Replaced

Nicole sat across the dinner table from us Friday night. She was not her usual positive self. Something happened. I decided to pry.

Replaced

A former actress, Nicole followed her true calling behind the camera. She did film. Music videos. And stills. The latter is, IMO, her best work of all.

Her son came twelve years ago. A daughter, sever years later. So she ditched LA and set up a photographer's studio here on the Central Coast.

Many of her stills adorn the walls of my home. Family portraits. My kids. Wife. Dogs. Taken at different times over the last ten years.

Nicole closed her studio on Friday. 

I assumed the economy took its toll. Nicole believes it goes deeper than that. "Everyone is a photographer today," she said. "They own digital cameras, enhance them with Photoshop (or picnik) and post them on Flickr. The value of a professional is no longer recognized I suppose."

That hit home. Big time. Especially as it relates to real estate.

Maestro

In 2004, I presented twenty-five very far-out predictions in a speech given for a large Realtor association. Slide nine read as follows: In the future you will no longer "own" any listings. A nice 3-D rendering of a product box was placed below the title. Across the top of the box the word "Maestro" was printed in bold. Underneath, it read: Orchestrate the entire process of selling your home - yourself.

Maestro included: 

• A turnkey blog site that featured your home
• A unique URL based on your home's address
• Map mashups with local data 
• A huge photo library and video player
• Direct syndication to every listings site on the planet

Maestro was real estate marketing in a metaphorical box. It provided the homeowner tools to recreate everything an agent does -- the many photos they should be taking, the compelling copy they should be writing and the web distribution they should be executing. 

The premise behind Maestro fed into the notion that in the future, by virtue of handling all of their own marketing, homeowners would retain ownership of their listing and simply hire agents to coordinate the sale -- i.e. show property, hash out paperwork, etc.

The audience booed. "There's more to selling a home than that," they barked. I knew that. Just like there's more to capturing a moment than saying cheese and properly framing your SureShot. The problem was, four years ago, when homes were selling like hotcakes, I wasn't sure the real estate consumer knew that.

And I'm not so sure that the consumer knows any better today.

Nostradavison

Several predictions from my presentation have now come to pass in real estate. And honestly, most of what I predicted seemed inevitable anyway.

A few, however, veered towards absurd.

Consider:

"Holographic Search" that allowed consumers to walk through a listing projected from a computer while sitting in their own kitchen.

"Caravan" was a device agents provided to their buyers. Think listing alerts meets GPS (I got this idea one evening waiting at a busy restaurant that handed out devices to patrons that lit up when your table was ready).

And of course Maestro.

I know they are borderline silly. They were offered to stimulate conversation. 

But then today my inbox received a press release sent from the U.K. announcing the launch of EstateCreate, a self-publishing website built to help consumers list their home and market it everywhere.

Holy shit.

Blinders

You'll think the product is simple. Regard it as a basic template website. With few bells and whistles. Much like most agent and broker websites are now. You may also shuck this as silly, much like some of my predictions, pay it no mind and think to yourself, well... even if a seller uses this, they'll still need to sign their listing over to an agent for full commission.

Blinders. 

Products like EstateCreate are trying to tap into the gaping holes left in the consumer mindset all the dog branding, bad websites, lack of transparency, poor search experiences, misguided marketing and lack of professionalism created and continues to create.

These are the gaping holes that today's real estate brands continue to avoid filling with better information. Higher standards. These are also the voids that real estate innovators are trying fill with solutions offered to real estate folks who continue to shun the idea of spending a few dollars a month for new technology.

If vendors can't sell their innovations to real estate professionals to help the consumer, my guess is they are going to start targeting the consumers themselves in greater numbers, tapping into their motivations to market, buy and sell their homes.  

Think TurboTax.

I hurt for Nicole. Being taken out by the economy is one thing. But being replaced because the marketplace misunderstands your value proposition is something entirely different. I'm showing Nicole how to change that and save her business. 

- Davison
Twitter: 1000wattmarc

Thinking horizontal in our vertical

John Battelle posted this gem the other day. It captures so neatly the challenges and opportunities facing many in online and "traditional" real estate these days.

Consider this point:

"Every customer interaction is marketing. Every partnership is marketing. Every employee is a marketer.

And all your data, well, that's marketing too."

And, further:

"Joining the conversation economy ... means taking your core assets - the data that drives value and knowledge inside your enterprise - and offering it as fuel for the collective intelligence of all your partners - your channel, your vendors, and, ultimately, your customers."

His thinking here is placed in the context of a discussion with Oren Michaels, CEO of Mashery. Mashery provides a managed solution for companies that want to create APIs. APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) allow publishers (e.g. Trulia) to share their data with others.

Lie down

We've been telling broker clients for some time that their conception of marketing must be obliterated if they intend to survive. That means empowering everyone -- including the executive team -- to become part of the "marketing department." The person formerly known as the marketing director needs to become the managing editor -- and work with IT, sales (i.e. agents), and management to coordinate the extraction and broadcasting of data and knowledge into the marketplace.

For MLSs ... well, we've beaten this dead horse to a pulp, but I'll take one more swing: Stop protecting and start broadcasting. With great care of course. And with the goal of putting information to work for broker and agent subscribers. But, man, unlock the value!

Break glass in case of emergency

There's so much inside most real estate organizations: Data, personality, knowledge. But it sits behind glass, that smudgy barrier of plastic marketing - and, frankly, bullshit - that has stood between real estate and its customer for too long.

It's time to break the glass and create a glorious mess.

Get horizontal as Battelle says. Reach outward. Forget about an API is that makes no sense for you. There are a hundred ways to take the larger point and run with it.

-- Brian Boero

Losing a race with progress

Feb 26th, 2009. The Rocky Mountain News closed its doors after 150 years of operation.

