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We are on the home stretch. It has been a difficult down cycle. The worst few months may be on this coming lap. Yet the end is in sight; brighter times are ahead. Having survived this experience will not, however, in and off itself, earn you the prize.
The recovery market, that will take us to the sustaining markets of 2010, will be a unique and demanding experience. As this column has discussed over the past several months, there are specific business tasks that must be completed by brokerages that hope to succeed in this new marketplace. The overall objective of these tasks continues to be the creation of a brokerage configuration that can generate market level profits. This is the number one challenge for our industry.
One of the most important of these tasks is the morphing of your brokerage-marketing program into a vehicle that disseminates, throughout your market, your firm's one marketing message. The objective of this month's column is to provide brokers with a marketing transition checklist to use in preparing their new marketing plan. For further guidance and wisdom, please keep Grown Up Digital by Don Tapscott and Groundswell by Charlene Li at your desk. Both of these books are now being recommended by leading business journals and business-oriented publications.
Steps to Create or Refine
Your Brokerage Marketing Message
1. Create a whole new relationship between your customers, your services and your firm. Service menus are no longer appropriate. Align your competencies with your customer's expectations and needs. Let the resulting chemistry customize the customer's transaction. If this sounds difficult using the traditional independent contractor-based agent/broker arrangement, then you have discovered an important hint. Use the next several months to build an agent/broker arrangement that will run smoothly in the new market.
2. Focus on engineering productive and creative relationships with your customers. Oops, did I say your customers? Imagine that. Remember that today's consumer wants a relationship with you and your agent. Remember that your value proposition will be delivered through the experience you create with the consumer. That experience will be more successful if your have gone to the effort of building a relationship.
3. The three elements of your consumer-centric trilogy need to be: 1) Your value proposition, 2) The customer experience you co-create and 3) Your customer service discipline. Your firm's marketing message must effectively present all three of these elements.
4. 2009 is the year in which online communities will really begin to exercise their influence. If you don't believe they have the power, you might want to keep in mind that they just elected a new American president. Connecting with these groups online (and every community has them) will be critical to your success moving forward. Don't ignore the likelihood that your local newspaper is losing altitude quickly and may not be a player in your marketing program for much longer. Start redirecting your resources now.
Your brand, like so many other things connected to your brokerage, will have to transition from representing a program, product or service to standing for a new vendor/consumer experience. Who is going to represent your firm in this new consumer relationship? If this is going to be your agent, you best get started now on creating a whole new kind of agent group within your firm. Remember the essence of the new challenge is delivering your firm's value proposition, and your firm's consumer experience, through a customized transaction, that is perfectly executed, every time, with every customer.
Your market is going to know if your marketing message is running rough. Let them tell you, rather than just telling their friends. A critical part of your new consumer relationship will be its features that allow both you and your customer to be involved in scrutinizing the ongoing transaction. Prepare now, both mentally and administratively, to have your customers rate and rank their experience with your firm. Be prepared for the fact that your final score will be communicated to all of your customer's contacts. In an Internet-powered world, that can easily be dozens of households in your community. Today's consumer is serious about the promises in your marketing message and about how that compares to their actual experience.
Run a fair race. Perhaps the most important element in your value proposition will be the integrity factor. Today's consumer is not willing to tolerate shady, sloppy or haphazard behaviors from anyone with whom they do business. Take a moment to review recent buyer/seller surveys by NAR, the California Association of REALTORS, and the Houston Association of REALTORS. In each of these surveys, consumers have come down hard on agents who lack negotiating skills, knowledge of the local market, basic people skills and knowledge of the process and its probable outcomes. Today's consumer is demanding that integrity, honesty and transparency be incorporated into the transaction. They will publicly reflect on these aspects of their experience with your firm, regardless of whether that experience was with the agent, broker, or office staff.
Perform consistently. Moving forward, knowledge will be the basis of judgments regarding integrity. Your firm's value proposition must include a promise that you and your agents will be properly prepared. This will require a company-wide Standards-of-Practice program, because individual interpretations of ‘knowledgeable' just won't hack it anymore.
If you are having a difficult time reconciling these comments with the consumer you think you know, it might help to remember that the last time you were in touch with the consumer was in 2002. The land rush market of 2003 - 2005, wherein your agents were order takers, was not about knowledge of the consumer but rather crowd control. The more complicated market of 2005 - 2008 was, again, not about knowing the consumer but, rather, surviving the moment. This new consumer didn't just pop out of thin air, though they will present exciting challenges in your immediate future. The new consumer has been under development for the past several years, and they like the wonderful new real estate market ahead, and the affect that they have had on the transaction.
Now is the time to prepare. You can do this. It is important to have your new Recovery Message in position and revving up, this year, to benefit from the market opportunities coming in 2009 and 2010.
