This was one of my last posts of 07. It's one of the many posts I wrote last year about branding, a subject I have a particular expertise in having worked for 20+ years in show business building personal celebrity brands. I often find myself struggling to understand how real estate people set out to build their brands just posting away, blogging away, Twittering away with no set plan in mind. They may achieve a certain degree of name recognition but they are not building a brand. I think this had a few novel ideas in here brokers might benefit from as they seek to build their brand in 09 …Marc
I've always wanted to be an archaeologist. Ever since I was a kid. My first discoveries were found beneath the cushions of my grandparent's sofa. Candy wrappers, hardened tissues, playing cards. The occasional utensil was a treat. For a 6 year-old these things were a real find.
At an early age I learned that a superficial examination of anything reveals little of real value.
Nothing is at it seems. A landscape might hold natural beauty, but it's underneath, sometimes mere inches below the surface, where the real treasure is found.
Today, I like to excavate great companies. I'm fascinated by extremes. I want to know why some companies leave their customers feeling pained, sickened, stressed or empty (AT&T comes to mind) while other companies elicit a feeling something like euphoria (say Katz's Deli in NYC).
Today, I'm standing at the site of Starbucks. My latest dig. I'm trying to figure out why I and millions of others remain loyal despite the abundance of competing cafe's. The coffee is not the best. Their retail shops are starting to look like department stores. Yet something draws us back each day, sometimes more than once.
This morning my pickax hit paydirt. I leaned in and brushed away the sand. Here's what I discovered: The Starbucks Job Application.
Allow me to draw your attention to some of the questions on this application:
Have you ever visited a Starbucks Coffee Location? Describe your experience.
What do you like about coffee?
Why would you like to work for the Starbucks Company?
Describe a specific situation where you have provided excellent customer service in your current position.
Brokers: When you recruit an agent, do you ever ask these questions? Do you ever ask a recruit if they have used your company, and, if they have, to describe that experience? Do you ever ask what they truly love about real estate? Do you ever require them to scroll back into their past to reveal something special they did that could help you determine if they are suited to extend your brand experience?
Or are you just recruiting for the sake of growing? Are you just recruiting for the sake of saturating a marketplace? Are you just recruiting for the chance to get one deal from anyone with a pulse? Or are you trying to landscape the marketplace with an experience that is bankable?
Agents: Have you ever really sat down and wrote out why you're attracted to the broker or the brand you're looking to call home? Or are you joining a firm just for the split? Or because you get a corner office? Or so you can have the freedom to do whatever you please? Or is there a deeper desire based on something intangible but ripe with meaning?
As my archeologist fingers sift through the chalky soil of wayward brands, I have found that their cultures are built on chaos. They have been bled of meaning in an entropic mercenary swirl.
Starbucks employees start out at less than $10.00 an hour. The work is hard. The hours are hard. Yet they are drawn there and picked based on certain virtues. This is what built their brand — passion. Passion to serve. Passion to push the Starbucks experience. It's a passion that begins at the top and extends to the newest recruit. Everyone in Starbucks knows why they are there. Interview them as I have. Dig deep and gain an understanding that the foundation of any great company is a solid culture, experience and brand.
Those in real estate who have neglected to create such a foundation should take notice. Stick to what you're doing now, allow yourself to be run by fear and complacency, and in years to come, I and others like me might uncover your artifacts and find little by which to identify you. You will have been lost. Unknown.
Don't let that happen.
- Davison
Twitter: 1000wattmarc
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A mist of difference
Freaking...
Scary. Real estate is the only industry of it's size that doesn't play with the "big boys."
It's still mom and pop; hit and miss –more miss than hit.
Hi Marc,
I mostly dropped by to wish you a Happy New Year.
In answer to your question, I have had to "choose" a brokerage more often than many, given I have been licensed in five states. I know one thing…there is one Company I have firmly decided years ago never to work for, ever. Why? I don't like their "colors". Gold and Black.
It's a personal choice, but how many hot pink cars are driving down the road today?
