How Nested Putney Got Three Hours a Day Back With AI-Powered Progression

Ben Nutley

Self-employed agent · Nested · Putney, South West London

Ben Nutley runs the Nested Putney branch in south west London. As a self-employed agent, he handles valuations, viewings, negotiations, and prospecting. With an increasing number of properties under offer at any one time, sales progression was consuming hours of every day. With Linchpin handling it, those hours go straight back into winning new business.

Three hours a day, not looking for new business

When you're running multiple deals as a self-employed agent, progression competes directly with the work that grows your business. Ben was managing everything himself: chasing solicitors, constructing detailed emails, following up with buyers and sellers, and pushing forward every party in every deal.

"The amount of time I spent on progression and not looking for new business was unbelievable. It was incredibly time consuming. That's the bottom line."

Ben had tried outsourced progression services before. The challenge he kept running into was that when things got difficult (a solicitor went quiet, a managing agent was hard to reach) the work came back to him.

"It was still me doing most of the correspondence or chasing and it was always brought back to me. Every 10 days I was probably involved in some way or another, rather than them actually rolling their sleeves up and doing something."

He wanted someone who would stay on it through the difficult moments. Without that, he ended up taking progression back and doing everything himself.

Working with Linchpin

As someone who prefers to pick up the phone, Ben had reservations about an AI-powered approach.

"I'm someone that jumps on the phone straight away, guns blazing, and I want an answer."

In practice, the emails our AI wrote did what phone calls often couldn't. On one deal, repeatedly calling the buyer's solicitor yielded little success, but the proactive, detailed AI-written emails got consistent responses.

"All the content that comes through looks great. I mean, it's to the fact everyone can understand it."

The volume of follow-up made the difference. Correspondence goes out to every party, responses come back, and nothing slips through the gaps without Ben having to think about it.

A shared ownership sale that got complicated

One deal looked straightforward at the outset. It was a shared ownership sale, and early on it seemed like everything was in place. Then the complexity arrived: issues with cladding documentation, an unresponsive managing agent, a buyer who was halfway across the world for weeks at the time of exchange and needed to send signed contracts home by post, and a mortgage approval window that couldn't afford to slip.

Linchpin's steady progression kept every party moving through each step.

"It does take a lot of pressure off because I might have sat there for 15 minutes trying to construct an email that's going to hit all the right points and your system has done it instantly."

The deal completed. Had the sale been delayed another few days, the mortgage offer would have expired and the deal would have fallen through.

The result

The biggest change is capacity. Instead of spending hours constructing emails and chasing responses across multiple deals, Ben reads the updates and moves on.

"It just gives me more time to do the things I need to do to sort of get more business, I suppose, rather than spending three hours a day on sales progression on multiple deals."

The quality of the correspondence is something he couldn't replicate in the same time.

"I couldn't have constructed those emails at all."

There's also no downtime. With any team of human progressors, holidays and sick days create gaps. Ben has seen this pattern repeatedly: someone goes away, and the handover to a colleague doesn't always happen the way it should.

"There is no handover. No one wants to pick up someone else's cases. Linchpin doesn't take a holiday, does it? So that's always a bonus."

Asked whether he'd recommend Linchpin to another self-employed agent: "100%. Take the stress out of your day to day and give yourself the time back."