundred calls booked in a day trying to find that one valuation out of a hundred. And if it wasn't that, he was door knocking in 40 degree heat. But I mean, at the time he didn't care too much so out there. Um, but that opened up a different light in terms of my first experience of databases and prospecting and building resilience, and from a young age found that I quite enjoyed the industry. Um, came home. That led on to me wanting to come back to work with my dad. But at the time I'd got a taste for success in Australia, the wages were a little bit nicer, and the commissions off the back of my booking appointments for the suite, and the business wasn't quite where where it wasn't in a position at the time being 2015. So we'd just come out of obviously the crazy periods down to 13 and slipped like recoveries through to that. The business wasn't there to support me. So I came into Manchester and at the time went into a role as a 19, 20-year-old investment consultant was the job title, which I thought with the B's knees.

unknown: 04:51
Okay.

Speaker 1: 04:52
I thought with the B's' knees. Um, but basically I was just selling off-plan investment opportunities to investors from abroad.

Speaker 3: 04:58
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 04:58
And then from there that led into some bits that didn't quite go my way, um, which led me into different directions of setting up my own company, going into business development, and leading through to COVID if you fast forward to that period of time where me and my dad reunited and I got put back into his business into a position where I wasn't working, I was furloughed, having had my business that I basically had acquired previously, taking a role with that company. Pivoted back into working with my dad at a point where he didn't want to pay me a wage. So I said I would try and pay for myself, introducing free CRNs to prove that just collecting data was a massive part of what would develop him into successfully growing the company, converting more business. And from that, there, that led basically into the opportunity of me paying for myself and some, and then putting him into a position where he's prepared to gamble on our first CRM. And that led on to where we are today in a position where we took a further gamble when introduced to you guys, um, which was a big investment, yeah, the grisk, but we're in a position now where it's paying dividend and we're doing doing well. So that's that's my background very quickly.

Speaker 4: 06:11
Yeah, really good. I love it. Um okay, and so I guess my first question is um from the point where you returned back into the business uh around the COVID time um to now, because like it's like six years have just flown by, right? Um what's the biggest differences that you can see in the business and the industry?

Speaker 1: 06:42
Goodness, that's a good question. Yeah, um just thought you up on the spot. It's a really good question. Yeah, um, because there's a lot of changes. Yeah. So many changes, not just for us personally, but obviously in the industry as well. Because you had so much growth, so much excitement, so many agents becoming successful. It went crazy, didn't you? Yeah, it it was not um, but that did open up opportunities for us to be able to take more risks, which was good. Um changes in our business were substantial. That's when we were fortunate enough to be in a position to invest into the right systems, which off the back of the market's being surbuyant with stamp duty savings being in place, sub 2% interest rates, which sounds sort of sort of nice at the minute, but there's a big change. Yeah um led into our business growing substantially over a two-year period. You saw growth of in excess of 300% growth. Yeah. Um, so from our standpoint, the business grew substantially, which gave us the flexibility to take risks and develop. Put me in a position where I moved house, um put myself into a new location, identified an area that I thought would be sweet, which led us into being to a spot where we could take a risk, growing into our second branch, um, off the back of building relationships, not necessarily jumping straight into an office, building a pipeline of good opportunity. Um and throughout that period, we just saw real success. And then obviously this trust came into power, not talking too much politics, cocked everything up, and then just put us back into a position where we then started to reap the benefits of the now what you like us to call an AI operating system, started to pay huge dividends. Um so changes from our standpoint are substantial, both systematically, and also in the way that we go about what we do, yeah. Um, from an overall market perspective, if I was to talk you through the waves of changes we've seen in the Northwest, it's it's been all over. Right.

Speaker 4: 08:40
All over. It's crazy really, because listening to that, like, you know, like we said before, like pretty much you if you if you didn't have a crazy period just, you know, immediately once the market reopened in COVID, then like you're never gonna have a crazy period, right? That was the time where literally like everybody was like just you couldn't you could come in in the morning to like five offers, right? Um so but it felt like it feels like now we're on the other side of it. Um a lot of established companies just rode that wave, yeah. Didn't really do anything particular, like just rode it. And then now they're on the come down going like, right, what are we gonna do now? Whereas it sounds a bit like due to circumstances, whatever it may be, even though the uh the company had been around a while, because you'd only just joined it, that that period of time allowed for change that uh now that we are on the other side of it and the come downs happened, has you've it's it's almost like in hindsight, like, oh god, thank God we did that. It wasn't it's obvious now in hindsight that people should have done that, right?

Speaker 1: 09:51
I always say to people when I meet them in them two years, it wasn't a question of are you gonna sell a home, it was how much you're gonna sell a home for. Yeah. Um you could list your house with an online agent and sell, not necessarily get delivered upon with the best outcome at the end of proceedings, but you'd sell your house. So for a lot of people, seeing the fee and thinking the saving on that fee was a huge benefit. But and it didn't scare us because we still knew our brand and our reputation, the way we worked, and our ability to be able to sell the value of how we work differently would win us the jobs, and it did. Um, but what came after that crazy two-year period in them uncertain times came new opportunity for us to be more proactive. So in uncertain times, people pull back, become more reserved. And during that two-year period in our business, my dad's always been more the risk adverse. He's been more adverse to risk. He doesn't like to take them risks, but whereas I've always been that young yeah, I always call that young spunker. Um that's an Australian thing, right? He's in a position where he likes to take risks and to develop, and we bounce off each other perfectly because he he can rein me in, but I can also open him up. Yeah, and opening up them opportunities in them on certain times is what has put us in a position where we are today, yeah, which is seeing massive growth in terms of everywhere or all aspects of our business.

Speaker 4: 11:11
I suppose it's easy in hindsight, isn't it? You know, when it all works out, it's easy in hindsight to go, like, you know, that was the right thing to do. But yeah, you know, if it hadn't, then I guess like, you know, we'd be talking well, we probably wouldn't even be talking about it, right? So, um, so what are some of the things then now that whereby you look and say, like what like for someone listening, now maybe they're thinking to themselves, but but but but tangibly, what is it that's happening in the business now that that's making life a bit easier than if you hadn't have had that in place?

Speaker 1: 11:47
I suppose the investments we put into our AI operating system running for you guys has opened up the opportunities for us to pivot roles, pivot positions, really concentrate on the sort of the monetary generative roles within the company. And I mean, for me, for example, I've travelled two hours down on the train this morning. If you rewind five years ago, that they've been wasted time.

Speaker 3: 12:13
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 12:13
But I've been playing around with AI scouts, opened up two new front doors, two new valuation opportunities just from dropping a message that was created for me at the click of a finger.

Speaker 4: 12:23
Yeah um so from our standpoint, yeah, that's pretty crazy when you compare that to phoning through the yellow pages in Australia, really, is it?

Speaker 1: 12:31
It's nuts. Like I can't even think of I think of how alright at the time I enjoyed doing it, which was nuts. Um, which I've always liked to think is why I'm a little bit different, is resilience is built, but I would never ask my staff to do that anymore. Why would I want them to ring a hundred people when they could have ten people put in front of themselves that are pre-qualified, have been identified to have been seen to be looking at properties and could or should want to potentially purchase or sell their own home.

Speaker 4: 12:59
Yeah. Um I guess the argument on there on a on an agent not doing that side is always Yeah, but uh what about the rest? What about the rest of the phone calls? Like it's it's quite hard, isn't it? Because until you actually do it, you sort of pre-programmed to believe that you must do the 90s you must leave 97 voicemails in order to get three good phone calls. Otherwise, like you haven't worked hard.

Speaker 1: 13:27
I was brought up on it.

Speaker 4: 13:28
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:29
I was brought up on it. It takes some takes some doing to get past it and and move forward. But when you assess your day and you you look at, I mean, I always look at my day and I think of how am I using my time and break it down and how much of that time are you using to actually generate income for the company, yeah, for the business. And when you start to look at when you start to look at the conversion rate of them opportunities that you are calling, you realize you're wasting a shed load of time. Yeah. A shed load of time where you could just be qualifying, you could use them qualified opportunities, make them calls, move on to something else.

Speaker 3: 14:01
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:02
You think about the value of an estate agent. Your number one role is to achieve the best price, the best outcome possible for your client.

Speaker 3: 14:08
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:09
And if you're spending all your time bringing dead-end leads, dead-end opportunities, you're not, you're not delivering upon that outcome.

Speaker 4: 14:16
Yeah, I I likened it. I did a talk just yesterday to a company, and I was saying to them, like, uh, once upon a time, you needed an accountant to do all the maths work. Because like, what a pain in the ass that would be if you didn't, if you weren't into maths, and you you've literally got to by hand write down all of your outgoings, all of your incomings, get it all to balance, and like that's why you paid an accountant to do your account, add it all up. Like, no one pays accountants to add up anymore. I don't even need an accountant that can add up. I need an accountant to reduce my tax and keep me out of prison. Like, that's their job. So, like, if they spend their time adding up, it's really kind of useless to me if I also pay too much tax and end up like in trouble compliance-wise. It's kind of that it feels like that uh transition is happening in a state agency, but it's quite hard because there are a lot of people in the industry that if you don't stop to think about it, working is leaving 97 voicemails. You know, but we're trying to make the shift over to like, no, no, your job was to get an instruction. It wasn't to leave 97 voicemails. Yeah. Don't care about the 97 voicemails.

Speaker 1: 15:29
I mean, being a smaller company, people we don't really have people to report to, but I'd imagine in some of these bigger companies when the micromanaging members of staff to mix I see it day in, day out in companies local to ours, you know, and in our business, uh there's there's people we know of that work in these other companies and we get feedback that you know they they got commission commission cut because there wasn't a a call target hit, and it's like rewinding 15 years.

Speaker 4: 15:55
Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy because the AI, uh on the one hand, AI will uh put all of that under a magnifying glass because it'll make it easier to see like uh how many calls someone made and all of that sort of stuff, but not not so that you can monitor how many calls someone has made, because AI will also make it possible for you to see what opportunities were missed. Yeah. You know, what opportunities were claimed, like, you know, where's the frust what frustrating phone calls happened in the day, like all of that sort of stuff, so that you can just get straight to the root of the problem.

Speaker 1: 16:28
If AI can break down and educate the person making the call on how to be better, yeah, that's that's where we're going.

Speaker 3: 16:35
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 16:35
And that's you know where we can all learn. Me and my valuations when looking at conversions and then trying to understand where I could be better, how I could, you know, how I can learn. That's all coming from AI now, and it's yeah, it's super cool.

Speaker 4: 16:48
When I um talk to yourself or your dad, and and I'm always like away from you know our conversations, just generally in the industry, I talk a lot about revenue per employee and that sort of stuff. And you guys have a high revenue per employee. Um for the listeners that don't know what that metric means. Basically, you take your turnover, divide it by your number of staff. That's how much revenue each member of staff is responsible for bringing in. Um and yours is quite pretty high um compared with the standard. Is it something that you particularly consciously pay attention to, or do you think that that's just happened um naturally because I don't know, you've you've tried to in introduce technology. I don't know, like how's that sort of come about?

Speaker 1: 17:35
It's funny you s you talk about it because it it came from the EAX 10. Yeah. Um when you mentioned RPE, it's never really been something that we tangibly actually looked at.

Speaker 3: 17:48
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:49
Um so when we did the numbers and you ran the numbers of what's good and potentially what's bad, we went, bloody hell. We're not doing so bad. Yeah. And I think for us a lot of it comes from um the backbone of the business in my dad's where he has always managed a lot and taken on board a lot of the the back end of what we do really well. Where in a lot of companies they have I remember maybe four or five sales progressors, yeah. Whereas we've always only ever needed one. And that's all changing now into a position where we don't need four or five. We actually only need half as much of my dad's time as well, which is allowing him to go into other positions within the business to work on it, not necessarily in it. Yeah, it's really exciting. Um, so now it is something that we monitor, and it's actually the backbone of a lot of the decisions that we're making in terms of our growth and where we're going and how that's gonna look. And so it's changed everything when we've started to look at it in that way.

Speaker 4: 18:42
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:42
Um, all for the better, all for the better.

Speaker 4: 18:44
Yeah. You also uh you guys have good, really good fees compared with a lot of the agents in the industry. And and I I've often spoken about this kind of uh this split that's happening in the industry. It's quite easy for me to see because I uh sit in a sort of helicopter point of view whereby I talk to lots of different agents. You know, I can I can took I talk to people about their revenue per employee, I talk to people about their average fees, like what they're struggling with, what's going well, all that. So it's quite easy to see from above. When you're s inside that industry, it's hard to know whether you've got a good revenue per employee or any of that other sort of stuff. You just sort of hear the rumours of what people are charging. And every agent that I talk to kind of believes that it's there's a reason the their fees are low, if they have got low fees, because of their area. They always it always comes back to that. Like, oh no, because in my area this happens. Um so how have you managed to not just maintain good fee levels but even increase your fee levels? I think just before the show started, you were saying like recently you've got uh three percent, I think, on a on a on a instruction. Um average fee is at the moment is I don't know what would you say average your average fee is. I know three percent is probably at the top end, so what's 2%'s kind of average? Um how how have you managed to maintain that? Not just from a um mindset perspective, that's probably the main one, because you must get challenged on it a lot. Every day. And and you obviously lose instruction, so how does the mindset stop you from slipping back? And how have you managed to maintain it um when there's undoubtedly going to be agents around you that will do that will sell someone's house for, you know, a packet of biscuits.

Speaker 1: 20:36
Yeah. I mean, this is my favourite topic of conversation because it's what I do day in, day out. It's sort of like my my entire my entire role is around meeting people, valuing homes and winning business. So day-to-day you deal with objections surrounding fees. And when when I break down what we do, it's if you want to charge the fees, you've got to be confident in your outcome that you're delivering upon. So everything you're putting across comes from the confidence that you put out there. Um the the battle of ongoing fees being the rap race at the bottom is so common in our industry. And the way I'm explaining it to people at the moment is that estate agents have worked in the same way for the last 25 years. It's that they've always rely, they've always been reliant on that main portal that's been right move. Yeah. And if you rewind pre-Right Move, the power was with the estate agent. They had the filing cabinet in the back, they had the list of buyers and the people they could speak to. So when Right Move was introduced, it put you into a position as an agent where you weren't just that special. You know, the everyone has the best marketing, everyone has the best service levels, everyone has the best X, Ys, everyone has the same things. If you read anyone's websites, it's the same stuff over and over and over again. And so for us, it's just been finding our key differentiators on how we deliver the best outcome.

Speaker 4: 21:54
Yeah. And and and do you find that I mean it's been a Long time since I was an estate agent, but when I was an estate agent, sometimes you go in on a valuation and you'd meet people that were quite open-minded and ready and to listen to you, and sometimes you go in on evaluation whereby, like literally the person's like mm-making some toast while you're talking to them, and then they want you to get out.

Speaker 1: 22:19
So, like that's the best part of the job, though. That's the beauty of being a good agent and being being a good valuer, and it's understanding the ability, having the ability to be able to adapt depending on the person that you're meeting. Is a big thing that I teach my team and the the people that are coming through into these more senior roles is that you never know what you're walking into, but how exciting is that?

Speaker 3: 22:39
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:40
How great it is it that you've got to be able to pivot and help and understand by asking the right questions as to what's so important to these people.

Speaker 3: 22:47
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:47
And if you can get to know that person and understand really what they're looking for, which in most cases is the best outcome financially, and and and also from an emotional standpoint, that stress level has been diminished. If you can tap into that and then get to the point of the fee being 2% towards the end, they might still have that knee-jerk reaction, that flinch.

Speaker 3: 23:07
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 23:08
Which you should be testing throughout your evaluation anyway. It's a big part of what I do. I love flinch testing, chucking numbers out there early and seeing how people react. But um, yeah, I I took 2% on a fee, if you work it right, it for us has proven to be great, and that's now backed by stats.

Speaker 3: 23:25
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 23:25
We we know what we achieve in excess of other agents, so we're in a better position to be able to sell the value of what we do.

Speaker 4: 23:31
Of course. And installing that confidence into a team member, like, how do you go about doing that without them just keep coming back to you going like, I just I it's not that I can't win any listings, it's just that no one wants to pay 2%.

