Blow The Whistle.

28 Feb Blow The Whistle.

Blow the whistle.

On finite estate agency practices. Specifically, competing with other agents.

Because estate agency isn't a finite game.

Much as trainers and 'leaders', the Tom Ferry's and Grant Cardone's of this world, would have us believe.

Competition is such an easy sell for them.

Pitting one agency against another. Striving for better, every day.

I have nothing personal against these trainers - all fine individuals in their private lives. It's just that they're mostly clueless about how the world has changed. And the damage, specifically, they're doing to estate agency.

A finite game?

From the author, Simon Sinek, The Infinite Game:

"In finite games like football, or chess, the players are known, the rules are fixed, and the endpoint is clear. The winners and losers are easily identified.

In infinite games, like business, or politics, or life itself, the players come and go, the rules are changeable and there is no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers in an infinite game; there is only ahead and behind,

Can we agree, therefore, that estate agency is not a finite game?

The rules are not fixed. Fixed fee, % of sales price achieved, No fee, unknown selling price at the outset, fall-through's after acceptance of offer, gazumping, gazundering.

The players are not always known. Off-market sales, homes selling with another subsequently appointed agent, For Sale By Owner.

The endpoint is most certainly not clear. Is winning the instruction the endpoint? Having agreed offers? How about the day of exchange, or completion? It might be an endpoint for the agency - until such time as the homeowner contacts the Property Ombudsman to complain and seek redress.

The winners & losers are not easily identified. An agency wins the instruction, fails to sell and loses the instruction to another agency at a much lower asking price. How about the fixed fee agency that puts in more hours to achieve a sale? We sell more homes - some at a loss!

Estate agency is one of the most intricate, and intimate, of professions - relying as it does on promises, relationships, human nature and contractual agreement. It's only a competition because it has been portrayed as such by those that aren't quite good enough. Those that lack the natural affability to win both hearts & minds of those they seek to serve.  Or, by those who seek to profit from turning the game into a blood sport.

"If we listen to the language of so many of our leaders today, it's as if they don't know the game in which they are playing. They talk constantly about "winning."  They obsess about "beating their competition." They announce to the world that they are "the best."  They state that their vision is "to be number one." Except that in games without finish lines, all of these things are impossible.

When we lead with a finite mindset in an infinite game, it leads to all kinds of problems, the most common of which include decline of trust, cooperation and innovation."  - Simon Sinek

Decline of trust? Isn't that the very problem estate agents/realtors face? Vendors don't trust them. They are perceived as an industry built on bragging, promising and emotional manipulation.

Bragging that their agency is the best. Promising five star service, without ever defining what that looks like. Trying to persuade vendors that December is actually the best time to put their home on the market, even though the potential client would prefer it launched in February.

I tried hard not to mention that this third rate advice from the trainers is costing your agency money, but I just couldn't help myself.

We have the world's, the world's number one agency, insistent that agents in their circle adopt a system-based approach that produces "overkill, over time."  That agents thinking of quitting should "take all the thinking out of it." Just follow this procedure, just follow the actions that produced these millionaire mega-agents and all will be fine.

I've often pondered what I so dislike so about the Keller Williams business model. They being the antithesis of everything I value.

They proudly proclaim themselves the #1 training company in real estate, whilst their core principle morally corrupt agents and simultaneously diminishes the reputation agents have with the public.

I find it hard to uncover any other agency so obsessed with competition, so blithely unaware of the consequences.

Competition that results in lower fees, industry-wide.

Competition that encourages false claims. Competition that is, at best, nebulous.

Fighting in the estate agency playground might resonate with those macho bosses that seek to dominate.  It doesn't resonate with the vendor/landlord.

We don't care that you think your agency best. We're looking for connection and that requires emotional labor.  Connection between people is always the result of emotional labor, never physical labor.

We're looking for trust, permission, remarkability, and above all else, humanity.

Compassion, humility, vulnerability.

Again, we don't care which agency is better.

The more your agents seek to convince and convert, the less convinced we remain.

That's finite agency for you.

Tell someone at a party you're a realtor, or estate agent, and they instantly have you down as salesperson - not a real person!

It doesn't have to be that way.

The Infinite Game.

"There is only ahead and behind."

It's not semantics.

Winning and losing doesn't put you ahead, or behind.

Winning simply keeps you in the game.  Losing, often enough, puts your agency out of it.

Being ahead is as simple as being different from those that seek to better your agency. If agencies, the world over, are mistrusted, why would any agency seek to be better - when they can so easily be different?

Behind, implies that your agency either isn't good enough or, more likely, doesn't care enough to differentiate. An agency that assumes it can transact its way out of the hole it digs for itself.

A commonality among estate agents is ever-decreasing fee levels.

The result of a finite mindset, in an infinite game.

The competition reduces their fee. Your agency reduces its fee.  A race to the bottom.

Same story with valuation. Higher and higher, devil take the hindmost.

The Infinite Game mindset, on the other hand, encourages creativity, transparency,  innovation, relationships rather than transactions.

There is no us vs. them - simply us, improving what we do and how we do it.  Day after day.

There is no competition. The focus is internal. A contradiction to everything the trainers have told you. Competitive advantage? Competitive analysis? Doesn't exist in The Infinite Game.

It's time to blow the whistle on the the finite mindset. Enough with the hustle and daily grind. Enough with "crushing it."

There will soon be polarity in estate agency. Those that compete to be best. And those that understand how competition kills the game.

Dead.

Thanks, as always, for reading:)

Love to hear your comments on why you still compete with other agents, when that mindset simply adds to their credibility - not that of your agency.

Drop me a line if you have any questions on personal brand, or story. I'm happy to help.

Chris.

p.s. If you'd like to be notified every time I post something new, just fill out the subscribe box on the home page. That's all you'll get - no selling, no unsolicited email, nothing!