Countrywide’s ‘retail’ managing director Sam Tyrer has written a New Year message to staff brimming with apparent positivity and confidence.
In her email, Tyrer explains that getting rid of jobs last year has made the business “more straightforward”, and she says that the new ‘hybrid’ model will soon be in ‘a very large number’ of branches. The suggestion in her email is that it will be branded Entwistle Green.
The model, which has been trialled in some offices, charges upfront to self-service vendors. In the trial, the upfront fee varied from £795 to £995. People who subsequently switch to becoming conventional customers are credited with their fee, meaning that they do not lose out – while in theory at least Countrywide retains the client.
Tyrer says in the email, which is revealing about the company culture at Countrywide: “At the end of last year we brought our Retail & London teams together – this will help make running our business more straightforward, we’ve reduced the number of senior leaders to ensure we gain consistency in leadership messages and to keep you more informed, we’ve also removed leadership layers in some cases to ensure we are closer to our customers and you – our colleagues.
“In the Retail part of the business we’ve also created more combined Sales & Lettings leadership roles as we continue to see the benefits for our customers & the business of bringing the two closer together.”
Tyrer goes on: “We are also committing to you, our colleagues, that we will continue to lead in a way that is straightforward.
“We had to move quickly to adapt to a challenging market in 2016 & we will see more changes in 2017 – many of which are very positive, such as the roll-out of our hybrid model to a very large number of our Brands in the first half of 2017.
“This is really exciting & the results are superb.
“Our fabulous Entwistle Green Brand go live [sic] in just a few days time.”
In other parts of her lengthy email, she urges staff to ensure compliance in all areas, including anti-money laundering, gas certificates, EPCs, Right to Rent and referencing, saying: “Let’s make a commitment that 2017 is the year we sort this out”.
She also sets a few key targets for the first quarter: these include all sales and lettings leads being opened and contacted every day.
She also urges staff: “The portals often just don’t do the job – we have to work properties hard to sell & let them. Let’s stop losing our customers business because we haven’t done our jobs.
“Let’s commit to this being the year of record low withdrawal numbers for sales & Lettings. We will also be measuring this & will have recognition & prizes for our best performers.”
She goes on to urge staff to offer every single customer Countrywide’s mortgage and conveyancing services.
She concludes: “Let’s commit to ensuring not one pound of value leaves our group, but also that we offer our customers BETTER services than are available elsewhere.”
Tyrer also tells staff to communicate better with customers.
She says: “It’s easy to think that with the rise of Purplebricks and other online agents that the ‘people’ element of agency is less important to our customers – that’s just not the case.
“We know from our hybrid trials just how crucial the human interaction is for our customers.
“Would it surprise you to know that the top complaints reason we record weekly for both sales & Lettings is on our lack of communication with our customers? Well that’s a fact & one that we MUST change in 2017. Let’s make a commitment to communication so much more with all customers.”
Tyrer concludes by saying: “Finally, let’s make a commitment to be an agile team this year, a team that’s more open to change, and more able to have honest and straightforward conversations about how the business is changing & how our decisions are right for the long term, for our Customers, our colleagues & our shareholders. This is the way we will win & grow!
“2017 will be a winning year for us at Countrywide and that’s because we have a great plan & great people in the business. . .
“In 2017 we have such a phenomenal opportunity to stride way out in front of any competitors, take market share and grow our business and I can’t wait to see us all doing that and celebrating being a winning team together this time next year.”
Comments (34)
The comments on this thread are indicative of this website in general – at best short sighted and contradictory, at worst blatantly biased and wilfully misinformed.
One one hand you have several articles espousing the success of Purplebricks, with 40+% increases in stock price YOY and investors told to buy buy buy into this online only platform that’s gaining success. Eye has plenty of comments from people saying how terrible PB is, but you can’t argue the stats.
Then you have more articles about the pressures on high street agents and the potential end of traditional agency through forced decreases in fee and lack of business, and subsequently the potential loss of agents.
More articles on a changing industry and the need for agents to awake action.
Then more articles about share price crashes for LSL, Foxtons and CW, with investors told to sell the two former and reduce the latter.
So it’s logical those huge businesses would take action, and simply continuing as they have always done is not going to work because it’s that exact model that has led to the rise of PB and online plandforms. To date, the industry has been painfully slow to react
This article highlights the action that CW has taken to date, and the comments in particular are very enlightening as to why PB has gained so much success. Almost every comment is whinging about a changing company trying to adapt to the times and starting an online model in the style of the (currently) most successful agent.
I hate PB; they’re misleading, a rip off, and will only reduce respect for the industry (if that’s possible). They’re lying to customers and their Trustpilot reviews are clearly forced and fake
But they make money, they’re changing consumer attitudes and they’re successful.
