Dom is a very accomplished self employed agent who has gone on to become one of the most success self employed agents in the country. He now runs a team of self employed agents. 

His first hard hitting tip is that you aren’t in sales, but you are in marketing. This is twofold… you have to market yourself to people. You need to spark emotion as emotion inspires action. Marketing practices is a fundamental for any estate agency. Therefore you have to learn social media, advertising, etc if you want to succeed in our industry until 2030. Dom shares that he sounds like a human, and not an estate agent whenever speaking to clients and within his marketing mix. Dom’s marketing isn’t corporate, for example when doing an open house, reach out to other neighbours and let them know there may be some extra traffic. By doing this you are showing that you are human. It will often then create intrigue and is a great firm moment of contact with the street. Dom highlights that this indirect approach means neighbours will go online to be nosy and then see you great marketing. 

He adds other touch points such as, “we are out of your hair thanks for baring with us” which again indirectly highlights we’ve done our job, which in turn is non ‘estate agenty’ and also promotes more intrigue. 

His second tip is that you just “treat your clients like your marketing department”. So rather than spend on marketing, treat your clients on the standard of service  you provide to them, so that your clients indirectly become the marketing department and refer you business. Do not take for granted the importance a £500 increase with work on the final sale amount and the little things you can do throughout the sales process - they go a long way. Whilst Chris doesn’t discuss this, the fulls right in line with the teachings from the great book, “Full Fee Agent” by Chris Voss and Steve Shull.

By driving a powerful enough emotion to blow someone away, they will actively drive people towards you. Dom mentions a TV show called “The Bear” on Disney Plus (Season 2, Episode 6) in order to understand the levels of customers experience and how you can translate that to your estate agency business. If you can provide such outrageous service, you clients will refer you for life. Go and spend your entire marketing budget on ensuring the experience is so world class. Note it is actually Episode 7 as Chris found out, but WELL worth a watch.

Customer Experience trumps Customer Service and if you offer what Dom suggests and combine it with excellent database management, this should lead to 85% of business being referral business. In the theme of this Dom shows us how to use yearly events to promote your business to the community. He highlights linking this to local Facebook group and how quickly it can help grow your reputation in the community. Events are massively underrated, and there are no such things as past clients. Chris shares all the events (and the events calendar) that he utilises and drives Associates to at The Estate Agency.

The hard thing is that you don’t want to treat giving back like running a business (even though that is what you are doing). Be human and focus on the relationships and not transitions.

Chris closes the podcast by asking Dom what the best piece of coaching advice he has been given. Dom highlights that as you grow you HAVE to document your processes. You will get very busy, very quickly. You need to be able to leave the business tomorrow, and by documenting processes from the off, this will be possible. Learn from Dom’s mistake, who had to take 4 weeks out in order to document his processes. Dom leaves by highlighting that it isn’t fair for clients to receive different experiences  because there is someone else in the business looking out for them.