Guide To Becoming The Best Agent In Your Area

This guide has been compiled from years of experience in various sectors of the property industry, from estate and letting agency, surveying, property investing as well as training and mentoring many other people to become property investors. During that time, we met hundreds of agents across the Country. We analysed the areas where the best agents were excelling against a backdrop of mediocre competition. We want to share these insights with you to help you become the best agent in your local area. 

Throughout this guide, we will show you how to do the following:

• Destroy the competition;
• Identify the key emotional drivers to keep you going when things get tough;
• Make choosing your agency a 'complete no-brainer' to a prospective client;
• Find out what separates the best from the rest;
• Effortlessly find new clients and make more money without working harder.

Dedication

We dedicate this guide to all those people who are determined enough to make their dreams come true. Those of you who continually face uphill struggles, setbacks and disappointments in life, yet keep on going no matter what.

The road to personal and business success is long and winding; full of learning opportunities which bring certain challenges and frustrations. However, those determined souls who keep digging deep and keep trying 'just one more time' know, that one day soon, it will all be worthwhile. You are the true heroes in life and our source of inspiration.Thank you for being all that you are.

Disclaimer
Unfortunately, in today's litigious society, we must state that the ideas shared within this guide do not constitute in any way, financial advice or guidance and we are not regulated by the FCA or any other financial regulation authority. We are not qualified to make any such claims regarding the merits or otherwise of a particular investment, particularly within an economy that is greatly uncertain at the time of writing (March 2020).

We encourage all parties reading this guide to seek sound and competent financial guidance from a suitably qualified party in accordance with the law. We also encourage all parties to seek sound and competent legal guidance from suitably qualified lawyers.

WiggyWam, it's directors or employees cannot, and will not, be held responsible for any errors or omissions contained within this guide and share the information within as ideas and suggestions only. 

Introduction
At the time of writing this guide, the world is going through unprecedented change. The CoronaVirus scare has sent over 3 Billion people into lockdown, planes are grounded, businesses are closing their door to the public and all eyes are on the media as to how this whole pandemic will play out.

Amongst the casualties of these unusual chains of events are the estate and letting agents together with their clients. The property market has all but ground to a halt and we expect it to take many months for things to get back to normal. This is another blow to the industry which has gone through unprecedented legislative change over the last few years.

We know the care and attention that agents put into looking after their clients, with many going above and beyond the call of duty to ensure they are offering the very best service possible. Unfortunately doing so involves many long hours, sometimes at unsocial times to stay on top of things. It is with this in mind that we offer this guide to those agents who are forward-thinking enough to want to not only survive the current market turmoil, but to really thrive when we are out of the starting blocks again.

Without a doubt, the property market may never be the same again and as Darwin once famously said, "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change, that lives within the means available and works co-operatively against common threats."

We have included the full quote for you as most often, the quote ends at the word 'change'. However, the future we envisage for the industry relies very heavily on the last part of Darwin's infamous quote "…that lives within the means available and works co-operatively against common threats."

We see the property industry being radically shaped by the changes forced upon it to a more efficient, streamlined and consumer-centric approach. Those smart agents that make the changes now, however hard some of them may appear to be, will certainly be the ones that come out on top over the next few years. Those that fail to adapt and make changes will almost certainly perish.

We trust that you, dear reader, wish to survive and thrive in the current economic situation and be the one agent that wins more business from the ones that failed to change.
 
A Quick Reality Check
Before we get into the real meat of this guide, we felt it would be incredibly useful to do a quick reality check with you. This time of being locked away in our homes is the perfect time to be taking a good hard look at our ourselves as well as our current businesses to see if we are still aligned with them. This might seem like a superfluous activity, yet time and again through mentoring people who wanted to get started in property investing, the question would always be raised as to why they wanted to do it in the first place?

The answers might seem obvious; to make more money, to create a better lifestyle or to have 'bragging rights' down the local pub or golf course that you are a property investor. However, these reasons are pretty lightweight when it comes to surviving the harsh realities of what it takes to be an investor. Weak reasons lead to people quitting on their goals and dreams, and the same is true in running a business.