To survive agents need to adapt, continue best practice and see what works. Harking back to glory days is just burging your head in the sand.
Given the attitudes on here I’m wondering if traditional agency will survive at all.
“Store closures, high-profile staff departures and redundancies have led some to wonder if the retailer is in trouble”
Thats a quote not from today but from 2013 when Ms Tyrer was running her bit in Carphone Warehouse..
Maybe that email is an old one she copy and pasted?
Yet another brilliant literary masterpiece by Ms Tyrer. I think I shall now refer to her as Ms Aesopp as she tells such brilliant fables that have a morale at the end of them. The Ass and the grasshopper spring to mind.
Just this morning Magnus James emailed us an exceptional candidate whose cv suggests that they are a leaver from Countrywide locally.
CW think they can have their cake and eat it. Their A&W brand here offers the no frills we don’t care service for £995 and there’s a property down the road from us with that board up as well as the board of their main high street brand here, MD. I have no idea if the vendors know they are being played or not but the property has been on the market for ages and obviously neither ‘agent’ is giving them the advice they need.
If Ros had actually read the email it doesnt say that the online proposition is going to be called entwistle green -it says it is being rolled out to entwistle green – it is already operating under a number of other brands
Operating ‘badly” is the reality of the situation. I think that those tasked with delivering it see it for what it is; a con! They have no real interest in making it work, just get a house on where and how you can and then try and convert to standard agency. Thing is; neither is working. I’ve been told by a good friend who is still there (heaven knows why, as he needn’t be) that even the retail d said in her recent broadcast that it needs relaunching. Don’t think she probably meant to say that! Message received loud and clear though: it isnt working!
Her statement is completely contradictory.
On the one hand she’s saying that their online offering (just stick it on the portals and let the vendor do the rest) has been a rip roaring success whilst on the other she’s saying that just advertising properties isn’t enough and they need a proactive sales approach to “work” their instructions and get a deal agreed.
Surely they can’t both be right and, to me, this has let the cat out of the bag. Her definition of success for their online model must clearly be based on gaining prepaid listing business. The fact that it doesn’t sell is somebody else’s problem. However, back in the real world it’s painfully obvious that salespeople need to put a lot of effort into selling and completing properties, and this obviously isn’t happening as well as it could – most likely because of CW’s culture of buying instructions by over valuing.
On a separate note, I don’t understand how their online service will continue to be offered through their existing brands whilst also creating a new dedicated brand. Isn’t this just a bit confusing?
As High Street Agents, we’ve all stated that the benefits of going with us instead of an online agent are tenfold. There are obviously those vendors who cannot be swayed by service and benefits and only see price.
In my countrywide days there was definitely more effort on coaching and nurturing staff to become better sales people – from the outside now it seems that they want a call centre mentality where it’s about the number of calls, not the quality. What’s not helped the cause is that there’s been rapid, aggressive market where ‘if you tie a dog up in the corner, it will sell a house’ and certain individuals actually believe what they are doing is working – it’s not. for the last three years you’ve had the lights on in the office and people have walked in.
Rant over.
What will happen when the market slows right the way down? (worst case, crashes. Interest rates go up and the market is flooded by investment properties that are no longer as beneficial to their tax savvy landlords) We’ll have a bunch of houses on the market with no one wanting to buy them – we’ll have a bunch of multi agency properties – and the best trained sales negotiators will sell them.
All of these schemes ‘building our future’, ‘agents of change’, etc. are a waste of time. There was nothing really wrong with the business Platt/Tyrer inherited, they just needed to keep investing time, effort and training into the fee earners. The re-inventing of the wheel has set them back and will continue to do so.
‘Do not let spacious plans for a new world order prevent you from saving what is best from the old world’. Winston Churchill
Estate agency is not and never will be a loss leader service to draw in those more profitable cross selling opportunities. It is a service, that when done properly and professionally saves a lot of people, time, money and heartache.
It is a service that people would wish to recommend to family and friends.
The worrying thing would be if Sam Tyrer got her hands on any of the New Homes Business that Countrywide had slaved away to gain over the years. She clearly has no grasp of the residential side of the business – God only knows what she’d make of the new homes industry.
There’s a simple, straightforward answer to that one, secretagentman92 – she wouldn’t get within a thousand miles of the business.
Builders don’t take 5h!te from anyone; they shout 5h!t – and only those than jump quickest and highest onto the shovel will do for them.
She simply wouldn’t be able to talk their talk – and seemingly hasn’t the legs or stamina to walk their walk.
They’d be marched off every site in a heartbeat.
Is anyone actually steering CW ?
Or is the deafening creaking of catastrophic foreboding, drowned out as they all sing “We shall overcome” whilst having a look out the window ?
The stern window at the trail of destruction left behind in the ship’s wake.
