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Who are you? Peter Grant, currently serving year 27 of my sentence in the property industry and still loving every moment of working in such an innovative environment. What does it say on your business card? CEO of VTUK What is VTUK? It’s a tiger, where the spine is technology, flexible enough to be agile, but strong enough to support huge speeds and sharp turns. The claws and teeth are our clients, fearsome and sharp as razors, getting the job done, all wrapped up in big soft pelt of service, mindfulness and care. How long have you been trading? We started trading on the same day that Tim Berners-Lee unleashed the internet on the world in 1989. Famously, I was quoted five years later as saying: “posting properties on the internet to sell them will never take off!” In what ways do you help estate and letting agents? It would …

How are you ensuring you survive the 2019 fee ban? As you face a loss of income, we’ve put together a useful guide to help your business not just grow but stand out from your competition. 1 Don’t Just Let It Lettings isn’t the only market you can grow. Think about expanding into sales block management, auctions, land, property investment or new homes. This can all be managed and streamlined through Openview. 2 Train Your Staff Train your staff on your current software system such as Openview. This will allow them to perform exceptional customer service whilst give them the ability to upsell. By doing this, you’ll be able to offer your staff incentives should they upsell to a client, boosting their happiness in the workplace, helping to retain them which will in the long run help reduce staff turnover. 3 Innovate B1 This is your chance to innovate and …

We asked out tribe to describe Taurus… What’s Taurus? Built within Openview, Taurus is our automation system. Using what we call business process management, Taurus can automate those employee activities that either cost the company valuable time or are business critical to the company. As well as this, Taurus can provide your business with 100% security by monitoring staff transactions, financial transactions, preforming continuous backups, monitor and control all safety and compliance as well as comply with all your pre-existing security measures. This is our response to the problems created by employee-dependent applications. Taurus can levering your organisations IT system by creating a real-time, responsive infrastructure. Who’s it for? Taurus is for property professionals needing to save time in and outside the office. Our Taurus system is suitable for any estate agent, landlord, leasehold block manager, lettings manager, new homes builder, property manager and social housing provider. How does it …

Now for this one you need a bit of a retrospective scope and it’s to change something that a lot of agencies actually put in place in the last 4 years, which was to move away from a managed service to a let only service, theory being that there was actually more profit in let only than there is in a managed service. Well, with the fees going obviously a managed service is a lot more attractive and it does generate far more revenue. So, the strategy is to move your landlords back to managed strategy. Explaining why this is better, well we all know it is actually better for the tenancy and helping the landlord to understand why that’s a benefit for them. I’m sure you’ve got your own ideas as to how you’re going to do that but if you need any help, give us a call and …

How do you find new landlords? Whether it’s on the phone, using prop tech such as Openview or just by simply asking, we’ve put together a useful guide. 1 On The Phone Talking directly to landlords is often the best way to make new business. Maximise your chances of receiving a referral by delivering exceptional service via phone. Ensure your staff are fully trained on your phone system, allowing them to deliver outstanding service. 2 Data Your database is full of hidden opportunities. Think outside the box and treat your clients as individuals with the potential to be managing a property you didn’t know about. Over 505 of landlords have more than one property. 3 Within Your Staff Cold call your own agency and listen to how your staff deal with a call. As well as this, test how your staff deal with portal leads, this will give you an …

Scanbot (App Store/Google Play – Free/Lite, Pro and VIP editions available at an additional cost) Our app of the week this week is ScanBot. Available as a free version with the potential to upgrade to a lite, pro or VIP version, Scanbot allows you to scan any document such as tenancy agreement with your mobile and turn into a digital PDF version in an instant. Eliminating the need to have a huge scanner in the office whilst turning all your documents digital. As well as scanning you’ll be able to send the document via fax in an instant whilst utilise the camera as a QR scanner. Whilst Scanbot can be a significant assistance to your agency by turning unnecessary paper into digital forms, VTUK can provide your agency with a complete paperless solution. We asked our tribe whether they’d prefer to fill in a paper or online form, over 75% …