Making the tea might be an essential part of most office days, but it’s not bringing any extra money into the business. Most company owners know this – and yet they don’t know the monetary value of every other task their team completes.
I'm a huge proponent of categorising tasks according to their value and allocating them accordingly – and this process is helping letting agents across the UK maximise their profits.
Here's just one example. If your agency has 250 calls coming in a day, and a member of your small team has to stop the task they’re working on to answer the phone each time it rings, then the cost to your business could be huge.
It’s likely that 200 of these calls are about maintenance issues, inspection bookings, or other routine matters.
These calls are essential for your existing landlords and their renters, and not answering them promptly would certainly equate to unhappy customers – but they don’t require your most experienced tenancy manager to deal with them.
So, what if someone else dealt with those calls, leaving that manager to focus on adding to their portfolio? What if only the other 50 calls came through to your office number – the ones about complex matters needing years of knowledge to unpick, or from landlords looking to take you on as their letting agency?
Outsourcing the simple, routine (yet essential and time-consuming) tasks to virtual assistants (VAs) is an effective solution, leaving your senior team able to focus on the income-generating and customer-retaining tasks.
Not only do I strongly advocate using VAs for the majority of incoming calls, making a virtual assistant available to every tenancy manager dramatically increases the size of the portfolio they’re able to manage.
Two hundred and fifty properties each becomes the norm, rather than 60. Again, they deal with the complex while the routine enquiries are re-routed to the VA.
Through that one change, you’ve quadrupled the size of your overall agency portfolio and you’ve ensured your property managers can effectively retain their existing landlords because they’re dealing with serious matters, while the day-to-day is dealt with just as quickly by someone else.
So, that’s customer retention sorted – but we want more than that. We want growth.
That’s why every agency also needs a business development manager (BDM).
They’re not going to deal with a plumbing fault or an inspection enquiry, because answering those calls is going to divert them away from talking to a prospective landlord, or from setting up a lead generation funnel.
By increasing the number of high-value tasks you’re giving to your BDM, your tenancy managers, and the rest of your senior team members, you’re increasing their potential to bring money into the business.
This is beneficial to you as the agency owner, but also to the team itself – because a high-earning team bringing in increased revenue can in turn benefit from higher salaries.
Yes, it’s about wanting your business to grow and flourish, but it’s also about wanting that for each individual you employ – setting them up for success in their role so well that you’re in a position to financially reward them with increased wages.
A guest blog by Sally Lawson, CEO & Founder at Agent Rainmaker. Head to agentrainmaker.co.uk for more information.