Competition

reprinted from Broker Agent Magazine July 2005

Do you have a plan on how to compete against the other 7,000 agents in the Central Ohio market? First you need know your competition and see how they position themselves in the market. Take a piece of paper and list their strong points, weak points, and finish with how you will position yourself to be unique and stand out from the crowd.

Let's assume you are competing against some entrenched agents who have name recognition and have built a team approach. Their strong points and market dominance are:

-         A team approach, which implies strength and the ability to manage a lot of clients at once.

-         Knowledgeable about real estate.

-         Name recognition.

-         Money to support marketing and advertising of listings.

 When meeting a prospect this dominant agent will most likely:

-         Emphasize their competitive edge and the benefits of having a team approach.

-         Focus on themselves, their past success, years in business, awards, etc.

-         Very well done marketing pieces to promote and sell the home.

-         An expensive advertising budget.

 Now list their weaknesses and how you can exploit them:

-         The negative aspects of a team can be:

1. The client may not be dealing directly with the agent but with team members.
2. The agent may be spending their time managing the team and not with the client.   

You can compete by telling your prospects that you have chosen to not have a team approach so that the client only works with you, not some team member they haven't even met. Plus you limit your client base to a level that you can personally manage on your own. You spend your time managing your client's transaction and not managing a team.  The entrenched agent talks about how the team benefits the client; you show how it really benefits the agent instead. 

 -         When the entrenched agent emphasizes self promotion in their advertising it may mean:

1. The agent is overly focused on self promotion and increasing their client base, but does this really sell homes? What is good for the agent may not be a benefit to the client.

You on the other hand are mostly concerned with the outcome for your client. You grow your business by referral and success for your clients, not by self promotion. It's about the outcome for the client not for the agent.

 -         They utilize a large marketing budget and flashy marketing pieces to help dominate their markets. But:

1. Does that really sell the home?
2. The surprising thing is many clients truly don?t believe that the advertising really sells the home either.

You compete by letting the client know that most advertising is really to help the agent find more clients and gain more market share. Again, it is about the agent not the client. Predictably what the dominant agents typically do is invest their money but not their time.  You will show the prospect how you invest your time in them. One example is to take your listing clients in the car to view the homes they are competing with. This allows them to better react to the market.

 The mistake that agents often make is to copy what the successful agents are doing. But you won't win by playing the game by their rules. To compete you don't have to undermine your competition you just have to be different and offer something they aren't.