20 May Stop Boring Me.
Stop Boring Me.
A excellent book by Kathy Klotz-Guest.
"Coming up constantly with a steady stream of marketing content, stories and ideas that inspire excitement, interest and banish boring can be challenging. Your content-weary audience is saying "Stop Boring Me!" You cannot connect meaningfully with your audience if you bore them. There's just too much content chasing too little mind-share today. And most business marketing stinks because it is transactional, superficial and not human."
I'm talking about YOU, estate agents.
Why are you boring?
You've left the latest free appraisal and, convinced that you were the best agency, were shocked to get the bad news.
The vendors liked some other agency. Slightly more.
You gave them your best pitch.
Told them everything that you thought relevant.
The local market performance. Comparable data. A marketing plan. Your key performance indicators.
How your brand has more registered buyers on its books than any competitor. More branches. More awards.
Better, apparently, at negotiating offers. Sales progression at its most efficient.
You asked the right questions and 'listened' attentively to everything the vendor said.
You were charming. Polite. And professional.
You've been told to ask for the business. So you trial closed. And again.
But the answer was an emphatic "we've got two other agents to see."
So your lowered the fee. Just in case that made a difference.
It didn't.
It's a familiar story.
Just not the story that the vendors, in this case, wanted to hear.
It's familiar also because it's the same story that many other agents are still telling.
The Story of Our Competence - An everyday tale of success.
But, it's a story lacking the most essential ingredient.
Emotion.
The five most 'shared' categories on social media are: Awe, Inspiring, emotional, positive, surprising.
Was your pitch awesome?
Was it inspiring?
Emotional? Surprising? Probably not.
O.K, I'll give that you made it positive.
So did every other agency.
Emotion, though, is the driving force for story.
Make the listener 'feel' something.
Make a connection.
And here's the hard part for most agents to grasp.
Before.
You ever need.
To connect.
Not the day before. Not the week, or month before.
As before, as it's possible to be.
Whether they might turn from a connection into a client, or not, surprise them.
Inspire them.
As I said, make them feel something.
When you get that right, they invite you to their home because they know you.
Not as an estate agent, but as a storyteller.
They know more about you than any other agency.
There's affinity. They like what you have to say.
If they've been following you long enough, they probably even trust you.
That's a rare thing in estate agency. Something valuable.
An asset of which you can be rightly proud.
You have built an audience.
So, the lead generation goes out of the window. Vendors are now chasing you.
The cold-call script consigned to where it should have been put years ago. File under W.P.B.
Advertising? Everybody that is somebody within your local community now knows who you are, what you do and why you do it. Who needs advertising?
The fake sincerity? Abandoned. You're dealing with friends now. Not faceless & nameless 'hot leads'.
What then to tell your audience?
Here's my point.
You have their attention. Now it's time to get their engagement.
The content that you put out ticks that little box.
Latest home for sale?
Up-to-date market reports?
Where's the emotion in that?
Every other agency is doing that. Hoping against hope that it creates awareness and the perception of authority.
It's boring for most homeowners.
If the end goal is to get vendors to trust you (it should be), rather than to sell them something -
It's going to take time.
Which is why you need to start telling your story now.
The ever insightful Dr. Brené Brown talks on the Chase Jarvis Podcast https://chasejarvis.com/blog/brene-brown-rising-strong-in-a-digital-age/ of building trust with this analogy:
At her daughter's school, the teacher fills a jar with a pebble each time someone in class does something good. When the jar is full, the kids are given a special treat. Brené refers to trust as like those pebbles. Adding pebbles until the jar is full.
It's the same for estate agents/realtors when striving to get vendors to trust you.
It doesn't happen straight away. No matter how polished your presentation.
It builds over time. Certainly not in that 1 hour appraisal window where most agents try their best to impress.
It can be things written, or said. Small, seemingly innocuous things that add a 'pebble' for certain homeowners. Homeowners build up an image of your agency, and of you, over time. When you connect emotionally with them, that image builds faster.
The knowing and liking of your personal brand will most probably get you the invitation to appraise. The trust, if it's there and if it's real, will mean that you're the only agent who gets the business.
In my view, the very best way to put emotion into your content is to talk about yourself.
Shock, horror and dismay from so many estate agents at this seemingly suicidal approach.
" Like the guest at the party who talks only about himself." is one phrase I have heard.
But that's missing the point.
The guest at the party who talks only of himself is boring because the content isn't inspiring, emotional or surprising.
Not because the guest talks about himself.
But if that guest were David Attenborough, Seth Godin, Richard Branson or any other high-profile celebrity, guests would be hanging on their every word. Even if the conversation starts with " I think this.... I believe that.... my opinion of them is.... When I started out in this industry..."
They're not so much talking about themselves, as much as expressing their values & beliefs. Creating affinity and connection with people who share similar beliefs. Building their audience.
Gaining trust. Amplifying their personal brand.
So talk about yourself. Talk about the things that inspire you. That motivate you. That have surprised you.
It doesn't have to be estate agency related. Often times, it's better if it isn't.
The boring estate agents will continue to talk about the market. The impact of Brexit, the slowdown of first-time buyers, the negative effect of online agency and everything else remotely related to property.
What they won't talk about is themselves.
Which is a shame because that's the most interesting thing about them.
"and most business marketing stinks because it is transactional, superficial and not human." - Kathy Klotz-Guest.
Make your conversations relational. Make them deeper and above all, talk with emotion about yourself.
If I can help, just get in touch. My advice is always free.
email: chris@andsothestorybegan.co.uk
mob: 07369251435
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