If we were to ask you, why you are an estate/letting agent, you could no doubt come up with a few ideas as to why you are involved in this profession. However if we were to delve deeper and ask you to come up with 10-15 reasons why you are an estate/letting agent, this would no doubt cause you to ponder the question at a much deeper level to come up with intrinsic, deeply emotional, motivational reasons as to why you are choosing to spend your life within this profession. Such common answers might be to take care of your family, or to be the very best agent that you can be, or even to leave a legacy, knowing that those people that crossed your path in life and transacted property through you were left feeling that you took care of them and helped them find their dream home.

So, to start with, let's check in and find out why you're an estate/letting agent? Do your best to list as many reasons as possible, and certainly aim for at least 10. Write them down on a piece of paper, or you can add them in the comments below. You might be surprised as to what you find out about yourself.

So, how did you get on? Wait, you didn't do the exercise? Ok, well that's up to you, however what we have found after years of working with people is that those who skip over and don't do the exercises presented are lacking an intrinsic set of motivating values or reasons as to why they are involved in their chosen profession, which ultimately leads to meltdown in the future. Without the necessary motivating factors to carry you over the current hurdles, and the ones to come over the next 2-5 years as the property market gets back on track, ultimately most agents will give up to go and do something else. This leads to them missing out on golden opportunities that the present and future uncertainties will offer.

You may have done the exercise and found out that you are in this profession for reasons other than you thought. Some of those reasons will be deeply personal to you, however once you have identified these values and reasons, it is worthwhile keeping this list close to you as it will assist in carrying you over the bumps in the road that we all experience as time unfolds.

Others of you might have hit a wall and come to the stark realisation that this work was something that you found your way into and you're lacking passion for it. Or you may have realised that you've enjoyed your time in the industry, but now it's time to move onto something else. If you find yourself in either of these camps, please don't be disheartened. This is exactly why we have presented this exercise to you, and if you're not feeling aligned, then now is the perfect time to make some changes to your life and begin a new chapter.

Still not sure which applies to you? Well, read on because there's a very interesting article below that should help you to clarify your motivations around this most important of topics. You see, we spend an enormous amount of our time at work. It becomes the place where we meet new people, develop our professional and personal relationships and find fulfilment beyond a wage.

However, is what you're doing now the best use of your time? To help answer that question, let's take a look at the following study carried out by a nurse who cared for elderly people in their final months of life before they died. Here, she compiled a list of the top 5 regrets of the dying (see http://www.karenstan.net/2013/11/11/nurse-reveals-top-5-regrets-people-make-deathbed for more information). They were as follows:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
This was the most common regret of all. When people realised that their life was almost over and looked back on it with clarity, it was easy to see how many dreams had gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even half of their dreams and died knowing it was due to choices they had made, or not made.

It's very important to honour at least some of your dreams along the way through this journey through life. From the moment we lose our health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom that very few realise, until they no longer have it.

2. I wish I didn't work so hard.
This came from every male patient that was nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
Often, they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks when it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets around not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to themselves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again. When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.

Is all this a little morbid when we are talking about the property industry? In our view, no. The industry is powered by people and as more time goes on, the less opportunities are available to make adjustments in our lives to live the life we have always wanted. So, if at the end of this section you feel that agency work is no longer for you, then congratulations! You have just saved yourselves countless hours/days/weeks/months/ years of frustration and can take steps in the right direction towards your true calling.

For those of you who have reached this point with a smile in your heart knowing that agency is definitely the route for you, then congratulations are in order for you too! Knowing that you're aligned both mentally and emotionally with the industry and your business will enable you to be streets ahead of your competition and to succeed where others will fail. With that in mind, let's look at how you can become the best agent in your area.

 
Becoming The Best Agent In Your Area
We'd like to share a little background to this section so you can appreciate where the information presented has come from. For years, we worked with a national team of property investors who trained and mentored new and existing investors in how to get started and expand their portfolio. Part of that process involved finding the best agent in the area to manage the properties that the investors subsequently bought.

We ended up interviewing hundreds and hundreds of agents in various different towns and cities across the Country. What was interesting was the fact that some patterns emerged as to what made one agent stand out head and shoulders above the competition. It was always the same pattern time and time again; one agent, in every town or part of a city, whether corporate or independent, led the field by a huge margin.

