Hamilton Fraser's Paul Shamplina and Goodlord's Director of Insurance Oli Sherlock share their top tips for making sure landlords choose your fully managed service.
How can you upsell landlords - new and old - from a let-only service to your fully-managed letting service? Paul Shamplina, Chief Commercial Officer at Hamilton Fraser, joined Goodlord's Oli Sherlock for a webinar discuss their own approaches. Watch the webinar on-demand or read on for their top tips.
1. Build profiles for your landlords
"The first step to really winning landlords is understanding exactly what they're about and what's driving them to be a landlord," says Oli Sherlock, who worked as a letting agent before specialising in insurance for the lettings industry.
Ask the right questions
That includes finding out why they're letting their property - for example, is it an investment property or are they relocating - and establishing their short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals, so you can see if a fully managed rental service would be right for them.
Personalise those profiles
Sherlock suggests going even further and personalising your landlords' profiles. "I would include stuff like where they're going on holiday, what their dog's name was, anything pertinent they would describe to me. So I could use that back again in the conversations and it seemed to add value and made any conversation around fee easier." Download a free template to help you build better profiles of your landlords.
2. Keep data at your fingertips
Make sure your knowledge of the local market is always up to date, says Paul Shamplina, and know how your own data compares. He cites void periods as an example: "If you know what your average void period is, you can say to your landlord that you can turn their property around in five days."
Understand your market share
Sherlock agrees that you should be using this data at the point of valuation, nothing that Goodlord provides these monthly insights as part of its platform.
"You can say that your average void period is 15 days against the average of 22 days, for example, or that your average tenant is earning £31,000," says Sherlock. "Because I think what your competitor will do is walk in there and tell the landlord what percentage of market share they have."
3. Detail every single thing you do
It's not enough to have a brochure that talks about your brand and says you offer let-only and fully-managed services, says Sherlock. You should have a document that details every single step that you take care of as a part of your fully-managed package.
Outline the steps in the process
"The way you're going to be able to convince landlords to go with your agency and to pay the fees that you're actually worth is starting at the basics and detailing every single step.
"Now I'm not suggesting for one second, you talk through every single step, but you should have it as a document and signpost it and you say, I'm not going to talk to every step, but I would ideally like you to read through each step that we'll provide you as part of this service," he says.
Share the fee at the end
Shamplina agrees: "When you've done your pitch, and you've gone on to your fifth page after knocking a tree down because there's so much paper needed to show the work that you do, by the end of it, the landlord should say, crack on," he says. "You don't need to mention your fee until the very end."
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