Starting with Jane & the Lettings Department …
It’s holiday season so we are all running around like madmen covering for our colleagues whilst they sun themselves on foreign beaches… I too have just returned from a fortnight in Paradise (Naples, Florida) and I am missing the sun, sea and pina coladas already!
We have had an informative month, we learn all about social media, courtesy of The Property Academy and a clever gentleman called Grant LeBoff of www.stickymarketing.com. Over the past month or so lots of agencies have been vying for a position on the Zoopla Top 100 Property Influencers, http://www.zoopla.co.uk/property-power-100/ but we were mindful of wanting to ‘tweet’ to our customers and not other industry people as a priority, so Mr LeBoff has given us lots of tips on how to do this! We now have a growing list of local followers, we are tweeting community news and updating customers on new or current reward card offers (especially for our new tenants and purchasers) and VIP Landlord offers, so hopefully you will interact with us and let us know anything newsworthy that is going on in the local area. www.twitter.com/sewellgardner.
Some of the team, including 2 new members of the sales team (Mark & Matthew), came along to a great day of training with the brilliant Peter Knight, head of Estate Agency Events. We joined some of our fellow Award Winning estate agents from other parts of the UK and had a brilliant day learning how to give even more back to our customers. One of my favourite anecdotes of the day was about Social Proof – an experiment in New York when a chap stopped and looked up into the sky for 60 seconds and 20% of the people who passed by during that time also looked up. Then the chap was joined by 3 other people, now 4 people stopped and looked up to the sky for 60 seconds, and this time 80% of the passers by also looked up. It is totally in-built into us to follow others, that is why it is of exceptional importance for any of our customers who have enjoyed being part of our Sewell & Gardner family, take to their i-pads, i-phones or PCs and post on their Facebook pages about the experience they have had with us. You can ‘like’ our community Facebook page at www.facebook.com/SewellGardner, we ALWAYS want to hear from you with anything of interest, especially nice comments, which truly mean the world to us!
L to R: Reagan Bradley- Head of Property Management, Mark Tibbles- Senior Sales Negotiator, Matthew Lemon- Property Marketing Manager, Jane Gardner, Julia Pennell- Senior Lettings Negotiator, Susie Griffiths- Property Manager, Jackie Scott- Senior Sales Negotiator, Emily Outrim- New Homes Negotiator, Sarah Gili-Ross- New Homes Negotiator
Over to Alex and the Sales Team …
Just back from the summer holiday and feeling refreshed, which is good news as the offices are bloody manic! I can’t remember it being this busy for years. Confidence is definitely up and as we say in our offices, make hay while the sun is shining. My best advice for anyone looking to sell right now is to not wait, take advantage of a busy market and get your house on the market, BUT, do not think that buyers will pay more than the property is worth. When choosing your price (and agent), make sure the agent can back up the price they have told you, have they sold others at a similar price. Experience tells me this is the time that the weaker agents can only compete by quoting unrealistic asking prices matched with low fees. As we are in a service industry I think most people can appreciate that paying the smallest amount of money rarely means achieving the best service and when selling (for most people) their most valuable asset you want to use a team that can provide you with a great service. Don’t take our word for it though, just click here to see what the judges at the Estate Agency of the year awards had to say about Sewell & Gardner sales team, http://www.estateagencyoftheyear.com/sewell_gardner/index.html.
We have had some changes in the office and have welcomed some great new colleagues with bags of experience to our team. Mark Tibbles has joined us as a Senior Negotiator and Matthew Lemon as our new Property Marketing Manager. Both have settled into the team brilliantly and it feels like they have been with us for years. Given that our office loves to create a nick name we are grateful for Mark & Matt for having such exciting surnames to work with!
So in summary, the sun has been shining for most of the Summer, England have retained the Ashes, the rugby season is about to start and a busy month will hopefully roll through to the rest of the year! Let’s hope it stays this good!