First of all, we feel it would be useful to walk you through the qualifying criteria we used to use to choose the agent we would eventually work with. For some, this will be a huge insight into how investors work, so for maximum benefit, we're sharing it complete and unedited from the secret investor handbooks we created to assist investors in their journey. Then, we'll share with you the top 5 tips to becoming the best agent in your area.

Secret Investor Handbook Extracts – Choosing Agents To Work With
(To preserve the authenticity of the message, we have included it in its entirety).
As investors, we need to leverage our time by employing the services of professional people who will do some of the work for us, whilst we benefit from maximum reward. One of the key players here will be the letting agent we choose to work with to manage the properties. Some amateurs make the mistake of saying they will manage the properties themselves in order to save themselves paying 10-15% of the rental income to the letting agents, however this is folly in our experience.

A good letting agent is worth their weight in gold so you want to work with key people who will help you to run this as a business and manage your properties carefully. How do you pick a good agent? This is a great question and one that we would offer the following guidance for you:

• Firstly, visit all the lettings agents in the area you are choosing to invest in. Ask them the questions that follow and make a note of how they respond to you. There are huge differences between letting agents and in our experience of visiting many towns and cities around the UK, there is generally only one letting agent in each area that you want to work with. The key is finding them and working with them!

• Take copies of a street map with you, together with red & green highlighter pens. Ask each agent you visit to highlight the areas of the town where they have high demand with the green highlighter, and the areas of town that you should avoid with the red highlighter. You want good quality properties rather than cheap houses, which are in rough areas, which you will end up paying your tenants to stay in!

• Ask the agent the following question to test demand for certain property types: "If I were to bring you a property that you could rent out in a heartbeat, what would it be and where would it be?" This qualifies the property type and area that is most in demand and helps you buy to meet this demand.

• You would also be well placed to enquire who are the local tradespeople they use and would they be happy to recommend a builder, electrician and plumber as you would like some assistance in renovating properties to a good standard for letting.

• Finally, ask the letting agent if any of their landlords are looking to sell their properties or get out of the business. This can be a great source of leads for you! You can also provide an incentivise by telling them that you will leave the properties with them to manage when you buy them.

1. Before any tenant moves into your property, they must sign an A.S.T. agreement which details all their responsibilities as well as your own as a landlord. To make your life easy, ensure they sign the agreement as well as initialling every page in the bottom corner. This protects you, as should things get contentious in the future, the tenant cannot claim to have not seen the page in the tenancy agreement where it states the rent they have to pay and the terms they have to comply with! Never, ever, allow a tenant to move into a property without a signed A.S.T. as the minimum period of occupancy is 6 months by law (even without an A.S.T.). If they move in and never pay you a penny in rent, then you will not be able to evict the tenant any earlier than 6 months and the Courts will usually find favour on the side of the tenant rather than the landlord as you will be deemed to have known better.
2. Always ensure an inspection of the property is carried out a month after the tenant moves in. The reason for doing it after one month rather than quarterly as suggested by most people is because you will be able to quickly determine whether or not the tenant is likely to become a problem. You will also get some idea of how they live and if there are apparent problems, you can draw the tenant's attention to the A.S.T. initially to try and head off any issues. If this doesn't work, then you can serve them notice to get them out of the property at the end of the 6-month term. It will give you a certain amount of peace of mind and prevents problems spiralling out of control.
3. Always protect the tenant's deposit (if you take one) with one of the approved deposit protection schemes and let the tenant know immediately where the deposit has been lodged or protected. There are severe consequences for not doing so including a fine of 3 times the initial deposit paid to the landlord, plus the requirement to pay back all the rent the tenant has paid! Clearly, no landlord wants to find themselves in this situation. Your lettings agent should be able to guide you further on this if you are in any way unsure of what the legal requirements are.

1. Be Proactive
Being proactive is important as it demonstrates certain great qualities about you and your business which others may not know about. One example of this would be a letting agent putting together a prospective landlord pack for investor clients looking to buy in their area. Any agent in the Midlands and North of the Country, Scotland and South Wales could easily put an investor pack together which they provide free of charge for anyone enquiring about investing in their area. This could include demonstrating your knowledge concerning which are the best areas to acquire properties in to rent, and which are best avoided. 

