Increase Sales
The immediate obvious gain by using professional photography is the uplift in sales.
Case studies show that sales rise by around 50% over time. There is, however, an instant uplift just from the impact of the early sets of photographs on the web, which drives up click through traffic on the portals. That in turn pushes up the online enquiry rate, the number of applicants, the viewings, the offers, the chances of booking block viewings and making the diary more efficient thus saving travel time between appointments, the chances of getting multiple bids and best and final scenarios. All of this drives up income, speed to offer, speed to sale (SSTC) and therefore exchange and banked income coming in.
In the early days, one of the short-term gains is that driving up your click through rate will give you something else to sell yourselves better when you go out on valuations. If you can show a better click through rate than your competitors, especially the leading sales agent by volume, then you can justify charges, if you want to, for the professional photography. Also, you can demonstrate that you will outperform the bestselling agent and although you have not experienced the greater volume of sales that come with time yet, from better photography, they as vendor have good reason to choose you because they are statistically more like to sell through you and faster too.
The other thing you can do is compare your sales to instruction ratio after a while, as this will increase too. That can give you more instructions before you become best selling agent by volume overall. When you can demonstrate that you sell a higher proportion of your stock compared to the highest volume sales agents you will get instructed more often. Professional photography takes you from being the underdog, to being the dog snapping at the heels of the leading agents by volume and poised to overtake them. Ultimately, given time for the momentum to build up, it takes you top dog position where instructions start walking to your door, rather than you having to fight for each one. Vendors will come to you for the photography as the sole reason to use you. There is a lovely penny drop moment when you realize what is going on, in the sub-conscious of the vendor market, as your reputation swells. You can literally see the snowball effect before your eyes.
It takes you out of that group that avoids conversations about portal statistics and puts you in the group that wants to take them on valuations as you can demonstrate through them why a vendor should use you ahead of the leading agent by volume.
We all know that people buy and sell through who they like. That is not always enough, though. If you count the number of instructions against the number of valuations that you attend it is probably lower than you realize. Go through your diary and do the figures. It will shock you as you probably trick yourself into thinking the best of yourself, and not the reality. How often have you seen vendors you thought you had in the bag sell their house with an agent who they do not actually like that much but, have the house they want to buy? How often have you got on very well on the valuation and they have gone on the market with the biggest agent because they do not want to lose out? Better photography reduces the incidence of this. There is no point a vendor liking you but, placing their business elsewhere and feeding the bank balance of your competitors. That is just a bad business model, and you need to change it if you are going to succeed in the long term, thrive and see off your competitors for good.
Acceptable photography will never make you better than your competitors and give you the edge you need to get instructed more often. Professional photography gives you something of real tangible pound note value to offer on valuation appointments that potential vendors can see and relate to instantly. Many of your competitors will be doing acceptable photography but, you can take the lead. Many of the corporate agents charge for outsourced photography. The top end of the market seems to focus on the £300 price point to pass on the cost. If there is one thing vendors love to brag about among their friends and peers, it how good their house looks online. For those who know the house well they are even more impressed because they know the day-to-day reality of what it looks like, most of the time.
In the longer-term, would-be vendors will have noticed the professional photography before you bring it to their attention as the portals are literally putting it under their noses. Finally, you will get something extra for nothing out of the portals! Long time coming! As you know about 92% of all vendors do some research online first, before asking agents out. When your stock on the portals has professional photography across the board that impression is already stuck firm in their mind, before they choose which agents to invite out, and then after, start shortlisting the agents to use. On top of that you can confirm the valuation appointment by sending them a photography promoting CD to reinforce the point. Then you have instilled your want, on the valuation, as their need in their head, before you turn up.
You can use your portal statistics to demonstrate the following in the early days of using our professional photography: -
In the longer term, as all your stock has professional photography, the snowball effect of better presentation imbeds itself into the market’s sub-conscious. The groundswell of reputation takes hold of the market until, after a while, vendors walk through your door and dismiss the competition because they cannot risk not having the best photography and your sales results. You will also find that your sale price to asking price ratio will rise and this will also impact positively on your reputation that will in turn feed into the valuation requests and better fees.
Talking plainly, in the early days of using professional photography, while you are waiting for those extra sales and take-ons to make their way to SSTC, through the pipeline and into your bank account, your costs are going to rise and you will see a cashflow impact to a degree, unless you get the vendors to pay for it partly or entirely.
In a ‘normal’ market were talking realistically 5,6,7,8 months before the impact turns that cashflow corner. However, in the longer term it will generate huge gains. Turnover rises by about 50% so for many small to medium agents selling roughly £400K SSTC, netting down to £300K exchanged, that’s £150,000 gain per year in banked income.
Profit is derived by more take-ons, generating more sales, with bigger average fees, easier sales as the internet is doing the work before the negotiators get to do the ring rounds, so your route to sale is easier in about 50% of your listings. Instructions that are ‘instruction getters’ will declare themselves earlier and you will have a greater opportunity to work your local-house-to-sell box better and chain build. Because your negotiators are doing less work ringing out, they are freed up to do the extra viewings generated by the better photography online to bring the sales together and get them into the pipeline. In addition, your viewing to offer ratio will fall, freeing up negotiator time to concentrate on the viewings that are going to put business in the book. The office manager has fewer demands on their time so, can book in the extra valuations that are generated by the better photography. There comes a point where the sales need more servicing and you may need to get another negotiator. It is either that or, outsource your contract chasing to plug the human resource gap that way. Either way, a nice problem to have!
