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Badger Or Bust: Kilostate Estate Agents

This week Kilostate, an estate agents in London calls out to Ruth Badger for help in the Sky TV programme, Badger or Bust.

This two branch estate agent has one good branch and one that is going badly wrong. It is facing closure unless it can be turned around within six weeks.

I don’t know much about estate agents, but like the double glazing company last week, there is a certain stereotype associated with the trade.

Again the stereotype goes out of the window as people muddle on.

The branch was a shambles.

Four staff handling 15 properties which some of the staff didn’t even know well when Ruth had house inspections from each of the sales people.

To put the 15 properties into perspective, they called on a rival who was dismissive of Kilostate as a competitor and said that they handled 130 properties with 7 people.

No wonder Kilostate were struggling.

It got worse.

Any business with a shop-front in a busy road with shops should have a good awareness level. Not Kilostate as Ruth Badger demonstrated with pavement interviews.

“Where’s the nearest estate agent?” she asked standing close to the offices and in response, she was directed towards other agencies.

The team designed a leaflet and a doorstep campaign started. Ruth Badger gets action and the three sales people came back with 117 leads between them.

It just showed what could be done with some focused effort, a target and an incentive.

Unfortunately the visible performance board was controversial. For me, it’s essential that people know how they are performing and how the business is performing. If that creates some competitive pressure between the staff, then even better.

But the staff didn’t like it. There was confusion on what should be shown. They wanted to keep their own measures private. The branch manager didn’t provide clear leadership and the white-board wasn’t completed regularly.

After working with the business for a week, being away for a week and then coming back, Ruth Badger put them back on the right path and got them motivated again.

One month later she returned again, to be greeted on her drive to the office by a much higher visibility of Kilostate boards.

This time her intervention has been successful and it shows what a forceful, determined outsider can do.

Ruth Badger’s style won’t work everywhere and I hope that people don’t think that we all behave in the same “I am right, you are wrong” way.

Even at the end I was puzzled?

  • The branch had an uninspiring manager but where were the owners? What were they doing?
  • Where were the lessons from the successful branch? You can learn a lot by looking at what better performers do.
  • Why did this company need to send for “the Badger?”

The programme is repeated again on Sky 3 on Saturday. It’s well worth watching.

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