Marcus Richards
Acaboom provides a unique software solution for estate agents to use during their market appraisal process.
The range of services encompasses the full client journey from booking the appointment and creating a personalised client presentation with rich data to use on the appointment, through to an interactive digital proposal, valuer notifications highlighting key activities happening in real-time, nurturing, and ultimately securing the instruction with an e-signature.
Tell us about yourself?
Started out as an estate agent some 30 years ago and worked in that arena for 15 years or so before moving to a sales position selling an IT solution selling into hospitals.
In 2004 founded a property visualization and floor plan solution which quickly became used by some 4,000 UK estate agents. In 2008 the company was sold to the DMGT group of companies (i.e. Daily Mail).
After some years of development and beta testing, I then launched Acaboom to the market – this was in 2016.
It has quickly become the leading tool to help estate agents win new business and is very much unique in what it does.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Don’t get distracted and just continue to work at doing the basics even better.
What problem does your business solve?
Our clients are mostly estate agents. When they pitch for new business their challenge is to get across what they do differently from their competitors; basically, they need to differentiate themselves from others.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
The day I went to sell my property I had three estate agents pitch to me; I found that:
a) none did a great job of telling me why they were different and why I should use them
b) I didn’t understand how they had arrived at the price/valuation they offered and all prices were very different, and
c) I forgot most of what I’d been told two days later. Therefore, the decision to choose my agent all came down to the fee they’d charge and I went for the cheapest fee …..even though as an ex-agent I knew agents were all very different and there was likely one out there who’d do a much better job and get me the best price.
What is your magic sauce?
Not only is the software solution unique and first to market in what it does but the customer service we provide is second to none.
All to often tech companies deliver tech (well maybe) but shy away from making themselves easily contactable and with customer service that is eager to help. We want to be inspired and we want to inspire.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
We’re growing fast in the UK PropTech space – it’s a known arena to us so it makes sense to push ahead in this space at this moment in time.
However, the product lends itself to international expansion and also into other verticals – both of these are on our radar to be tacked in the next 5 years.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
We’ve grown fast and ensuring not only we have the right people in place but also the right processes and systems to continually deliver the highest quality of service has been a real learning curve.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
It’s typically the leading estate agents in a market/area that look to use Acaboom – they want to show off what they do in the best way possible.
However, we are keen to speak with those in other marketplaces/countries who have a challenge getting their sales teams to effectively get across the company’s USPs and differentiate themselves from their competitors.