The lady is an absolute genius. She’s worked out that getting rid of staff makes business more straight forward. How long now before she also works out that getting rid of customers will make it even more straight forward.Staff gone, customers gone, job done.
Brilliant!
2 things I agree with, they identify lack of communication as a major loss of instructions…so on behalf of non CW agents please keep your old habits as it helps feed the rest of your competition!
Secondly, they had massive numbers of tiers of management to kid the staff there was a career progression available. Several of their brands like G-Pees used to have MD, OD, sales director, Regional Director, Area manager, senior Branch Manager, Branch Manager and a host of negotiators. Just have fee earners and someone inspired to orchestrate them! Real entrepreneurs who inspire everyone to work together and reap the rewards is the way to go now the easy markets are behind us.
Surely the competition should be more than happy with the slow demise of CW?
embrace and rejoice, more business for you
Thing is a lot of agents have worked there in the past and some have very happy memories (people leave people not businesses)
Also a lot of us still have good friends working there.
And from a selfish point of view, If CW actually came out fighting provided a service the COULD as high street agents it would cripple onliners.
The issue with CW (and has always been) promotions too fast and the poor roll out / execution of ideas.
Inexperienced middle management are after figures not result and care very little for staff.
Spot on Smile!
I think we are all ok with fair competition…..just not misleading and blatantly untrue marketing….a lot of which is aimed at undermining our small independent businesses.
Since July 2015 when the” phone queen” Titanic Sam Tyrer bustled through the doors at Countrywide the shares have depthcharged £800m of “value “
If your not making enough money, reinvent yourself to make even less money…. just make sure no one is allowed to see one of your properties without an appointment with your mortgage broker first to make sure ‘not one pound of value leaves our group’. We’ll makes up the losses on increased FS business. Apart from being on very risky ground legally it all makes perfect sense!!!
It looks more like a complete mess to me!
They’ve been doing that forever that’s what makes it so patronising that she is just churning out the same old lines dressed up in corporate speak to explain away a load of redundancies! The only thing that’s a bit new is the closer relationship between sales and lettings and putting it under one management structure but that’s hardly revolutionary!!
fair play to Ms Tyrer. When you read comments like “combined Sales & Lettings leadership roles” you know this is not estate agency as we know it.
Problem is we just don’t know what it is!
Ros – have they really dropped the ‘h’ from Entwistle Green or is that a typo?
It’s never had an ‘h’ in it.
My insiders at CW (some of the normal guys on the ground) are leaving like never before, citing a real crisis, a complete failure of structure and policy, no real management and ship without any captains. Some leaving just after joining. I have no idea what how they will maintain and continue their course when all the decent and experienced guys are jumping ship. It will be an interesting 2017 for CW.
The planning granularity committee must have convened to come up with the name Entwhistlle Green A name conjuring a transformative,non-determanistic realignment drawn fromm the silos of day to day operations The name synchronising intelligent validations and will inspire innovating responsible recalibrations . Pioneering and addressing ecosystems in the marketplace
Entwhisle Green ,duck that sounds quite Northern powerhouse
That doesn’t make sense.
Well be really straight forward soon when they have even less offices and staff.
If sellers go down the hybrid route pays 1k to list the property if thrir not getting interest in 3/4 months why give it back to Countrywide ? I know I will be touting their stock offering 1k off my fees just to destroy their model locally.
And believe me my marketing and staff are more than a cuthousand above.
I love the fact they have identified lack of communication the reasons they are losing clients but are slashing their workforce!
I know their staff are fed up and even the offices that are safe good long term staff are quitting as they do not agree in the direction the company is going.
That’s what happens when you give a business to someone who doesn’t know the first thing about selling a house. I have a first hand account of a senior person in n CW who the first meeting with their senior team reassured them by saying he’s bought a few buy to lets and is always looking at Rightmove, then botched it by asking for the cancellation column to be removed from the figures sheet as it was too negative! You can’t make this stuff up.
What a patronising load of tosh to the good agents they have (yes there are some)!
This girl loves making commitments!
Nothing more straightforward then telling your staff that this week we have decided to close down the branch we only bought last year and you have lost your job. The star strikers wont be hanging around to see if the new stratgy will bear fruit
The banks must be scratching their heads wondring why the company they have reecnty lent hundreds of millions to expand have now put the gear firmly into reverse Monies lent on that mythical beast “goodwill” which is fast going out of the back door They have sat back aghast and seen the company,s “market value ” plummet on the exchange
The fact that in a very difficult market they are hawking around LSH their commercial property arm to the highest bidder indicate s that the banks have asked for their money back They have absolutely no chance of getting anywhere near the “book value” of LSH and so likely to break up .Not looking good
The debt is a serious problem and fear that Platt will have little time to see if this “hybrid” wins the day Something tells me that they are unlikley to be a winning team by this time net year