Welcome from CEO Sally Lawson

When I first got into lettings in 1990, the world was a very different place. We sent letters, wrote stuff on paper and drove around having lots of face-to-face meetings. Nowadays, the world is faster. There is 1000 times more information available; we send emails, keep notes on computers and in many cases are too busy to have meetings, but not everything has to change.

Running my letting agency since 1990, through two recessions and the invent of the internet, mobile phones, email, Skype and online CMS systems, I worked furiously to develop systems to streamline my business and improve consistency of service and output to improve profitability also, but it had a side effect.

You cant beat talking to people,building relationships with landlords and tenants, helping them by working together with them for mutual gain - it’s still PEOPLE that we do business with.  So how could we combine the systems and productivity and the face-to-face relationship that our customers had grown to admire about us and was reflected in many of the referrals and testimonials they gave and are still visible today on our review sites?

We created the tenancy management and client accounting centre. We took the day-to-day admin and compliance issues, the leaky taps and neighbour disputes away from our front end people. This allowed the issues to be resolved quickly by someone “in the office”, who was not out on viewings trying to let properties, but instead in the office ready to deal with the issues that crop up. This meant that tenants were happier as their issues were resolved sooner, the property managers could spend time ensuring that the contractors are adequately insured, the client account managers can allocate funds and pay on time, using all the IT development and systems we had developed and landlords could log online to see how their account was doing as opposed to calling the office trying to speak with someone who was out on viewings.

The front end agency staff are talking, meeting, helping, advising and problem solving, working with our customers, the landlords, to create better rental units and get them more rent. A real win-win. It revolutionised my business.

This is the bloodline of our network today, local service by fully trained property lettings experts, supported by the highly trained tenancy management centre to deal with the ongoing day-to-day management. (which also manages property for other agents around the UK) The results of this can be seen by what our customers say about us, and time and time again it is the fact that our front end guys go beyond the expected; really helpful, really friendly, so thoughtful, and why is this? ... Because they have time to be.

I hope you enjoy our videos, articles and information here and on the net. We create a lot of educational videos for landlords on YouTube and other sites, just search my name and Concentric and you will find them, or check out our YouTube channel, ConcentricTV.

We look forward to getting to know you.

All the best for now, 

Sally Lawson PPARLA (former ARLA President) 
CEO and Founder