My Secret to Converting Sales As A Real Estate Agent
By: Matt Giggs | Feb 19, 2024
I hope you’re ready to learn my secret for converting sales in real estate agency in the UK. Why should you listen to me on this? Because I’ve been in estate agency for 28 years and I know what works – read “How I Became an Estate Agent in the UK” for more on my background.
I'm telling you right now we live in a fast world. A world that is going at pace all the time. Everyone's on this merry-go-round, and we go round and round and round. And as technology improves, we get even more things coming our way don't we?
If you're a business owner of an estate agency right now, you are bombarded by new platforms and new tech that you should use to be better at what you do. I'm not denying it, some of the tech is absolutely amazing. I mean you probably found my blog through a link on one my of social media profiles – LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram or YouTube.
Without tech, you wouldn’t be reading this – you probably wouldn’t even know who I am. But tech can’t replace the principles that served me so well back when I started in estate agency 28 years ago. Back then, I didn’t have a driving licence or even any real knowledge or experience, but I was one of the fastest, best performers in the corporate world within 6 months of being in this industry.
When I talk about performers and results, I'm talking about completions. That’s really where all clients want to get to, and you don’t need lots of tech to get them there. You need conversation.
Conversation leads to conversion
So, in the beginning, what was I doing that made me successful? I remember this guy who had been doing the job for years and years and years, and he rang me one afternoon and just said, “How are you doing it? What are you doing that's making such a difference? How are you making those sales?”
Now I'm not trying to be braggy, I'm trying to make the point that this was 28 years ago and what I was doing then is what we all need to focus on right now. If you want to convert more sales, then you need to be in more conversations because it's only in conversation that you achieve a conversion.
I’ll say it another way: a conversion is the result of a conversation.
How can you really pick up the nuances from a client through a text, a WhatsApp, or an email? The trouble is everything that's easy to do and quick to do ends up being the worst thing that we do. Taking the easy route to do anything in life is the quickest way to not succeed, to not feel like you're achieving because everything's speeding past all the time.
Focus on the conversation so you don’t get trapped in just putting offers forward on an email. Though we do need to put it in writing and there's no such thing as a bad offer in any market, you need to be having conversations.
Where I think certain bigger online agencies have maybe failed over the years is they've taken the view that technology can actually manage conversions. But emotions are lost in logic. How do you dig deep and connect with the buyer if you don't have a conversation?
Conversions depend on emotional connection – tech gets in the way
When I work with estate agencies who want to improve their ability or their results, it's their ability that dictates their results. I’m not talking about their ability to send an email, text or WhatsApp message. Don’t get me wrong, I've seen some fantastically well presented emails with offers, information, data, the works. They’re brilliant so far as they go, and I’m pretty crap at writing such emails myself, if I'm honest. But very rarely will sitting behind a keyboard get your point across. Very rarely will sending a little message or text really bring the right perspective.
Think about it. Over the years, how many times have you received a message from someone and you've looked at it and thought, “That's a bit rude”? But actually the person sending it didn't even realize that was how it came across.
As an estate agent, do you really want to risk seeming a bit rude when messaging a client? You've got to think about this guys. You're dealing with people's largest, most valuable assets and you're relying on technology to transition them from where they are to where they need to go?
The role of tech in conversions
I’m not saying tech doesn’t have any place in estate agency. It’s the structure and the foundation that gives you the opportunity to take your ability forward, to take a conversation forward. But don’t hide behind the tech.
For me, conversation is where everything happens in sales. It's where you get to the heart of the sale. You do not get there if you're sitting at the office typing away. You've got to get in your car. You've got to get on the phone. You’ve got to go and meet them – even hop onto Zoom. Whatever you do, you need to be in a situation where you're in the conversation.
I have doubled people's conversion rates in recent months on offers because they've decided not to put the offer forward in writing straight away. Instead, they've decided to have a conversation.
When you go into those conversations, part of the conversion isn't you spieling, selling, telling that client to go and accept the offer, right? It's got nothing to do with that. It reverts back to all the principles that I've shared on this blog, and that's to ask the questions because questions are the answers.
You've got to be invested in what your customers’ knowledge is. Be invested in what their experience, needs, goals, outcomes, and desires are before you even start the process of negotiation. That’s why it's only in conversation that you actually convert the sale.
And if you convert the sale, I'm promising you now you're going to be making your clients a lot happier moving forward.
Tech traps that stop sales
Try not to get trapped in the tendencies of the modern era – don’t let your devices create a divisive relationship with your client.
It doesn't work I promise you – you'll end up just being the same as everybody else:
- non-communicative
- no relationship
- no meaning
- no feeling
You know selling a house, buying a house is the most emotional process. It's done with the heart and justified with the head.
For sure we need to put things in writing, but never do it before you've had the conversation. For me this is where you're going to take steps moving forward – this is where you connect with the heart.
You're going to get an offer – the offer comes in, and more often than not buyers and sellers will want to communicate over email. Why? Because it's easy, right? But if you want an easy sale, get into conversation.
The first thing I always do whenever a client comes to me – and I had one recently where they said, “Can you just put it in writing to me?” And I said, “Absolutely, as soon as I've shared with you the information and asked you just a few questions so I understand your needs, I'll put everything in writing to you.” And they were like “Yeah that's cool. When should we catch up?”
So you don't need to react, you need to respond. You need to be strong in your approach to managing expectations through having better, more skilled conversations.
The conversion has always been in conversation
When I started in estate agency we were encouraged to talk to our buyers every single week.
Most of the time when we registered people to go on a mailing list, which used to happen in the prehistoric ages, people would come in and they would say, “Well look, can I go on your mailing list?” And you'd start to register their details and everything else. You'd write everything out and so on and so forth, but that really was just the beginning of the process.
But really it was the conversation that you had with people on a weekly basis that would advance the sale forward, not you sending a set of details in the post. You know, I remember it was very rare back then when I was sending details out to buyers and sellers to think to myself, “Yeah, they're going to come back to me when they get that post.”
So I never used to do the post outs, which was the main reason actually at the start why the higher ups kept ringing me.
What helped me was doing the phone outs. I'd speak to my buyers, and when I first registered them, I’d ask:
- What time frame are you looking for?
- What kind of properties do you really need?
- What are the things you can't live without?
And I'd get into conversation early on in the process, and I'd always promise them that I'm not just going to ring them about properties that don't meet their needs.
Trust was built there and then, so when I phoned them, they answered. When I spoke to them, they listened because I understood them.
I don't think you can really understand a client until you get into conversation.
Be in conversations to convert more sales
I'm not saying you shouldn't email, you shouldn't use text, WhatsApp, and so on as touch points to help you to leverage the conversation. But everything should be driven towards you having a meeting, a conversation, an opportunity face-to-face where you can actually understand your client before you give them your solution.
There you have it. It sounds really simple, but I tell you now, if you want to be different in the current climate and if you want to stand out in your market, be in conversation. Then you're going to enjoy more conversions of sales.
That’s my secret to converting more sales as a real estate agent today. I hope you've enjoyed the post and hopefully you're going to give me a little like or you're going to comment below to ask for more information. Don't forget to subscribe to the blog so you’ll be the first to hear about my next post. Thank you so much for reading, I really appreciate your time.