Speaker 1: 23:48
Yeah, it's it's tough. So I'm only in that, we're only in the position now where we're starting to offload valuations onto team members. Yeah. So it's quite an exciting topic of conversation for us, is that I've just been away. I've been away for three weeks, went over to Japan with my wife, nice, had a fantastic time. But in that time, it was the first time I've had to let go of my baby, which is our Longbridge branch, and trusting my staff member who I know has got the ability to be able to do what I need to do to go off and to provide valuations. And I was at a house yesterday um in Longbridge, she'd won the job, put herself into a position where she'd got the business at 2%. This lady had been into two and three other estate agents, and the main the main reason that she came with with us, with Nikki, was because she trusted Nikki, she saw the value of what we do, and she'd seen the true value of what that end goal would look like. She trusted that we would get more money and get it to her end destination, which is to move down south. Yeah. Um, in the right time frame, and that she would walk away on top.

Speaker 3: 24:51
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 24:52
And that came from that came from the top. So everyone, everyone in our company, myself and my dad, now believe in what we're doing, but that didn't come without risk. So a lot of listeners will probably say, oh, well, that all sounds great, Tom, but it wasn't easy for us. We had the conversation surrounding going from one and a half to two percent. We did, yeah. And I never I never I doubted it. Yeah. Which I feel guilty of because I I say I'm I'm up for risk, but our competitors were fighting to the bottom, 0.8% was what we're competing with. Yeah. Um, and it was only yesterday we we found that one of our competitors had now increased their fees to one and a half percent. Yeah. I took a bit of pride in that.

Speaker 4: 25:33
Yeah. I've had that's funny, I had a similar conversation with another agent that um I've worked with for years and years, and when we first met, he was in serious financial trouble. They were charging a flat fee of something like 700, 800 quid, something like that. And gradually over the years, his fees have gone up. He's now like clearly far and away the most expensive agent in his area. And he was saying something similar to me that like they've they've started to notice all the other agents' fees have come up. And just as you've said, he was like, I kind of feel like I've done that. What are you doing?

Speaker 1: 26:02
You're raising the standards. Yeah, you know, if we're being paid in Australia, in in Australia, in America, the the way that agents work is just better. Yeah. And the reason it's better is they they paid more money. So if we can increase our fees, increase our service levels, it's not just better for for ourselves, but it's better for the client.

Speaker 4: 26:20
Yeah. I I I often get into conversations with people about their fees, and it's quite a hard one because you don't want to offend people.

Speaker 3: 26:30
No.

Speaker 4: 26:30
But like, you know, you also like I've had the conversation so many times over so many years, not just externally, internally with my own team. Like, and so you want to sort of cut to the chase. And the bottom line, it doesn't matter whether you're buying software, whether you're paying for an estate agent, whether you're buying a hamburger, whether you're buying a pen. Like, do you want what the person's offering? And estate agents often fall into the trap of I'm only offering the same as everybody else. So I can there's only so much I can charge. So I think like, brilliant, what you're kind of explaining there is to that you've sat down and empowered the team to know what it is that we offer and how it makes a difference to the end client. Now, look, not everybody's gonna want that. No. But at least they can articulate it to something.

Speaker 1: 27:18
That's okay. Yeah. That is okay. I don't want to work with everyone.

Speaker 4: 27:21
No. You want to explain what we do, and if you like the sound of that, then this is what we charge and have the confidence to do that. I think a lot of people are stuck not knowing how to articulate that they might do something different to the rest of the estate agents.

Speaker 3: 27:39
Yeah.

Speaker 4: 27:39
Did you ever did you ever struggle with that problem? Did you ever find yourself at any point like, I don't know, maybe pre pre-iceburg or pre whatever, pre-game to Australia. Did you ever find yourself in the situation where it's just like, I don't know, we just we do the same as everybody else?

Speaker 1: 27:55
It was always uh originally down to the company values. It was my dad's values at the time were open, honest, accurate. Yeah. Whereas our values now come more down to better, better strategy, better buyer, better results. So we pivoted in the way that we look at what we do. But that open, honest, and accurate approach and the brand that my dad had built surrounding how trustworthy he was as an agent was what we used to sell.

Speaker 3: 28:17
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:17
So at the time, I mean you rewind a lot of years. My dad would have just competed on fees to win the business. Yeah. Because he was selling values that every agent would tell you the same thing.

Speaker 4: 28:28
Absolutely. We're going, we I see I see that one a lot, honesty. People have that as a core value. And if you're if you've been an estate agent for a long period of time, you can see the value in that core in that, you know, having that as a core value.

Speaker 1: 28:40
Everyone thinks we're we're likes.

Speaker 4: 28:42
Yeah. But the but but the reality is that it's a waste of a core value because there's no there's no one out there that's got the opposite. There's no one out there that's advertising. Guess what? Our core value is dishonesty.

Speaker 3: 28:56
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 4: 28:57
So it's so it doesn't land, if you know what I mean. Like everyone's expecting it. Yeah. It's just that you I'm not expecting you to be dishonest to me. So when you tell me, you know, one of our best traits is that we're honest, it doesn't carry any value to me, you know. Um so that's that's that's interesting that you've switched those over to being something that's a little bit more tangible to the end uh buyer, if you like.

Speaker 1: 29:20
I mean, before that you had it's you're proper rewinding the club, but before that you had glossy broches. Yeah. Which my dad clinged on to for a lot of years. But and it's just eventually opening up, it's continuously adapting to try and be different and better.

Speaker 3: 29:35
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:35
And if you stay ahead of the game, you put yourselves in a position where you'll you'll be successful.

Speaker 4: 29:40
I f I th I wonder if one of the things, one of the reasons that happens, especially like with that divide that I see in the industry, um unfortunately on the wrong side of that divide, I see a lot of uh estate agents that are my age or maybe even a little bit older than me, that have been around for quite a while. And I wonder, just thinking about it now, if it's because they they were able to they lived through the change. And so I remember like many years ago at one of our very first estate agency X events, probably 2018, I did this presentation where I listed off all of these things that an estate agency is, and one of them was like professional photography. And my point at the time was like, what's the other option? Like unprofessional photography. Well, yeah, you know, I'm not expecting you to come around and take a photo that was slightly of my room. Yeah, you know? Um, so but because maybe we uh uh the older generation lived through once upon a time, it was a one black and white photo. So this is a benefit. When it first came in, it was probably like, well, let's advertise this. And it just sort of stuck with it, like you say, like the glossy brochures. We do a floor plan. It's like now someone goes, yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:54
So I resigned to all of it. It's but it's what's really scary, Mark, is that all of that is true. All everything you've just rhymed off there is bits that my dad and myself, in the early stages of working together, used to sell the value of what we delivered upon. I think the unique factor of a photographer was we had one photographer that was a true professional in what he did, but he solely professionally took pictures of houses, didn't do weddings at the weekends. Yeah. But nowadays, I don't even talk about social media anymore. No. The the reason I talk about social media and our 11,500 followers on Facebook is that all I'm utilising that for is to extract the data from the people that register to look at the information of properties that we've got coming available, like to ride move. Yeah. And when you think about it that way, I still see agents now selling themselves on the fact that they deal with social sneaky peaks and previews. Great. And what?

Speaker 3: 31:49
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:50
And what? Yeah, where does that how does that affect? How does that benefit your client putting that sneak preview? I can count on one hand how many houses I sold on social media in last six months. Yeah. But I can tell you the hundreds of people that I've extracted from social media, inputted into my database, that I can now communicate with, see what they're looking at, when they're looking at it, and what's of interest to them to proactively be pushed to try and get them through the front door about how Sam Selling.

Speaker 4: 32:16
Yeah, it's so true. Um I remember doing a talk once. Uh I think it was maybe not the last estate in sex, maybe it was the one before. I did a talk on stage with Daniel Priestley where he was talking about the, you know, uh, I don't know if you've ever seen like the triangle of like Maslow's kind of your needs, uh, what someone needs in order to survive. There's a similar one for uh creating value uh when doing a presentation. Um and at the bottom of that is time for money. So this is what we're sort of taught in school, like, you know, get a good job, you'll get paid a certain amount per hour. That'll be that's and that's at the bottom of the value. And then next up is if you're a professional, then you can get paid slightly more per hour. Um next up from that is the IP. So you've worked out how to do something, which is what you're talking about. I've worked out how to get you more money for your house. And if you want access to that information, you need to instruct me and pay this fee. And then at the top of the chart is the data. I've got the data. So not only have I worked it out, it's my data too.

Speaker 3: 33:27
Yeah.

Speaker 4: 33:27
And that's and now all of a sudden the person's like, well, I I do want access to your time and your professional time, and I want access to your information that you seem to have worked out because your stats back it up, and I definitely want access to your data because you're the one who's saying you've got it. All of a sudden, like, where's the argument then? So, yes, of course, some people you'll go on evaluation and they'll just go, like, I'm just not interested to put my house on right move.

Speaker 2: 33:52
Yeah.

Speaker 4: 33:52
And you have to have the confidence to go, I don't think you want what we're offering. But the ones that do want what you're offering, as you you're you're a living, pre breathing example of the fact that they'll they'll just happily pay the fee, right? They want that.

Speaker 1: 34:06
It's so true. I mean, the power's in the data. And it used to be the filing cabinet in the back of the office. Yeah. It's now your AI operating system where the data lies.

Speaker 3: 34:15
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 34:15
And if you've got that, then you've got the value to sell to be able to win the instruction at the fee that you want, in my opinion.

Speaker 4: 34:21
Most agents have got loads of data. Um, they just they can't find the needle in the haystack. I think that's where the AI operating system really comes in, isn't it? Because otherwise it's like you're just constantly playing a game of where's wally. You know, I've got to I've got to spend all day looking through this map trying to find the little bloke in the stripy t-shirt who might want to view this house. Whereas if the computer can do that bit for me, just immediately show me like these are the people that will view the house, yeah, or these are the people that are likely to instruct next. Then going back to the start of our conversation, you can have a higher revenue per employee, you can move on from there.

Speaker 1: 35:01
And who really wants to find Wally? Yeah. How hard is it to find Wally? Yeah. You know, I I've opened them books up and I struggle.

Speaker 3: 35:07
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 35:07
I built a business up on finding Wally, doing the bits that people didn't want to do.

Speaker 4: 35:11
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 35:11
I've now got an AI operating system that does that for me.

Speaker 4: 35:14
Yeah. And that's what I love. Especially if you've got staff as well, because going back to what is a staff member, this is the evolution that I think a lot of people are going to struggle with over the next few years. And I I I can talk about it firsthand because I've spent the last two and a half years converting our company to be AI first. And I can tell you the struggles that I had with staff is that that bit that we're talking about of you believe your job was finding was you believe your job was looking for Wally, not finding him.

Speaker 3: 35:47
Yeah.

Speaker 4: 35:47
You know? Um and uh in the world of AI, that job's not needed anymore because he just gets surfaced immediately. So now it's not trying to your job isn't trying to find instructions. Your job is getting instructions. The AI found them.

Speaker 3: 36:04
Yeah.

Speaker 4: 36:04
It gave you a list of 43 people that have all been on the market for more than eight weeks that are struggling to sell, and here's their contact details, here's what buyers we've got, here's what we've sold nearby. I had an email from an agent the other day saying the scouts don't work. It's like, how what do you mean the scouts don't work? They were like, well, here's my spreadsheet that I've been keeping about uh how I've got on with it. 43 listings that have all been on the market for more than 10 weeks, got the contact details, and here's everything, all the work that I've done. And in the column of work that's been done, it shows things like left a message in October. Uh, you know, bear in mind we're now in like what, end of April. Uh next one, no, no contact, next one, couldn't get through, blah, blah, blah. And they were all like that. No follow-up. Yeah, no, yeah.

Speaker 3: 36:47
Yeah.

Speaker 4: 36:47
And I've all and I've also sent 43 letters. It's like, right? So it doesn't work. It's like, well, what doesn't work? You don't work. Like, you're the problem.

Speaker 3: 36:56
Yeah.

Speaker 4: 36:57
You're the b I've given you 43 low-hanging fruit and you've come back with nothing.

