Running a Business

Ask most estate agents about marketing and they’ll talk about RightMove.co.uk, advertising in papers and putting up a board outside your house. Of course, they’re talking about the marketing of your house – at least that’s what they’d have you believe. The fact is that a newspaper advert is practically useless when it comes to selling a house but what it does do is market the estate agency. The same is true of the board outside your house – this increases the agent’s brand awareness in the neighbourhood as well as having the minor spin-off of alerting anyone randomly driving around a neighbourhood (rather than using RightMove) that you’re for sale.

An estate agent’s job is, first and foremost, to sell himself/herself to house sellers rather than buyers. They are in a competitive marketplace and if they don’t secure new commissions, they go out of business. In most cases they secure these jobs based on factors that include their percentage fee (excluding VAT of course) and the impression they create when they turn up to talk to the seller. It’s next to impossible to get figures from an estate agent that will tell you how effective they are at selling.

We’re in the process of buying a house in Waterlooville on the South Coast. Given that we currently live in Milton Keynes, we’ve been forced to cram lots of viewings into each visit. One of the estate agents impressed us with her knowledge of the area but neither of the houses she had to show us was suitable. Even once this was apparent, she was happy to give us lots of local knowledge about good areas, schools etc. Now, most estate agents, once they realise they’re not going to get a sale, will instantly lose interest and usher you out of the house. This is what made this particular estate agent a “purple cow” in her field (excuse the pun) – by spending time with her an unusual level of trust was created, something I’m not used to with estate agents at all.

As it happened, another house came on the market and it turned out to be one of ours. This is the house we’re going to move into (hopefully) shortly. Did we choose it because it was one of hers? Nope -we chose it because it was the right house. Who will we choose to market the house when, in a couple of years, we move again? If we choose to sell through an estate agent, it’ll be her – more or less irrespective of the commission.

Trust is an incredibly valuable resource in processes that are notoriously stressful. In many cases, indeed, the market is stressful because trust is so rare.

How much would you pay for:

• an estate agent
• a car mechanic
• a plumber
• a builder
• a solicitor
• a web developer/designer

…you could trust? Making trust part of your business by showing integrity, honesty and transparency at all times might be the single most important aspect of your marketing strategy. Of course it must be real and that can sometimes be painful (eg admitting that you’re not the right person for a specific job) but, particularly in processes where people feel vulnerable, being the one they can trust can pay off time and time again.

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Chris Cardell is a marketing consultant. Four years or so ago I paid a considerable sum to be part of a series of teleseminars aimed at helping improve my business’s profits largely through better marketing. I’m not a massive fan of his particular style which I find somewhat arrogant and a little too smooooth for my taste but I do think the training I received was worthwhile and useful.

I distinctly remember one phone call in which he said something like “who do you think decided that Paul McKenna was the UK’s ‘leading’ hypnotist? He did!” and much of what Cardell says has to be seen against that background. However, having said all that, when you strip it all down his training is useful and worthwhile.

I was less than surprised when I read on Duncan Bannatyne’s Twitter feed about action that had been taken by a third party regarding a mailing Cardell had sent out. You can see a full account on the SEOCreative blog.

This was certainly clever in that it succeeded in fooling a number of people into thinking it was a personal recommendation. So it satisfied the first requirement of good direct mail in that it got the “prospect’s” attention. However, the ultimate purpose of marketing is to secure sales and I can’t believe that many people would have gone through the entire process of buying whatever he was selling without realising that it was a fake letter. And as soon as they realise this, they’re going to have one of two reactions:

1. He’s a fraud and I won’t trust him with my money
2. That’s clever, I want to learn how to fool people too!

I can’t imagine that either of these responses is the desired one surely? The net result is that any faith I have in Cardell has now been destroyed: if his company is prepared to resort to such misleading tactics (indeed, the Advertising Standards Authority agree it was misleading) then I don’t feel I can trust him at all to be straight with me. I still get benefit out of the materials I purchased from him a few years back but nothing would persuade me to buy from him again. Another customer lost.

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