You can also advise which type of property is in high demand and give the client some idea of the services you provide to look after their investment property. Stories concerning how you went above and beyond the call of duty with your clients and helped them out should also be included. 

If you and your staff members are also investors, you should definitely let your clients know (see below). Perhaps with a little thought, you could come up with some ideas of other things to include which add potentially massive value yet which cost little to implement. Is all this effort worth it, you may ask? Well let's ask another question – how many of your current competitors are doing something like this? The answer in our experience is very few. So, do you think you will stand out against the competition if you're the only one offering a branded package of quality information to a prospective client? The answer will undoubtedly be, yes! This serves a secondary purpose too; it allows the less experienced members of staff to learn from your expertise and thus increase the levels of service offered, and also covers for their temporary lack of knowledge by providing the client with lots of information which the more junior member of staff may not know. 

Have some fun with this and see what you can come up with. It could be a USB with some informative videos on it shot in your office or it could be a deal-analysis service where you would offer to price up the refurbishment works, manage the refurbishment and sell/let the property at the end of it. For a fee of course! You might find that this strategy alone will bring you more work than you can handle!

2. Know Your Area Better Than Anyone Else
There's a saying in the investment world which is; 'You don't know what you don't know'. Seems pretty self-explanatory, but it's what you don't know that can get you hurt. Similarly, your client doesn't know what you know, therefore you must convey this knowledge and information to them so they can make an informed choice whether or not to work with you. This is one of the reasons why we feel the larger corporate agents have struggled so much recently and it come down to this; trying to use the McDonald's approach (hiring the youngest/cheapest staff and training them to run systems) in agency doesn't work in our humble opinion. 

If you're looking to sell your £400,000 home, you don't want to speak to a youngster who has no experience in buying and selling homes. You want to deal with people who know what they are talking about and have experience. Yes, everyone has to learn and not all youngsters are the same, but you can't expect someone to do business with you, especially trusting you with the most expensive asset they will own, if you and your staff or company haven't demonstrated that you know what you're talking about.

3. Demonstrate That You Are An Investor Yourself
This is head and shoulders above them all as the best tip we can give you as far as winning potential investor clients over is concerned. There is a world of difference between running your agency business from an investor's perspective rather than how some people choose to which is as a hobby. 

As an investor who owns property yourself, you understand the detrimental impact to your business of void periods. You understand why it's essential to get maintenance and repair work done as economically as possible (notice we didn't say 'as cheaply' as possible). You understand how to ensure the tenant pays their rent on time throughout the tenancy and to remove them from the property should they not. You understand, through personal experience that a landlord's property isn't just a number on the whiteboard in the office, it's their livelihood. Demonstrate that you can act in this way for your clients and you will deliver service at a much higher level than your competition.

4. Listen To Your Clients And Their Requirements
This might sound a very obvious tip to give you, however it's amazing how many people actually get this so wrong. It's vital to listen to your potential client and respond to what they are asking for, not what you think they are asking for. If you are in any doubt at all, or you feel the client may be off the mark in their requirements, ask qualifying questions to really drill down and get certainty or assist your client in shifting their mindset. The reason we suggest this tip is because we had countless conversations with agents where there was a complete misalignment between what we wanted, and what the agent was prepared to offer or indeed understood about our requirements. 

To give you an example, let's say we knew from our sums that a three-bedroom terraced property around £70,000 would work best for our particular investment strategy in that area. Yet when we conveyed that information to some agents, they would start trying to sell us 3-bedroom semi's at £120,000! Can you see the misalignment and how frustrating that would be to a potential client? 

It's perfectly acceptable to say that you don't have something suitable, but that you will keep in contact with them on the mailing list. And when you promise to do that, make sure you keep your promise and only send relevant properties to them. All too often we see agents take the 'scattergun' approach by sending lots of properties to potential investors which wastes a lot of time for all parties. It may work for buyers of residential homes, but investors are more specific in what they are looking for.

