Selling PropTech to independent agents

Over eighteen years I sat through several hundred PropTech demos, bought perhaps a dozen and kept about half. If you sell software to independent estate and letting agents, here is what actually worked on me and what did not.

Know who uses it

The owner signs. The office manager or head of lettings decides whether it lives or dies. Get them in the room. If they do not want it, it will be quietly abandoned within six months whatever the owner signed.

Send somebody who has done the job

Agents can tell in thirty seconds whether the person in front of them has ever valued a house or chased a rent. If they have not, every claim gets halved. Hire ex-agents, or bring one in to pitch with you.

Price it for a one-branch business

Most independents are one to three branches with an owner who does the banking on a Friday. Pricing that makes sense for a two-hundred-branch group is a joke to them. The products that stuck were obviously cheaper than the problem they solved, and said so.

Fit in, do not reorganise

The products I kept slotted into how we already worked. The ones I binned asked everyone to learn something new in a business where nobody has a spare hour. If it needs a training day, it needs a smaller first step.

Prove it in a fortnight

A free trial nobody sets up is worthless. Set it up for them, with their data, and come back in two weeks with a number: calls answered, hours saved, fees won. Agents buy numbers they can see.

Make leaving easy

Long contracts and hard exits feel safe to a founder and feel like a trap to an owner. The products I trusted most were the ones I could leave. I rarely did.

If you would like a straight view on your product and your pitch from somebody who has been on the receiving end of hundreds of them, that is what the Advisory is for.