Saint or Sinner?

There Is a huge gap between how different agents treat their clients. Fundamentally it is about what you focus on. Crudely speaking it is the difference between being client focused and being focused on sales targets and commission. This is why corporate or national estate agents are rarely successful or dominant in their local patch. Take Cambridge for example. Like any other village, town or city it has a mixed bag of estate and lettings agents. Like any industry it is very clearly made up of the good, the bad and the downright ugly. 

If you were to take the time to look at who sells most properties it is always the independent agent. And luckily for you, in Cambridge they are pretty much all a good bunch and are not hugely target driven with middle management cracking the three line whip. Agents work hard, but can sleep at night, rather than living in fear of missing aggressive sales targets.

An old boss of mine once said to me "we have never been target orientated, but motivate our teams to work hard and deliver the best service and results for our clients, this way by doing a good job you will earn well". This has always stayed with me.

And let's face it we are all here to enjoy a successful career and have a good living, to make profit. We would be disingenuous to suggest otherwise. Apart from affording us nice holidays with our friends and family, and the occasional overpriced iced coffee, being successful means we can invest more in systems that help us serve our clients better, and even more importantly it means we can do so much more within our local community.

Independent agents like corporations incentive their teams, of course we do. Whether it's commission for selling properties, providing conveyancing leads to solicitors, mortgage leads and even removal companies.

But, and this is a big BUT (that's why I capitalised it, to emphasise its sheer heft), there are no thumb screws, there's absolutely no pressure from our teams to use anything or anyone we recommend and this is the fundamental difference. We have chosen suppliers who are the best in their field. They provide a service that will without doubt be of benefit to our clients, buyers and tenants. We trust them. And us recommending them is quite naturally a reflection on us. So yes, it is very important.

To quote graphic artist Anthony Burrill, as we like to do occasionally "Work hard and be nice to people". Simple but beautifully powerful. I live by it, and foster it in the entire team, and indeed in our partners. I even have said poster, which spans one metre by half a metre, framed and positioned on my staircase just to remind me on a daily basis this is what we are about. Interestingly Mr Burrill uses the traditional discipline of letterpress to embrace bold new territories. Another lovely metaphor for our ideology, as firmly expressed in our brand.