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16th August 2016

Power of the Pitch

This week will see another five Land & New Homes Network members pitching for new homes developments using our latest addition to the Members Hub – “The Master Pitch Template”.

The pitching and winning of new business is a core part of our members Induction Day.   Designed by our friends at Workbrands and consistent with the high standard of all of our designed material that is exclusive to our members, this document seems to be one of the most sought after items in our packed cupboard of goodies.

So why all the fuss – well put simply as every agent who we’ve engaged with so far has confirmed, their previous attempts to produce a document have fallen well short in comparison – to the point that they’ve either been very lucky to win an instruction or missed out all together because they didn’t have a structure and just went into typical Estate Agent mode of “We’re great” “We’ve got market share” “Top 10 reasons why to use us” with little regard or understanding of what the house builder wants.

So what should the ideal pitch document include – well clearly we aren’t going to share all our secrets, however the basics are really quite straightforward and shouldn’t be clouded;

1. Firstly there is absolutely no point producing a pitch unless you know the brief, otherwise your document will be filled with assumptions – much better to ask the developers what their expectations are; ie will you need to put staff on site, how many days will that be, what marketing budget do you need to set aside, what are the developers sales rate expectations – the list goes on…..
2. Demonstrate you understand the site and the product that the house builder is spending hundreds of thousands of pounds developing.
3. Share strong local information – the house builder is asking you to pitch because of your local expertise – convey that knowledge – don’t assume they know it all. Very often the information you share will be hugely valuable to a marketing director who needs to brief the marketing collateral.
4. With the weather being so good, get out and build a library of high quality images which reflect the locations you cover and pictures that might be considered aspirational – maybe it is the Waitrose supermarket or the David Lloyd Gym or the really expensive golf course – you will be glad you went to the effort now  when you get asked to produced a document in January and the UK doesn’t look at its finest.
5. Present a suggested strategy – not just the usual, window displays, portal listing etc – be imaginative – be bold – be different and most importantly be memorable with your ideas.
6. Know the numbers – if they need 6 sales per month net, in reality that might need 8 gross, every month of the year – how sustainable is that through your databases and hard work or what more might be required to ensure those numbers are achieved – maybe bigger marketing budget!
7. Avoid including fees – use this as your conversation/negotiation piece – you can’t possibly commit to a fee unless you know what is expected of you – so if you’ve not got the detailed brief at the outset – don’t include.

Pleasingly those agents that used our Member Resources last week, secured 4 major instructions with a combined 470 units.    Better still, the feedback from the house builders without exception was – “we weren’t expecting that“.   Rightly so, we’re feeling pretty chuffed for those members.

NOTE:

Due to the intuitive nature of our Members Hub which is packed with branded templates for each of our members, all of the resources are easily accessible, editable and easy to download into a print ready format, therefore saving our members thousands of pounds in graphic design  fees.

For further information on the availability of membership in your areas and our forthcoming New Members Induction and Masterclass Days, please get in touch.