Lennon James has been independently identified as one of the top estate agents in the country and now features in the Best Estate Agent Guide.
This is the fifth year The Property Academy have worked alongside Rightmove to carry out the biggest ever analysis of the estate agency industry. The Best Estate Agency awards are designed to shine a light on the best agencies across the UK. It’s a huge undertaking and they’ve learned a lot from the past four years as to the main drivers behind what separates the good from the great. They’ve made the process around creating the Best Estate Agency Guide simpler to understand and more transparent from home movers.
The reason is simple yet compelling.
Consider this. The 2017 Tour de France was won by Chris Froome. He had toiled for three weeks, across 3500km, in all weathers, spending on average 7 hours a day in the saddle and ended up with a winning margin of just 54 seconds. When spread over the time spent riding, the margin between first and second place was tiny. But Froome’s Team Sky as it was called back then, knew the difference that the smallest improvements to the way they go about their work can make to the overall result. The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together. They were the best at finding those all-important competitive edges.
It can be, and often is, the small difference between selling or not selling, achieving a good price for your home and achieving a great price. When Peter Knight set up the Property Academy in 2008, his goal was to help estate agency business owners run better businesses, to foster and share best practice and ultimately to raise industry standards. And that’s why with Rightmove he has created the Best Estate Agency awards, to help businesses fulfil their potential, shine a light on where they are falling down versus their competition and achieve and maintain high service standards.
There are approximately 1 million properties listed on Rightmove, for sale or to let, at any point in time. The performance of every listing is analysed over a six-month period as the first part of the assessment. The next step is to collate the scores and identify the shortlist of c.2,500 agencies. Every branch of these agencies is listed in the Best Estate Agent Guide. All these agencies then go through to the next round of the assessment – a mystery shop and website assessment to identify the gold award winners.
74% of landlords and 83% of sellers cite the agent’s ability to market their property as being a deciding factor when selecting an agent to work with.
Rightmove and The Property Academy assess property marketing performance by looking at every single listing and tracking:
Both landlords and sellers say that using an agent who has demonstrated an ability to sell or let properties like theirs is a key factor in their decision over which agent to use in the sale or let of their property.
Rightmove and The Property Academy monitor results by tracking:
This analysis of listings performance made up 70% of an agency’s overall score. Based on these performance scores there was the equivalent of a ‘golfing cut’ where the best performing agencies c.2,500 went through to the next stage.
Their research also revealed ‘likeability and trust’ is a further factor that has a significant impact on which agency was the ideal marketing partner. They measured this via a simple mystery shopping process.
They employed professional mystery shoppers to make an email enquiry via Rightmove. They made several enquiries and measured the response against a set of objective performance criteria that consumers suggested trigger feelings of ‘like and trust’:
Over 3 billion data points were analysed in the search for this year’s top performers – the biggest assessment of any industry. It’s the equivalent of a Michelin star for restaurants or the Oscars for Film. It is the ‘best in class’ award every agency wants to win given its the only award in the industry where every agency is assessed. What makes these awards special and unique is that they are awarded based on the things that consumers consider to be among the most important criteria when selecting which agent to partner with to sell their property. PROPERTY MARKETING, CUSTOMER SERVICE and RESULTS.
In total, there are 25,000 estate agency branches in the country, all of whom were assessed and Lennon James are among this year’s award winners, confirming that we are one of the very best estate agents in the country.
From a very personal perspective, it’s a huge achievement for us to be recognised on a national platform as being one of the best in the country. From a more local standpoint though, there are some real important details to share as to why we are the standout choice of agency for home movers locally.
Lennon James generates 50% more Detail views per listing compared to other agents in our area. A critical statistic when you consider that no enquiry can be sent on your property unless the potential buyer engages and goes through to the full details (which is what the detail view is). This resulted in 79% Email leads per listing compared to other agents in our area. These two metrics combined result in it being 37% more likely that your home will reach an agreed sale compared to other agents in our area. That statistic alone I would hope is compelling to anyone considering which agency to partner with. If, however, your aim is also to generate the maximum value possible from the sale of your home, then choosing an agent who can drive the largest amount of interest in it seems equally as important to ensure this is achieved. Selling a home is one thing, selling a home for the maximum amount possible is another.
Lennon James Managing Director Jon Brierley said “Our be-spoke and now award-winning customer led approach and strong multi-channel online presence allows us to create an individual strategy for every client we work with to ensure we are able to deliver the best possible moving experience whilst generating the highest achievable values for their homes. These awards follow a rigorous and independent assessment, and we are absolutely thrilled to have been recognised as among the best in the country”.
Are you interested to know how we would look to market your home to achieve its maximum value? If so, we would love to talk with you.
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