Marc and I toured Zappos headquarters in Henderson, NV last week. Sherry Chris joined us.
Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate is a 1000watt Consulting client, but this trip was more about fun than work.
I wore a crown all day. We had a great time.
Zappos is an amazing company. You probably know that by now. Everything you’ve read and heard is true.
Millions of words – and dollars – are flowing into the marketplace these days trying to capture, explain or transplant this company’s mojo.
Most of this stuff misses the point.
There is no replicating this company. You can’t replicate a culture: Something special and delicate cultivated over many years by extraordinary people in unique circumstances.
Getting your CEO to blog and employees to sprinkle the web with tweets does not a Zappos create. Nor does spraying a patina of Zappos-like shine on a timeworn organization.
So I am hesitant to offer any detailed “takeaways” or “lessons.” But there was one thing our tour guide – Jerry Tidmore, the “mayor” of Zappos – said at the beginning of our tour that was really powerful:
“There is no secret to our success, there are no secrets at Zappos.”
It seemed like a throwaway comment at the time, but by the end of the tour I got it: This company has nothing to hide. Not from employees, not from customers. Executives work out in the open. Phone reps direct customers to other shoe sites if Zappos does not have what they want. Performance metrics are on whiteboards for all to see. There are a hundred other examples.
The details may not be applicable to real estate, but the idea is: Not harboring secrets – which is really just a simpler, easier-to-execute conception of “transparency” – can be really powerful.
It may in fact help you create something special of your own.
What are real estate’s secrets?
Real estate, for the most part, is the anti-Zappos.
Consider the secrets the sometimes lay on the other side of these questions:
• How much does my agent actually net for selling my house?
• How can my local real estate company claim “billions” in sales when it neither owns inventory or books the revenue associated with these sales?
• Does my agent get paid more when another agent from their office represents the other side of the transaction?
• Why does my agent pick one home inspector over another?
• Why am I not assigned to the agent I see do the most business in my neighborhood when I email my local broker?
I know. Many can answer these questions confidently and openly, because they do the right thing. But my sense is just as many cannot.
And what if they did?
Well, what I saw in Henderson is one way that can turn out.
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Great insight Brian. I’m glad you got a chance to check out Zappos! Their business model along with Interface’s sustainability model are the most fascinating to me.
Gone are the shrouded secrets of “business”. Gone are the ways of hiding your mistakes. Good business is a transparent business. Goodwill comes in many forms and Zappos is a bright beacon of light coming from ashore in a sea of vapidly opaque business models.
I love that they pay interviewee’s not to take a job in the final stages. It makes their culture that much more strong and pleasant to deal with from a customer service perspective. Brilliant!
Yeah, the RE industry needs to embrace transparency a little more. Unfortunately our agents do not want some information public about how and what they are doing business with, yet it is just part of the evolving reality that we need to accept transparency and let people know the information that they want.
I am almost embarrassed to say I am a realtor.
Truth or Dare?! In response to @1000wattmarc’s tweet : “What would you folks say if you were asked to reveal a truth about real estate that u have, until now, not been?”… I’m compelled to break with my long held hobby of merely ‘lurking’ and post a reply to this entry. (If only because Twitter precludes me from employing more than 140 characters).
As a co-owner of a small boutique agency, I can’t afford not to be transparent and truthful. To be otherwise would be self-destructive. We work in an industry that for too long pits, what should otherwise be colleagues, against each other in a falsely presumed zero-sum game. I suggest that as a result, less than confident brokers and sales agents are seduced by avarice and fear of failure to obscure their own process while maligning the success of their so-called competitors.
In contradiction, by embracing an ethos of openness and accessibility we built a business that thrives on collegial trust and client/customer respect which, triumphs over the zero-sum delusion that unfortunately still dominates the majority of our industry. Sure in the beginning, some criticized us for giving away too much information about a listing, to the extent that we would compromise that most disingenuous sales tactic, the ‘bait-and-switch’. But, we’re boutique… meaning I only have 3 sales agents. I can’t afford to have them wasting their time fielding calls about fantasy properties, based on non-existent qualities. Nor can I afford to exaggerate their success.
Everything we do to elicit the trust of a client in order to list, market and ultimately sell their property, is done through a process of exposing ourselves as honest, open and transparent practitioners of real estate transactions. If we’re not ’straight shooters’ than what is the point? We won’t get the client’s listing… we won’t be able to empathize with a customer’s ‘needs, wants + desires’… and, we sure as shit, won’t reach a meeting of the minds between the two.
