Just For Lookin' Thru

There’s a sense of urgency about getting people to your website in these cash-strapped times. Once you’ve got them there – a tactical and detailed exercise in itself – you have to keep them there, make them buy something, anything. The innocent browser will have little idea of the almost-science behind getting any website to sit at the top of the search engine list. If it’s not there, looking as though it’s the biggest shop in the street, browsers won’t bother to search far for it, will get bored and amble off through cyberspace. Opportunity lost. So how do you get to the top? Like any shop, it’s not enough just to be there, however great your products, your prices, or however smartly you’ve dressed your metaphorical shop window. Reputation counts, having a recognized name, a trusted history. Beyond that it’s necessary to get yourself noticed by the search engines before the customers can find you. There are things the search engines like, such as links from your website to other...

Why bother with social media? Specialize in email marketing, business to business, using mailing lists. email campaigns are: Cost effective, immediate, flexible, interactive, measurable and environmentally friendly. Targetted emails are welcome whereas Spam is a nuisance so it’s important to research your mailing list, discover what the recipients are interested in, either hobbies or products, and narrow down the list so the campaign is more likely to hit interested people – and not be deleted before reading. Some companies opt to supplement email campaigns with occasional high quality postal mailings, ie brochures- their promotional material sending a tangible message of quality and style. This is a sophisticated method. The measurable element includes basic statistics such as how many emails were sent and at what time, then quantifies how many of those were delivered, bounced back, opened, read, how many were ‘clicked through’ to the company website or unsubscribed. Conversio...

Be networking savvy with social media as well as business media. It’s no good using LinkedIn to ask frivolous questions such as ‘Hey, dudes, how’s the surf looking over at Porthtowan?’ You’ll be ticked off, ‘go to facebook’ and quite right. facebook is a place for friends, acquaintances, people you once met on holiday, or spent time with at college – fine for catching up with any news but less about making good business contacts. Linkedin is for AB users, 35-50 years old and wanting to use the site to make those good business connections and promote their own business, and you can manage your company’s reputation by monitoring www.twitter.com – the microblog site for brief updates (facebook also show status updates). Select all comments about your subject, sign up for google.com/alerts and twitter alerts. This way, you can begin new relationships with people who twitter, increase sales, and act fast to respond to postings, engage with complaints, and create opportunities to enhance y...

Firstly, it’s essential to understand the brand. What voice does it have? Is it quirky and funny, elegant and classy, or practical and no messing? Secondly, this message needs to be designed and written in a fitting style and tone. Are the photographs transmitting the same message as the text? Quirky images and funny text or perhaps stylish photography and smooth prose. Thirdly, get the message out. So what’s the best way? Always holding the ‘character’ of the brand in mind, everything has to match; the website, links to Facebook and twitter, brochures and mailing material, flyers and posters. Sound simple? Hardly. Step one means taking the time to thoroughly understand not only the product, but the entire company and the guiding principles of the boss/es. This includes their personal values, such as whether their driving principles are money or perhaps the environment, and what is their behaviour. If this is a green company, do the directors drive low emission cars? Or, if the m...

No posts for so long? Bin’ working innit? Deadlines, you know the drill. Okay, I just need to whine now, for quite some time. Can’t print, won’t print? Phone the helpline. Spend the next forty minutes moving all your furniture, pulling out your printer and your computer, disconnecting cables from the back, trying to find numbers that are unreachable and, when you find them, are printed so small that they are indecipherable to the naked eye. The man in Delhi or Bombay may have a little trouble understanding RP English but it doesn’t matter if he thinks your name’s Samantha when it’s Amanda, or that everything you say has to be spelled out using the phonic alphabet: name, address, serial numbers, ad nauseam, because he’s been trained to say, “Thank you for your patience,” at frequent intervals. He can’t see me crawling round on the carpet with my office in a state of chaos, and so 'impatient' I am almost in tears. His advice: to unplug cables and plug them in again. I could have ...

Okay. Another interest rate rise. The market has ground to a halt here. The smart people had put their properties on the market in May, to avoid having to have the HIP. If they accepted offers then, they’re alright now. The market has become saturated with properties. Overpriced, unattractive properties down here. So, it’s a buyer’s market. There’s so much to choose from that no-one’s choosing. However, in an auction I attended last week, a 3.8 acre parcel of pasture land sold for 60K. Buy land, they ain't makin' it anymore. In fifty years you could maybe get planning permission for your grandchildren. I’ve only been in this job for nine months and, in that time, we’ve gone from being rushed off our feet and selling houses before we’ve had a chance to get them advertised in the paper, to being stuck with hundreds of them. My own job, doing all the Saturday viewings, has changed from racing about like a headless chicken to try and fit in all the appointments, missing l...

I am getting to know Ella a little bit. I have been out to the rambling old cottage quite a few times now, showing folks round. She usually keeps out of the way, as though she doesn’t want to be involved in the process. Today, she’s inside with her family, and we pass through the rooms as respectfully as we can, aware of her sensitivity towards the old house. With a cup of tea, her daughter and her grandchildren, she is confined to one small room while we have free range of her home. After the first couple have left I go in and sit down to talk to her. They have made an offer of 500K and want to go for an immediate exchange of contracts, legals permitting, with a completion date set for September. This is a reasonable timescale. She looks worried, unhappy. “I don’t know.” She says. She tells me she wants her original buyers to have the house although they are now unable to proceed because their own sale fell through. She says that she ‘clicked’ with them; that they fell in love w...

En garde I’ve been worrying about our newest member of staff. She’s fresh out of school, an absolute stunner, with a sweet nature, and she’s being sent out on viewings. I don’t like it. It has never occurred to me before to worry about being in an empty house with a stranger but I’m not happy about her being in that position. She may be fine. She may never have to deal with some old creep’s unwanted attentions. I mention my concerns several times but my colleagues, and this little cutie-pie, all look blankly at me as if I’m being neurotic. I let it go. Today, for the first time, I’m sitting in my car and I know I’ve got an odd one. I see a man shuffling about near the house where I’m to meet my next client. I know he’s my man because he is walking strangely; he looks shifty and disturbing, and I wouldn’t go near him if I had a choice. Well, at least it’s me not the youngster who’s out here. I stride up to him and act like I’m taller and wider than I really am. I’m very physical w...

Hot Bodies The heat is intense today. My car is blue with a black interior and the sun on the metal is fierce and punishing. Even with the window open there is no relief. The sunroof has to stay closed because the ferocity of the burning sun is beyond bearing. I’m showing a friendly, chatty elderly couple round a bungalow in suburban bungalow-land where there is no sound but the churning of some piece of workman’s equipment nearby. I stay with the plot all round the house, answering questions, being helpful, making suggestions, until we come to the front bedroom and I turn to admire the view. Across the road are two workmen on the flat roof of a garage. One of them is facing us, wearing a baseball cap and bent slightly forward. All I can see is his perfect flat stomach; so flat that, as he bends, there are neat creases in the brown skin, as neat as pencil lines. He has not an ounce of fat covering his slim, naked upper body and trickles of sweat make tracks through the dirt on th...

Overcoming Nature Rose is in bed again. Each time I go out to visit the old cottage lately she has been in bed. Her asthma is so bad this time that she is taking steroids simply to breathe; to stay alive. There is an oxygen cylinder beside her bed. Out in the country, beyond calling distance of any neighbours, she has this for company, and to help her breathe at night until a doctor or an ambulance comes if she manages to phone. She is all smiles, as always. Her eyes are large and direct, and shine her welcome. Her face is as open and fresh as a child’s. She does not look ill at all, but as sunny and as bright as this late spring day. She asks many questions about what I’m doing, and who I’m seeing, and how I’m getting along, but she is stoic and philosophical about herself. She is accustomed to being barely able to breathe and has adapted to the limitation after so many years of labouring for air. My viewing party arrive and we crawl all over the 400 year old cottage, poking int...

Before the dust has settled There is a boiled egg left on the draining board, amongst a pile of washed dishes that have been left to dry. A bottle of medicine stands by the sink. More medicines are in the bathroom. The mirrored door of the bathroom cabinet is open, exposing a selection of ointments and tablets. These most personal items embarrass me and I slide the door closed before my first client arrives. Waiting outside I feel very subdued. There is something extremely dispiriting about standing amongst the abandoned relics of a woman’s life. The flat has been vacated very suddenly, with signs of her interrupted life everywhere; on every surface, bits and pieces, clutter, normality. Maybe it’s that sense of my presence being a kind of violation of her home, but I feel a bit irritable as the viewing party approach; a young man accompanied by his parents. I can’t tell if it’s me or them that makes the atmosphere uncomfortable. I go through the motions of smiling, hand shaking e...

Give me a break I have everything covered. In my car are two bottles of water, a packed lunch, a flask of tea and the essential chocolate, 70% cocoa because nothing less will do. I’m off to a racing start to meet thirteen sets of viewers and it’s house to house without a minute in between. Now, here’s the snag. I had two cups of tea this morning before I picked up all the keys, property details and the viewing list and, by 10.00 am I need the loo. Every house I get to, the people are waiting for me, or the second set arrives right after the first so I can’t sneak into the bathroom. By 12.00 noon I am thankful for pelvic floor exercises. If I’d known this was going to happen I wouldn’t have drunk one of the bottles of water in the car. I have to resort to lies in the end, saying to one couple that I have to go back inside to check the locks on the doors and windows before I go with them to the next place. They wait outside while I tear through to the bathroom knowing that, if the ...

Wilful neglect The virtual ruin fascinates me because it is almost untouched since it was built. The cupboards in the kitchen remain; the pantry and meat cupboard is under the steep staircase. It still has the original Victorian cast iron fireplaces in all the upstairs rooms and the original Victorian linoleum on the bedroom floors. Each square is made to look like a rug, and placed centrally on the wooden boards. Two are green and brown designs so are interesting although pretty drab, but I particularly like the one in the back bedroom which is a rosy pink with leaves and flowers - the back bedroom; with the soaking walls and the plaster which has just fallen off the wall in one great lump the size of a double bed. The back walls of the house are soaking because the owner of the house has left it empty for some years, meaning to do some work on it, and not getting round to it, and he has allowed a broken gutter to pour many seasons of rain down the walls. This is also why the enti...

You're not from round 'ere then? I am surrounded by delightful young families, happily retired couples, or contented empty nesters, enjoying their return to pre-children companionship and some freedom from parental responsibility, as well as a large number of women who have escaped their marriages and bought a dog, preferring long walks and book clubs. One of the imbalanced things about living in the west country, as with living in the farther reaches of Scotland, is that there is a surfeit of single women and a dearth of suitable single men. The men are wage slaves, and to be found in the south-east whereas women, on the whole, like a bit of a view. This must be the centrifugal effect, as though single women have been flung out from the frenzied middle of a dance, and have landed, like so many wallflowers on the hard chairs all around the dance hall. I can tell you; those chairs are hard; and sitting on them makes you invisible; not, however, to the sort of man who has an ...

Good Evening Mr Bond There are two couples to take round a little house on a new estate on the edge of town and I have strict instructions to make sure that the cat must not get out. I’m dreading this because I imagine a swift little beast slipping through our legs as soon as we open the front door. There’s no sign of it though and we all squeeze in, afraid to open the door wider than our sideways body widths, and close it with relief. Monsieur Chat peeps seductively round a door frame leading into the living room, delicately places a furry paw onto the hall carpet and sways towards us, allowing his body to brush lingeringly against the paintwork. Truly, this is Blofeldt’s cat. Condemned to a life indoors, his only pleasures are sensory. He is brushed, smoothed, fondled, and caressed. The world beyond the window; a world of territorial disputes, raking claws and screams in the night, is unknown to him. He slinks towards me, arching his back with pleasure and kinking his tail in...

