I’ve been challenged quite a bit lately by my marketing consultant to think about what it is that my business is all about.

(I have a marketing consultant?  Holy cow.)

The simple answer is that we buy and sell houses, but there are a lot of people doing that.  And of course, it’s a marketing consultant’s job to try to figure out how you’re different from other people who are doing the same thing you’re doing.  So, wanting to get the most out of this experience of being marketing consulted, I started to make a list of some of the ways I think I’m faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive.  In other words, I started thinking about what’s important to my customers, and to me.  What kind of person am I?  Where do I want the business to go?  That sort of heady stuff.

The profitable (sometimes painful) lesson I am getting from this exercise is this:

• Every success I’ve had in the real estate business came from doing something that was important to the customer, and / or communicating that that’s what I’d do.
• Many of the failures I’ve had in the real estate business came from talking about something that I thought would be important to a customer and either:  A) not presenting it well or B) not being correct that it’s important to the customer.

Now once you get to that point, it naturally follows that you should:

• Start figuring out what you’ve done right and what you’ve done wrong in terms of meeting customer needs.
• Start asking your customers what they liked about what you did, and what you could do better.

The second point requires a bit more work on my part, though if you’re a customer or potential customer and would like to add a comment letting us know what works or what needs improvement, that’s always welcome.

Regarding what’s turned out to be important and what’s turned out not to be, read on.

OK Then, So What’s Important?

Looking back on the last 8 1/2 years in this business (holy cow, 8 1/2 years, time flies when you’re having fun), my customers have generally praised a few key things about me and my agents:

• The web site is easy to use, especially to search for homes.  (I suspect a part of this praise is that we don’t require you to sign up for search – it’s just free for the taking).
• We either answered the phone when they called or returned their call or email promptly.
• When we were showing them houses:

• We showed them whatever they wanted to see, and were patient with them.
• We gave them good information and opinions about what they were seeing, without pushing them in one direction or the other.

My goal of course as a businessman is to make sure we do more of what’s important going forward and continue to play to our strengths of:

• Openly sharing what we know and the data we have access to online.
• Being genuinely of service to the many people who do honor us with their business once they’ve met us here.

This means doing a better job with the people we have, and getting more outstanding agents to help.

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