But, I digress… to answer the implied question of this post and to respond to Marc Davison’s ‘tweet-dare’, I would like to retell a conversation that occurred at a listing presentation that my company pitched for. The sellers had narrowed their potential listing agent selection down to 3 companies. We were up… and after explaining our process, which they were mostly familiar with, because we’ve been online for 8 years (fully transparent and accessible)… it got down to the short-and-curlies… The seller asked straight out: “Why list with you?!”… Initially stunned by the frankness of the question, my managing broker paused and while contemplating an answer… remembered that we we’re in the final 3 selection of potential agents, i.e., we were already selected for our competence, listing + selling success, efficacy, as it were…
So what was different about us?! My managing broker replied that, in truth, there is nothing different about… “us and the other prospective listing brokers… we all have access to the same MLS… and by virtue of our MLS subscription, our listings are marketed automatically to the same 3rd party listing services… your choice to represent you should be based on who you like… who you are comfortable with… that is, your own subjective feeling as to who you would like best to work with.”
Ultimately, the point is that as brokers we pretty much do the same thing… even though I had never hidden this fact from potential clients before, I thought it was honest of us to tell a prospective client that it really didn’t matter who they selected to represent their listing (from among the 3 companies they had short-listed) because, any of us could fulfill the task of selling their property. Needless to say, we won the contract to list, market + sell their property. Which we successfully did.
However, there’s a twist… Brian + Marc, your post asks for more transparency of the RE industry brokerages… I get it, sweet Jesus, I do it! But, let me finish this anecdote. Yeah, we marketed our client’s property and, we went through a typical multi-month-long sales-siege (given the current market)… finally, after a price reduction we found a buyer. Multiple showings later… and then a real offer!!! Great, right?! Then the buyer, out of no where, pulled in a ‘buyer’s broker’ to ‘handle his transaction’… annoying at first but, then, Ok… right?! The thing is that we knew the buyer broker and he himself announced his ‘agency’ with an apology to us, for his apparent ‘lack of initial agency’… fact is, the ‘buyer’ was looking for an edge… did all the work with us and then when it was trigger time… conscripted a broker to represent him on the buy-side of his new purchase as long as his agent give 50% commission back to him. Smart Buyer, Cool Beans… but, where is the onus of transparency now? Seller, Agent, Buyer, Buyer’s Agent… we’re are all culpable…?!
Any way, as my 1st reply to a post… actually, this is my 3rd, I believe I’ve prattled on at FOREM and once at Inmann News… but, this is akin to ‘coming out’… My ‘Dare’ to you Brian + Marc, is how much are you going to question the ’scumbaggery’ of consumers? … I mean, their lack of transparency and/or truthfulness… is just as self-serving as ours. Right?!
Peace, out…
P.S. I’ll RT this @1000wattmarc via @LoftsBoston
[...] Secrets, lies, real estate and Zappos by Brian Boero at 1000Watt Consulting [...]
Sebastian:
Thanks a lot for taking the time to share your thoughts and experience. They are really instructive.
Regarding your story about the listing presentation … I think you have hit the nail on the head: It’s about trust. In the undifferentiated mass that is real estate, being thoroughly open is the best way to gain that trust. More power to you!
Regarding your challenge about consumers, and their obligation to act in good faith…
I would argue that given the relatively large size of transaction fees inherent in the transaction, and the still-opaque nature of the real estate buying and selling process, the consumer is entitled to do whatever they can, within legal and ethical limits, to safeguard their interests within a structure that often compromises them.
Zappos has created such an impressive, quirky culture, not to mention a huge business. And the two are linked, of course.
I read a great profile of Zappos somewhere (Fortune, I think) that went into a ton of detail about their culture.
Looking forward to hearing the CEO speak at Inman…
I have been a Realtor for 26 years and I have seen more change in the business in the last few years than in the first 20 combined. You are dead on with your assessment.
Aloha,
Keahi
I’m jealous, I’ve been meaning to get down to Vegas to do the Zappos tour!
Zappos really resonates with us at Redfin as we work on building a better real estate brokerage. As we go, at every step of the way, we re-think how we could do things.
For instance our website shows more data than most any brokerage. We were the first to publish listing price history, sales history along with every other piece of data we can get our hands on. All without requiring user registration.
But it’s not just on the website that we push for transparency; as Marc and Brian have blogged in the past we survey every client, those whose offers are accepted and close and those whose aren’t accepted and post them online for every one to see.
We also blog every month in every market we’re in about how the business did. From how many offers we wrote to how many people would recommend Redfin to a friend (a simplified version of our net promoter score).
It’s great to see the industry talking about increased transparency and increased customer satisfaction. I’m definitely bummed I missed Rob Hahn’s talk at REBCPHL on net promoter score.
[...] interviewed by Brian Boero of 1000watt blog, Jerry Tidmore of Zappos said this:Â “There is no secret to our success, there are no [...]
I really like Zappos and how they run the company it “appears” so transparent in its approach and really does do good for the property market.
[...] the invisible thought bubble that popped over my head but thought about the post Brian wrote titled Secrects, lies, real estate and Zappos and about the invisible stain of distrust on the brokers otherwise clean [...]