5. Keep your commitments
By far, this is the biggest test a client will use to see if you're an agent worth working with. After we had called in to see an agent and engaged in a conversation, there were invariably some action points the agent agreed to take on and then 'get back to us'. It was amazing observing how many times they failed to do so. It would not be uncommon to hit an 80-90% strike rate of agents failing to make the grade by not getting back to their potential client. The ones that won the business were sometimes the only agent to get back to us! Get back to people when you say you will.

We hope the above has been useful and gives you some quick and easy wins over and above your competition. Are these things hard to do? No, not at all, but you will be amazed at how often agents fail to live up to the mark. We believe part of this is due to lacking passion for the agency business, either themselves as owners or managers or, within the staff they have working for them.

There is another tip that we would like to share with you which is so powerful, it will make an unprecedented impact on your business, probably bigger than anything else you could do. It will cause your clients to stick with you, to move their portfolio over to you from another agent and to grow their business with you, all whilst paying you occasional lump sums of income equivalent to two or even three years net monthly management fees. Does this sound exciting? Would this make a massive impact to your business? Yes of course it would! The more interesting part is realizing your competition will not be in a position to match your expertise and prowess in this area as it requires a certain skillset which most don't or won't possess, leaving you to clean up and become the best agent in town.

BONUS TIP: PROPERTY SOURCING
Property sourcing is all about taking being pro-active to the highest level because you are taking steps to find great deals for your potential clients which they buy from you and pay handsomely for the privilege. Furthermore, you not only get paid a fee for finding the deal, you can get paid for project managing the refurbishment and you get to keep the property to rent out on behalf of your client! Talk about a win-win-win!

In order to do justice to the property sourcing side of things, we have compiled a complete guide as it's a little more complex than just giving a few bullet points. For agents who haven't done this before, it's important to get into the mindset of a professional investor to ensure you are getting the right deals for your clients which are profitable.

Please check out our sister guide to this one called The WiggyWam Property Sourcing & Renovation Guide. In there you will get a flavor for whether or not Property Sourcing and Project Management of refurbishment projects would be your thing to assist in building your business. Some agents enjoy it and it helps their business grow rapidly, others feel it's not for them which is totally fine, it just leaves them somewhat at the mercy of the more pro-active agents.

For those agents who are more serious and who want to step their game up as far as this unique income stream is concerned, we've created a much more comprehensive guide including examples of sourcing agreements, hunting briefs and other vital information to help you find undervalued property, sell it to your landlord clients and project manage the refurbishment.

If you'd like a copy of The Ultimate Property Sourcing Handbook – Digging For Diamonds (worth £397) add your email below and we'll be more than happy to share our resources with you.

Conclusion

We very much hope that this guide has added some value to you and the time spent reading it has been worthwhile. We'd like to offer you some additional resources which we feel will be instrumental in assisting you in going from strength-to-strength with your business. The following reading list is definitely the books we would recommend to provide a solid foundation to your business as you scale and grow.

Top Three Reading List
1. Built to last by Jim Collins & Jerry Porras
2. Scaling Up by Verne Harnish
3. The E-Myth Revisited by Michael A Gerber

Without a doubt, these current economic times are very challenging and it is likely that things will never return to the way they were pre-2020. With challenge brings uncertainty and it is in this uncertainty that opportunities can be found for those who are willing to look for them, find them and use them to your best advantage. It is a known fact that more millionaires and billionaires are created in economic downturns than are ever created in an upswing. Whilst this might not be your aspiration, we hope it will serve as a source of inspiration for those of you who are determined to grow your business throughout these challenging times, creating a solid platform to dominate your market.

We have a quick favour to ask

Thanks for taking the time to read our guide. We'd like to ask a quick favour of you as someone who is clearly a thought-leader in the industry. We'd like to know what we can do to make the property market better for all concerned.

We appreciate that most people find moving home a frustration in itself. Its commonly known as the third most stressful thing someone can do after the death of a loved one and going through a divorce.

As someone on the front line and who deals with the general public and property transactions all day long, there's no doubt in our minds that you will have asked the question many times "why doesn't somebody do something about that?"

We'd like to say that we're in the market to do exactly that. We want to hear from you with your thoughts and ideas and proposed solutions which can help make the property market more efficient and fun for all involved, and ultimately more profitable for agents. So please take a few moments to send us a quick email now with your thoughts: