The high-profile head of Agent Rainmaker, which specialises in training letting agents and marketing, says she gets “a lot of hate” – but that this actually keeps her and her team going.

In a statement marking the ninth anniversary of the organisation, Sally Lawson says: “We’ve built an incredible community of letting agents committed to doing things differently. Who don’t want to be left behind as the industry evolves, who don’t want to be working their arses off to pull in a handful of leads a month at best, and who don’t want scarily low profit margins.

“We get a lot of hate and people saying it’s all just hype, but I revel in the criticism – it keeps me and the team going. Because I hope the critics will one day be brave enough to come and take a look at what we’re doing and why – it’s all about helping people work smarter, more efficiently, and earning what they deserve.”

Lawson is a former ARLA President and was chief executive of Concentric Lettings and owner of five other businesses when Agent Rainmaker started in 2016. She says that since then over 350 agents have added more than six figures to their revenue and profit, amounting to a total of £78m over nine years. 

“Back in 2016 our industry was lagging behind, and I wanted to find out what was missing and holding letting agents back. What I found was that many agents weren’t doing any marketing, had no effective strategies for generating new leads, and were completely wrapped up in complexity and compliance. 

“We’d all become back-end operators and not the businesspeople we could be. All of that resulted in the industry making an average profit of just 10%

“No matter what company you run, marketing must be your key focus – it can make or break you. So it became my priority to learn from the very best in the world.” 

Her training methods have involved working with US digital entrepreneur Russell Brunson and the concept of click funnels – the use of webpages structured to drive users to a specific target activity, such as making a purchase or signing up for a service. It is used across a number of industries unrelated to property and agency work.

Lawson says: “The industry wasn’t sure what to make of them at first and there was a huge amount of scepticism. But as people started to shout about the fact they’d gone from four leads to as many as 300, they started to take note.”