Matching Tips

Every agent will work in a different way, and what’s suitable for one will be completely impractical for another. Expert Agent is flexible enough to allow users to tailor the way they produce and send their matches, so whilst the tips we provide may not fulfil every user’s requirements it will give you some ideas to get started.

1.   Tips for matching applicants

Make sure that you register ‘walk in’s’ and log the details they take away with them using Match Processor. Simply take their name and their email address and save to the end of the applicant wizard, then right click – Match Processor and use the ‘Add Property’ option to manually add the properties they have taken with them. Use the ‘Change Status’ option to then mark the match as ‘Completed,’ and check the ‘Posted’ option so that you know they had a physical copy of the details. 

2. Match every new instruction

Match your new instructions as soon as you have the basic information – advert, advert heading, price and photos. Don’t worry too much about waiting for the finer details – floorplans, full particulars, and so on, people will make contact if they are interested even without having seen these items.

3. Send SMS Text Messages

It’s worth thinking about using more than one method of communication for the same match – just remember if you are going to do this not to mark your match as complete after sending the first output. Text messages are a good example of something you may want to use in conjunction with another output method – perhaps emailing the match also or using the ‘Next Contact Due’ quick link and following up the text with a call the following day 

4. Send Emails

Make good use of this free and easy method of communication. It’s easy enough that you could match out all applicants as opposed to just your own if you felt comfortable doing this – of course if each negotiator at your agency likes to do their own matching and sense checking etc. then you could run the match but leave their results as ‘pending’ and notify them that they have some outstanding matches to look at.

5. Review your matches

Small agencies are likely to do less batch matching and will simply be reviewing match results at the time of running a new match in Match Processor, rejecting any results that are not suitable based on your knowledge of the applicant/property in question.

If you’re a bigger firm, you may find that the volume of your match results means you need negotiators reviewing their own using the ‘Outstanding Matches’ tool. Negotiators can work with their ‘All Outstanding Matches’ grid filtered to just their own applicant, or they can use ‘My Outstanding Matches.’

If negotiators are calling their matches out rather than sending them, they will need to work an applicant at a time, looking at the list of suitable properties for them, using the Tooltip to help them on their call. Based on the conversation with the applicant they may need to ‘Reject’ certain properties by un-ticking them down the left hand side and then using the ‘Reject Excluded’ option on the right click menu, they may need to email certain properties, and so on. They can use ‘Change Status’ to ensure everything is logged accordingly.

Another way of reviewing matches would be to print a match report, having first filtered the results to just show the negotiator in question’s records. You could work from the list – writing R for Reject or P for Post next to each record for example, and then you could either input the results or pass to an administrative colleague for processing. This is much more time consuming than working off the screen, though.

6.   Post the Match

Make good use of the letters, lists and labels functions. If dealing with a batch match then you’ll be able to refer to the screen and see which properties are going to each person, so that you know which letter and list is for each applicant.

Remember to not mark a postal match as complete until you have the letters, lists and labels in your hand – if you send them to ‘Print’ but mark as complete at the same time, and there is an issue with the printer, you would have to try to work out who had been included in the match and run it again from scratch!