All that matters is to make a good impression?
28 June 2026(2026 June: LinkedIn) Small to medium to big firms of surveyors want to give a good impression of the firm’s capabilities. In larger firms, fancy job descriptions are rife: ranging from the ubiquitous ‘Director’ to ‘Head of …’. Titles are good for outward impression, inquirers and clients like to know who they’re dealing with. It is of course not only property advisers that are into lawful misrepresentation, most if not all businesses nowadays are into giving the impression that the person whom the customer/client is dealing with has some level of authority. As I write this, I’m listening to David discussing with Tony Archer about being Chief Livestock Liaison.
Compared to agency commission instructions, commercial property professional services are the poor relation. In many firms, a department’s function is to deter clients from going elsewhere and taking their lucrative work with them. In some firms, rent reviews are loss-leaders. Although reasonable for clients to assume that a Head of Lease Advisory, for example, is bound to have a great deal of knowledge and know-how, in practice provided the surveyor knows more than the client that’s all that matters.
When negotiating a rent review, something that even ‘Heads’ stoop to, there is an unwritten rule that one side’s surveyor expects the other side’s surveyor to observe. Insisting compliance enables the insister to demolish the insistee’s stance. It is perhaps one of if not the most successful ways for a Head to achieve nil increase and reinforce relationship with a tenant client.
Long ago, in my newsltter, I wrote an article about combatting dynamic professionals. The first thing I do whenever communicating with someone never previously encountered is due diligence. Knowing who you are dealing with at rent review is essential. My reputation sometimes precedes me, but whether people that have never heard of me know who they’re dealing with just by reading my website content, no way.
Their clients don’t always realise this, at least not until it’s too late, but many surveyors want to get the job done as soon as possible so they can get on with the next. This attitude, more common than you might think, translates as can’t be bothered, simply not worth it as far as the surveyor is concerned. Is the client any the wiser? If that were possible, then they wouldn’t have instructed that firm in the first place. After all what sort of firm has people at the top of the ladder that allow people on the lower rungs anywhere near clients? The answer is firms whose main source of revenue is agency.
I think it’s a great pity that retiring principals of well-known firms whose professional integrity is undoubted sell to overseas agency-oriented companies, to be rebranded, their heritage erased. The systematic hoovering up of British firms is being replaced by mediocrity disguised as impressive and highlighting the shortage of surveyors that can do rent review properly.
(LinkedIn views: 572)
Return to Article