Everyone wants a bargain. Hell, I do. We’ve got a Victorian end-of-terrace house on at 220K, in need of renovation, and I expect to be killed in the rush. I rather fancy I may have a go at it myself; buy it, do it up and make a few grand. I’m supposed to meet four parties at the place and we have instructions to go in through the back door because the front door doesn’t open. As I drive by I see a couple peering through the filthy front window so I hope they will find their way round to where I’ll be with the keys. I find a second couple at the back of the house so the other two parties have looked and run away and, truth be told, it looks quite shocking. The thing to do is to look past the utter rankness of the external and try to visualize the finished project. So, brightly, we start climbing over bits of fallen, rusted iron guttering, all broken into short sections in the yard. The man is walking with a stick so I feel it is judicious to move aside some of these more obstructive...

I had an odd visit today. Never mind that the houses that we sell are at the lower end of the market, but I was unprepared. I meet a young couple buying their first home in an ex-heavy industry area. It’s a tiny terraced cottage and, when I open the door, I take a breath and try not to move far inside. Obviously someone very old has recently died here. The brown, yellow, and orange wildly swirling carpet is an inch deep in filth and dark, sticky looking stains, and it smells. I try hard not to appear as nauseated as I am feeling and keep looking out of the window where the sun is shining and I can see an apple tree and a line of washing blowing in the Spring breeze. As I gaze outwards a fat, ugly bulldog waddles past, onto the grass beyond the window and squats down to dump his load onto the garden. I now remember being warned at the office that we had a place on the books where the neighbours’ dogs use the garden of the property for a toilet whilst it’s empty, and I wonder if th...

The bad-tempered hibernating bear part of me has been temporarily pacified by the sudden arrival of Spring today. I drive around in my car, wearing sunglasses, with the windows open. The sky is a deep Mediterranean blue and birds are singing in the hedgerows. How soon I forget the misery of the last four months with one burst of warm sun and blue sky. It is the return of hope, like coming up from underground, from the dank, dark, almost suffocating pressure of winter into the light and air. Glory be. It is even better that each week I show people round these houses, I come into the office the following week to find they are all under offer. Either there’s a shortage of properties or I am a stunning saleswoman. Every property looks fabulous today, and all the viewers are in sunny moods; outgoing and cheerful. No-one is taciturn and morose. Until I meet Mr Expert at the end of the afternoon but he’s not going to spoil my day. He comes with his old mum to give his second opinion on a ...

I meet young first time buyers at a tiny nutshell of a cottage, new on the market at 120K. The sitting room appears too small for a sofa – a deal table and a couple of chairs would have been a luxury when the old place was built. Upstairs there is just one room, not even a landing and, as we discuss the best way round to put the bed, I am quite wistful. What a precious and unforgettable time this is; buying a first home together, and I’m very anxious that they only go ahead with it if they’re sure; I want to minimize life’s pitfalls for them, or to delay them awhile. I emphasize the need for a full survey, point out the woodworm, and suggest they go away and talk it over for the weekend. It’s a dear little love nest but the price still has to be right, and unforeseen problems revealed – so love doesn’t get too battered too early. There’s an offer of 385K in for a huge but shoddily built place out in the country. Over six months on the market, frequent viewers all thinking it’s overpr...

Sometimes I just get fed up. Not unreasonable when the working day starts at 8.45 am (first fifteen minutes unpaid) and runs until 4.00 pm without a lunch break, or any chance of a cup of tea. By 3.00 pm I am feeling cranky, although everyone I’ve met today has been a pleasure to spend time with. Maybe it’s just dehydration and starvation but, when the fat guy and his partner arrive I feel that I’m really not at my best. Is it me, and has my professional attitude deserted me in my comfortless state? It’s cold, windy and rainy, and I am in and out of the car, driving all over the county taking people into cold, empty houses. What I could really do with is a nice cup of tea and a piece of cake, preferably sitting somewhere warm. What I get is a fat guy who does not speak, at all. I start off trying to get some eye contact, to engage one or other of them but it’s no dice. They don’t even speak to each other, merely move lifelessly forward, without apparent enthusiasm for the house, or f...