Something as simple as logo colors can have an impact.
It was hard for me not to choose to work with my father.
That said, I choose to work around people who value hard work, integrity, customer service and who yearn to increase their knowledge.
It is pretty impressive that every Starbucks you go into has that same feel from a customer's perspective. You know what you are going to get. They all get it. It would be nice if customers of real estate agents knew what they could expect from their agent. It is something we can all strive for.
Very thought provoking, which means this was a great post.
I think many Agents jump on board a Brokerage because of one of a few things:
1. A Broker's Market Share
2. Commission Split
3. They have friends at that Brokerage
Maybe there are a few other reasons…but typically not many.
We're in an industry in which competing businesses (i.e. brokerages) really don't do too much to differentiate themselves…so agents don't really have to dig in too deeply in order to make a decision.
When I initially got into the business 5 years ago, I interviewed at 3 brokerages…and went with the biggest firm with the organized 'training' program (don't laugh…I now know it was worthless).
However, the point is that they differentiated their sales pitch to me by saying 'we're big and we have the best training.' Since nobody else really had any way to differentiate themselves, the decision was pretty easy.
Things are changing, though. Brokerages are starting to (though slowly) develop business plans on deeper ideologies and beliefs.
What does this mean? This means that the Brokerages that do it right will recruit (and retain) the right agents and will, therefore, build a brand culture from the inside out.
Building a solid brand is the foundation for success in any industry.
@Kevin. Exactly. And it's also why the consumer does, for the most part, not take real estate companies and their practitioners as seriously as they should. The branding efforts most have undertaken has been weak, fake and never thought through beyond the appealing to the agent. Granted that's great for recruitment purposes but once you get beyond the agent, the general public sees real estate a very different way than they should. I am going to be addressing this last point in a post shortly after New Years.
@Ardell. Happy New Year to you as well. I agree, colors are indeed critical. I've written several posts last year about branding and the five senses and believe strongly that the staid Gold and Black color palette, while recognizable, means very little to the consumer. Like the encased in glass red, white and blue barber shop pole. You see and you know the establishment cuts hair. But how good they cut it or what they stand for is lost in the ambiguity of the brand.
@Tyler. The reason you experience that from Starbucks is by design of course. At the heart of a good franchise is the cloning of a perfected model that never deviates. This guarantees the customer a stable, reliable experience everywhere they go. You could say with conviction that every Barista at Starbucks is approximately equal in their abilities and execution of service and product.
Which makes one question the legitimacy of a real estate franchise where quality, processes and service is never enforced by the franchisee to a point where you can bank on a standard from one office to another let alone one city to another.
@Jonathan. The fact that brokerages don't do much to differentiate themselves is a sad testimony to laziness, lack of creativity and a clear indication that a brokerage still views their customer as the agents, not the public.
This spells opportunity for any brokerage to come along and win market share by building a strong brand. Equitable Real Estate did it a few years back in Phoenix and quickly asserted itself as the new luxury brand of that area. Today, through an M&A, they are now Russ Lyon Sotheby's International Realty and they own market share in that area.
Blueroof was another new brand that successfully built niche so quickly in Salt Lake, they were bought up within the first year of being in business.
With the right team, the right brains, the right ideas and the right desire, any brokerage, old or new can jump ahead of the pack.
I agree with Ardell. Many Realtors do not articulate their service clearly before working with clients.
On another note, rarely do I hear talk about the image of a real estate company in the community and I don't mean whether the company is the biggest or most successful brokerage. I'm talking about the community focus of the company. Does the company care about the community? Does the company give back to the community?
It's important to me to work for a brokerage that "gives back" to the community.
It was hard for me not to choose to work with my father.
That said, I choose to work around people who value hard work, integrity, customer service and who yearn to increase their knowledge.
It is pretty impressive that every Starbucks you go into has that same feel from a customer's perspective. You know what you are going to get. They all get it. It would be nice if customers of real estate agents knew what they could expect from their agent. It is something we can all strive for.