From a listing point of view, it is easier on your time because, we are doing the listing for you. We can provide a range of services; photography, with or without floorplans, written description, sign-ups & ID, whatever your needs require. That frees your time up to go back to the valuations that you lost to your competitors prior to having the professional photography and offer the new addition to your service. Certainly, in the early days, that means you can pick up instructions on the re-bound when they are coming to the end of their sole agencies with competing agents because you have something new and different to offer.
Also, with the better presentation of the properties, the company looks better online. It quite literally paints you in a better light. So, your reputation increases and drives more valuation enquiries. The snowball effect of more taken-ons, more listings, better fees, easier sales, more sales, exchanges and banked income becomes self-fuelling. The extra cost of the photography listing service we provide comes in at about 1/4 of the extra income generated. It also means, of course, that you do not need to employ a lister, so there is a direct saving there. All that is said on the basis that you pay for the photography entirely and it covers the stock that does not sell, as well. You could do an off-market fee to cover the photography costs for those, if you want to. That, of course, will discourage some vendors coming off the market, extend the marketing window and put extra sales in the book that way as well as putting income back in the pot. You could dangle the carrot that if they subsequently come back to market and, you re-use the photographs, that you re-imburse them the off-market fee against an invoice following exchange. That can ensure they come back to you instead of going elsewhere.
Professional photography is just a great way of putting more on the bottom line. It works. All you must do is more of it and keep the productive relationship working for you in perpetuity. Simple, make more money, do more of that. It is a sound business model that works.
There are four ways to consider increases in market share:-
Better photography generates a self-snowballing way of delivering more instructions by presenting your properties with better images, particularly online. This is where your potential vendors first see you. You only have that one chance to make a good impression. That opportunity can last less than a second when they are browsing in list view. If you look as if you don’t care about how your properties look, those vendors form the impression that either you actually really don’t care, or you’re not successful enough to fund it. Either way, when it comes to the valuation, before you have even taken a step in the house, you are already on the back foot in their heads. You can be the best lister or best negotiator in the world but if the vendor has already decided you are not, it’s all up hill. There is always that estate agent scoundrel scepticism working against you. It might be very unfair but into today’s image driven world, you must look the part to be accepted as being the part. We live in the time of talentless celebrities who just look the part rather than be the part. It is all about image. You can be a talented agent and still lose instructions, seemingly unfairly, if you do not get this right.
As you become more successful you will reduce the need to compromise on your fees when competing with other agents. You can lift your per centage commission rate simply because you are worth it. The closer you get to a 30% market share the more you control the market and can dictate fees. The would-be vendors start to feel anxious if they are considering not using you in that they may lose out on good property coming to market for them to buy and want to be in your good books.
Larger properties demand better photography by default. When you use professional photography as standard the larger properties are automatically attracted to you. This increases your fees and brings you instruction getting properties to sell, where vendors of smaller properties who are trading up, naturally want to keep things in house and employ you in the double bubble mentality. Two fees are always better than one and add to your sales statistics by volume to make you look better to when you use portal statistics to explain your success on valuations.
Another beauty about using the best photography is that the houses that are easiest to sell because they are well presented are automatically attracted to you. They can be large or small but, that also has the knock-on benefit of putting sales in the book easier and faster with less effort from the sales staff, freeing them up to sell more overall. It is a win- win situation.
If you carry on with weak photography you will never crack this market and make the breakthrough into it to prove yourself. You can have great sales staff selling lots of small properties but, unless you have professional photography you will never get the chance to get into the upper end of the market. You might get the odd instruction, here and there but, without professional photography you will never get consistency and build a reputation that delivers big fees day in, day out. You must make the vendor’s house look impressively good. ‘Topping’ the valuation, a bit of banter and working the common ground does not ‘cut the mustard’.
Typically, we produce 16 or 17 images for a one-bedroom, early 20s for a two-bedroom, mid 20s for a three-bedroom and pushing 30 for a four-bedroom etc. That does a number of things:-
An expectation of increased market share by 50% on your current level is a realistic difference for using our professional photography. Once you have got a calculator out and done the maths, it is a no-brainer. Photography is a variable cost in your business plan. Its not a fixed fee like the office rent or the portals and increases only as it produces disproportionately high returns. As your reputation swells so does the effectiveness of that reputation.
We all know boards breed boards. Well, the best presentation fuels the desire among vendors to want the best presentation and your reputation, and it’s growth, is intravenously linked to that cycle. Once you understand that, you are on the route to making better and more sustainable profits, reputation building, and its maintenance is marketing, ultimately. Blue chip companies spend about 10% of all their income on marketing. There is good reason for that! It’s all about winning customers in the long term and managing sustainability and growth.