Estate Agents: Your clients' opinions justify your fee

  How do you justify your fee?

We make no apologies for returning to a theme addressed in this article just over a year ago.

With fees being - along with online v. high street (and isn't that about fees as well?) - just about the most contentious issue in estate agency at the moment (any moment?), it makes sense to look at them in the context of reviews.

Review content supports your fee levels

Everyone - and we are no exception - tends to focus on numbers of reviews" "We have 300 reviews on our website", "We score 4.8 on Google", when we should sometimes be focusing on the contents of the reviews themselves. 

Just read this: 

 And this...

Having a great score on Google and on your HelpHound module helps, but it's the individual reviews that provoke potential clients into picking up the phone/click on 'contact us'.

And what to do with a review like that?

• Put it in your window?
• Highlight it all over your website?
• Reference it in your mailers/leaflets?

It's up to you. Reviews do not - and should not - stop at your module!

Estate agents - reviews and the great fees debate

How can reviews help an agent when it comes to that point all of you dread, when the clients says "I reckon you've got the job, now let's discuss fees."

How about if you had a review like this that you could show them?

A genuine review posted for a client in the last month

Let's walk through the whole of this screenshot in exactly the same way you might walk your client through it:

1. Everyone has scored us a full 5 out of 5, on every aspect of our service
2. Bear in mind that every client is asked for a review - see the box next to HelpHound's logo
3. HelpHound will not delete a negative review on our behalf
4. You will be asked for a review when we've sold your home

 Now - on to the review itself:

•  Please see what our client has to say about our fee

A final note: see how many people have voted that single review helpful in the week since it was posted.

Estate Agency fees - it's all about differentiation

An interesting piece in the Eye this week - a detailed analysis and breakdown of estate agency fees. The main conclusion is that the average fee, as expressed as a percentage of the sale price of the property, has fallen over the last four years. 

These charts show the marked move away from fees over 1.5% in the last four years

 
The full article is here, so we will concentrate on the aspect that we can influence: differentiation.

Differentiation?

Yes, it's a horrible word, and we've struggled for years to find an alternative, but we seem to be stuck with it for now. What, in the context of reviews, does it mean? It means setting your business apart from your competitors in order that...

• You gain the instruction
• The client is willing to pay a decent fee

This is just one exchange out of the many the article prompted; the former is much more likely to be our client!

And that is what Dialogue is all about. If it can enable our clients to gain just one more instruction and charge just one tenth of a percent more in fees, then it's more than paid for itself. If it does better than that, then everyone is in clover (if you missed the recent post about a new client's experience, read it here).