Speaker 3: 37:03
Yeah.

Speaker 4: 37:04
Like, that's the mindset that has to flip, isn't it? The job isn't leaving voicemails.

Speaker 1: 37:08
It's accountability to what you're doing. It's the same with the valuations. We had the conversation surrounding if you're not winning the business at the 2% level, then the fee's not the issue. You are.

Speaker 4: 37:19
Yeah, absolutely. It has to be the presentation or the person. I mean, it it it could be that the person's brilliant and that you don't really have anything to offer. So going back to what we spoke about before, if you haven't got a particular process, you haven't got data, then maybe it would be very difficult for you to go in and win these two or three percent fees if you were just going around and saying, you know, we do professional photography, our photographer doesn't do weddings at the weekend, you might struggle. But if you have got the the process, and it's been proven by at least someone in your team, i.e. you, then it has to be the person, right?

Speaker 2: 37:54
Yeah.

Speaker 4: 37:55
Um so it's really interesting. So so where do you see this going in the future then for your company and for the industry generally?

Speaker 1: 38:04
That's a really good question. Um I think for us it's just ongoing development in our business personally. It's we're looking to grow, but whilst monitoring our growth, it's keeping on top of where we're at in terms of RPE, yeah. Making sure that we're promoting within that's a really amazing part of what we're doing now as well. We're not talking too much on is that if you concentrate on RPE, you can. I always used to say that there's not a lot of money in a state agency, which is not right for employees. When you think about commissions earned in different countries, you watch selling to uncertainty, you see what these agents are making. But there can be now. You can pay your staff well and you can reward within. And that comes then with only benefits for you as an agency. When you're paying staff well, you get the return.

Speaker 3: 38:50
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 38:51
Because if your people are happy and they're making the right money, they'll do superbly. So for us, it's it's about finding the right people, continuing to grow, develop, and change, never being adverse to a risk in terms of if something new comes around, embrace it, learn from it, just right, great. If not, move on. Um and continuing to just to drive to be better. The industry itself, um I just love I love that I can still walk through people's front door and be the only agent doing this in our area.

Speaker 3: 39:21
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 39:22
I think that is huge. And I think about how hard we've had to work to get into the position that we are where I've got every single little piece of confidence in what I'm talking about in the outcome we can deliver for someone. Uh, I'd hate to be that agent right now that's sat there still doing the same work in a polite way.

Speaker 4: 39:40
Yeah, just struggling, wondering what's going on.

Speaker 1: 39:43
Um, still thinking they need to drop the fee, still thinking that they should sell the fact that their social media is fantastic, still selling glossy brochures. I don't see so much of it anymore, but yeah, it's still happening.

Speaker 3: 39:54
Yes, definitely.

Speaker 1: 39:55
Um, or even worse magazine articles, I heard the other day. And so for me, it's it's continuing to grow, continuing to develop, continuing to learn and driving forward. And if we can just separate ourselves from everybody else in terms of what they're up to, I would say the Red Sea and the Blue Sea. If we can stay in the blue sea away from everyone else, we'll we'll continue to grow and be successful.

Speaker 3: 40:16
Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 4: 40:17
That's brilliant. All right. Well, if anybody out there is listening and thinks, I need to talk to this guy. Like, where is where are they most likely to catch your attention if they message you? Would it be Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok? Like, where's where's the where's the place that you're likely to see a message?

Speaker 1: 40:36
Come come through to us on on any of our social pages, just on the Pendle Hill properties.

Speaker 3: 40:41
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 40:42
Um, and they'll get through to me or reach out and I can provide WhatsApp details and when you have a catch up.

Speaker 4: 40:47
Okay, awesome. Thanks very much for coming in.

Speaker 1: 40:49
Cheers, Mal.

Speaker 4: 40:50
Thanks for listening to this Estate Agency X podcast. Can you make sure that you're actually subscribed to this podcast channel if you liked the content? Uh, it helps us massively to get better guests, and it just helps us generally. So you might think you're subscribed, but just have a double check, whatever your um podcast platform of preference is, that you're actually subscribed, and then that way we can continue to grow the channel and get better and better guests for you.