Pay-per-exchange, or a progressor on your team?

Sales progression is the corner of agency work with the most developed specialist market: firms that do nothing else, and mostly price the same way — a fee per completed exchange, sometimes with nothing payable on a fall-through. It is an attractive structure and an honest one, because it puts the provider’s incentive exactly where the agency’s is. This note is not here to argue with it. It is here to set out when the arithmetic favours it, and when it favours the other model, which is a named progressor working your pipeline on a monthly figure.

When per-exchange wins

Low or lumpy volume. If your sales side completes a handful of transactions a month, a per-exchange fee converts progression from a fixed cost into a marginal one, and a good specialist brings process you do not have to build. The same logic holds for a lettings-led agency dipping into sales: you are buying capability by the transaction rather than committing a salary to a sideline.

When the arithmetic turns

Multiply your monthly exchanges by the specialist’s fee and the line stops being marginal at surprisingly modest volume: a per-exchange model at pipeline scale can cost as much as a person without delivering one. And there are three things a per-transaction supplier structurally cannot give you. The chain call answered by the same voice that answered it last week. Progression knowledge that stays in your business — the solicitors who respond to chasing and the ones who respond only to deadlines — rather than in a supplier’s system. And the option to fill the quiet weeks with the rest of the pipeline’s administration, because a dedicated person’s month is yours to allocate, not priced per event.

• Run the number honestly: exchanges per month, times the quoted fee, set against the monthly cost of a named progressor — ours is published on the services page.
• Price the fall-through pattern too: a no-completion-no-fee structure is kindest exactly when your pipeline is weakest, which is worth something.
• Then price the intangibles in one question: does your volume justify the same person knowing your chains week to week?

If your volume sits below the crossover, use a specialist with our blessing — several have earned their market. If it sits above, the question becomes the one this firm exists to answer: a named person, on your systems, an hour ahead of London, carrying progression and the administration around it for one published monthly figure.

Ejas Deane is a partner of the firm. He answers enquiries himself.