Think Outside the Box
This is such a cliché eh?
I am not a fan of slogans, and whenever I hear this particular phrase, it makes me think of Taco Bell’s: Think Outside the Bun. This slogan has been so overused – remember: Push the Envelope?
The converse slogan of: When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I do happen to like this slogan as it seems that real estate agents are viewed by most consumers as commodities and essentially do the same thing.
Have a home to sell? Quick, I’ll come over and:
- Put a sign in the yard
- Put it in the MLS
- Place an ad – print, online
- Put photos online
And other new fangled marketing techniques like social media sites, video tours perhaps and other “new and improved” ideas.
But…how does this differentiate you from the other kazillion real estate agents in your marketplace? Don’t they all do relatively the same thing?
There are a few leveling mechanisms at play here as well as the “exposure” concept that work as a disadvantage to the individual listing agent to distinguish themselves in the marketplace:
- Public websites and the Internet. Consumers can go to one of thousands of websites to search for homes. They don’t care who has the listing
- Exposure. Whether a buyer learns about your property via some syndicated website from your MLS, Realtor.com, your individual or company website, or the via Twitter, Facebook or ActiveRain, one of the main tenets of market value is exposure and an element of exposure is time. The more time a property has been on the market, the more exposure (theoretically speaking) it will have with buyers, within limits.
Since most real estate companies, and even many MLSs provide for “real estate syndication” of listings, chances are, regardless of what you do marketing wise, a consumer will find it in short order.
So…what causes a home to sell? Is it your wiz-bang marketing / Web 2.0 strategies, your catered-lunch broker’s open house that at least in our marketplace is often paid for by a lender and title/escrow company, or your extensive marketing techniques?
What do you think really causes a home to sell?
I would argue it has very little with most of this stuff.
Why?
Some homes sell quickly even when an agent bungles the marketing of a home. Why? The simple fact is, some homes are just easy to sell and in fact practically sell themselves. Either the location, price, condition, amenity or some combination thereof makes the home a strong draw.
Some homes at the opposite end of the spectrum need a lot of help to overcome “obstacles” to selling. Usually relating to price, condition, location, lack of demand that makes a property beg for ingenuity sometimes.
Going back to the When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail slogan reminds me of the common real estate agent’s response that if buyers aren’t biting, lower the price to stir demand. While there is logic and truth to this statement and sometimes it does need to occur, this option should not be main and only option pursued.
Which leads me back to the original point: How do you think outside the box for your clients?
Thinking outside the box doesn’t need to mean you are inventing a previously unheard of concept, or your approach is so novel that it creates an “ah ha” moment. Quite the contrary, sometimes, it is the application of something that has been tried and tested many times before but might not rise to the surface of something that is intuitively obvious, while upon some reflection, may seem basic and not worthwhile of serious attention.
It is at this point where the analysis can break down quickly and an agent reverts back to the tried and true.
I’ll use my eight year-old son and his friend in a real life example. A few weeks ago on a warm late-Fall day, my son and his friend had been playing for several hours. They are normally pretty creative kids and don’t need much (most of the time none) intervention from adults.
They gel really well together, but after several hours of playing, my son came up to me and said:
Dad, we’re bored, there is nothing to do.
I looked at them for a few seconds, and I could have easily reverted to structuring their next move and relied on many things, such as:
- You must be hungry, do you want me to make some lunch for you? – I knew they weren’t starving as I know them quite well and they just ate quite well just a few hours ago and they could easily play another 1-2 hours before they wanted to stop if they could find something engaging.
- Want to play a board game, game of cards, video game, TV show?
- Etc.
Instead, my feeling is that kids lives are way too structured today and over-monitored, with too much intervention. With the advent of organized sports, music lessons, play dates, video games in the car, life is just one huge organized and structured distraction for kids. When I grew up, as long as I was home for dinner, I was free to roam the neighborhood and we invented and did many things all on our own, all day long. While I wouldn’t let my kids have the level of freedom today I once enjoyed (sad commentary indeed), I replied to my son and his friend:
Just relax for a minute and I bet you will find something to do.
That was NOT the answer they were looking for.
I went back inside and was discreetly observing when next thing I know:
they are trying to slide down a far to gentle and small slope in our front yard with a snow inter tube. They were jumping on each other and having a blast. They did this for a looooong time.
It got me to thinking, am I this creative for my clients? This is not to imply that creativity is an override or replacement for doing the basics really well, it’s not.
But…how if the basics aren’t working for many homes in today’s market, then what other options are you doing that aren’t cookie-cutter, but which may exist at the individual property level that requires taking a fresh look at what the challenges a given property might face and be presented as objections buy buyers?
Personally, it requires a solid understanding of what is selling, what is not, and why particular properties are selling.
For example, there are many homes on a given street that have gone unsold for well over a year, when a given seller approached us on this street to sell their home. We quickly saw that this property would be one of the many homes on the street that would not sell if we didn’t spruce this home up quite a bit, and do it in a hurry to take advantage of every decreasing buyers in the as the strongest part of the selling season was behind us and was starting to wind down. We quickly got this home spruced up and showed exceptionally well and priced it to sell out of the gate and it did.
Another home we sold this year had a home right next door that was in serious disrepair while the home we were selling was a true gem, quite a contrast. While we couldn’t make the home next door disappear (I called David Copperfield but he never replied), we could have simply thrown up our hands and said we will have to wait until the right buyer comes along who doesn’t care. We suggested extending a solid 6’ fence on one side, nice blinds on a few key windows that filtered and/or blocked the offending view and a few other minor items.
Sometimes, the answers lie in nuance, the small details, that when taken together, combined and implemented properly, can be a direct cause of why a property to sells.
The answer can lie in:
- The condition aspect still doesn’t get nearly the attention it deserves in today’s marketplace. Home staging, re-design, home maintenance repairs and even minor to moderate renovation can make a measurable difference in a home seller’s net financial bottom line. While this approach is not relevant for all homes and sellers current financial constraints, it’s one tool in the toolbox that gets left inside the toolbox far too often.
- Detective. Sometimes it takes a careful analysis of a home to really pin-point what buyer objections will most likely be and if it is something that can be changed and resolved BEFORE it becomes an issue, can you identify it? Know how to cost-effectively remedy it?
- Being pro-active. Anticipating challenges and problems before they occur and solving them before they gain traction.
- Home Staging. Let’s face it, the overwhelming majority of home today on the market could benefit from this and listing agents as the point person, often don’t understand the benefit, know how to do it themselves, have an exceptional home stager in their back pocket to recommend.
- Renovation. What is the overwhelming majority of homes that are selling are either bargain-basement priced homes or renovated homes and your home (like most) that you may list is in the middle and needs serious updating. Would you know how to create an “Extreme Makeover” with your own recommended and cost-effective contractors in a quick time-frame to get a home on the market?
- Negotiation. This is widely touted but in my humble opinion, not practiced enough.
- Candid Conversations. Are you willing to have that hard conversation with a seller that their home faces challenges in today’s market and offering solutions to address it
- Listening. Really understanding what a client wants and needs can be akin to peeling back the layers of an onion. Asking open-ended questions like “Why’s That?” and then really, really listening to what they are saying, how they are saying it and what is really important to them can go a long way from having a mediocre experience for a client versus exceptional.
While each market is unique and faces it own unique set of issues to confront, we as REALTORS owe it to our clients to maximize their position in a sale or purchase.
I’m not comparing the details of the complexities and balancing act of selling a home versus an eight year-old being creative, but it does (at least to me) beg the question on how can we really add value to your clients.
How do you think outside the box and what is your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)?
Isn't it better just do it?