Rather than link to the story, I thought this 45-slide photo gallery of Rocky employees as they gathered to hear the news might serve as a dose of healthy reality to those within our industry who continue to resist change.

Yesterday, after speaking to a small group in Southern California, an agent rose and told the room about his dilemma in Pittsburgh, where MLS rules are preventing him from displaying IDX on his own site. I actually called the Pittsburgh MLS today to learn more.

Got voice mail.

Another agent spoke of her broker, in Chicago, who forbade her and her agent colleagues from having their own IDX display. She asked me what I thought she should do.

I suggested she leave and join the competition. 

Driving home I heard an interview with the rapper Fifty Cent. He spoke about selling his Connecticut mansion and how he had to fire his broker because he did not know how to market the property internationally -- where Fifty believes his buyer lies.

A gangsta who has a deeper understanding of property sales, marketing and merchandising than a so-called real estate professional. 

It's sickening just thinking about what will happen to those newspaper employees. These people did not resist change. They simply could not keep up, no matter how fast they ran.

In our business, too many are just standing still.

- Davison

What's blowing your mind these days?

I have become bored with video chats in the span of six months.

When I bought a Macbook last July, the built-in webcam was a revelation. Now I rarely call Davison, who lives 250 miles from Oakland. Instead, I click on the video icon next to his name in iChat. I say hi to Lori, his wife, if she walks into the room. I get to see his kids. If there's something in his office he wants to show me, he picks up his Macbook and points to it.

Sometimes we conduct three-way video chats with clients who use Macs. Sometimes there's a little chit-chat about how cool it is. Then it's just another meeting.

Technology now moves at a pace that leaves little time for amazement. Our "capacity for wonder," to borrow Fitzgerald's phrase, is now filled with "transitory enchanted moments" on a regular basis.

The fantastic becomes banal in a matter of days.

This is exciting, fleetingly, but also exhausting. At least it is for me. I find it tough to keep up with everything flying by the window as we speed forward.

Once in a while, though, I slow down enough to let something sink in. And damn if that video chat isn't something! The possibilities, looking forward now, are pretty stunning. Take the integration of 12seconds with Tweetdeck announced today. Or the rapid dispersion of Seesmic across the web. These things, or their progeny, will radically alter how property is merchandised and sold online. It's easier to see that when you pull back from the grind.  

Perspective

My grandmother turned 91 today. I just got back from visiting her. It's shaken me out of my unconscious disregard for the extraordinary for a few hours.

She grew up poor, the daughter of Italian immigrants. They had a goat in the backyard for milk, a wood stove inside for warmth, and a drunken illiterate uncle (exquisitely named Guido Guidi) living in the basement.

Now I video chat with my business partner from my home office... and take it for granted.

So enough aimless rambling form me. What's blowing your mind these days? 

-- Brian Boero

A little broker website sucess story (and desperate wake-up call for big brokers)

We’ve received a ton of great feedback on the “Top Ten Real Estate Brokerage Websites in America” report we published with Real Trends back in October. Brokers big and small have come out of the woodwork to share their stories and seek our help.

Jonathan Kaufman’s story is one of the best. Here’s an excerpt from an email he sent us last week:

"I launched my own real estate brokerage in August 2008 because I know the industry is changing and I didn’t want to be under the umbrella of my old brokerage.  Although I don’t know the model of the future, I know that I need to get out there and try new things…something I couldn’t do in my old situation.  I figured it was much more of a risk to stay where I was versus breaking off on my own.  So, I took the plunge.

As a start, I wanted a top-of-the-line web presence – something that spotlighted my real estate beliefs, something that set me apart, and something that would allow me to connect with the type of buyers and sellers that I wanted to work with.  I spent countless hours researching other brokerage web sites and read your ‘Top Ten’ report in late October.  It was a wealth of information and made me think about a lot of aspects of my site (and business).  Along with my web designers, we picked the report apart and took a lot of great ideas from it."

Take a look at the results here.

What’s he’s done is killer. There are some things I might change, but I’m not going to quibble here. The point is Jonathan created something excellent. It’s worth serious study.

Jonathan’s site is better in terms of design, usability and brand coherence than almost all big broker sites. Indeed, some of the major brands could benefit from going to school on it.

So congratulations to Jonathan.

But this is about more than a website. Think again about what Jonathan says above:

“… I know the industry is changing and I didn’t want to be under the umbrella of my old brokerage.  Although I don’t know the model of the future, I know that I need to get out there and try new things…something I couldn’t do in my old situation.“

Big brokers, pay attention: There are thousands of Jonathans out there right now. They’re smart, skilled, and confident. They have no need for the mother’s milk of a desk, of shockingly remedial “training”, of the legal backstopping required by the average recruit.

They are businesspeople. And they are leaving.

Kris did. Jay did. And so did Jonathan.

Brokerage companies are in for a serious brain drain unless they can use their assets in a manner that supports, rather than inhibits, these stars.

What are those assets? Well, at the top of the list – hopefully – is a brand. Not just a recognizable icon, but a marker imbued with some sort of meaning. Most real estate brands have been suffered the whips and scorns of thousand agent glamour shots, but for many companies, there’s something there worth saving.  Save it. How this is done is a long, always complicated process we’re working on with several clients right now.

The other lies in scale. Theoretically. The average big brokerage, being big, has people and resources the average agent or solo broker does not. The problem is that in many cases, it’s the wrong people using resources the wrong way. The typical brokerage marketing department has little to offer the Jonathans of the world, but it could. Doing so involves cutting the cord on lots of non-productive initiatives and creating a strategy (as opposed to halting, half-baked forays) for delivering new value to agents and consumers.

But I digress. And Jonathan’s broker has lost his opportunity anyway.

 -- Brian Boero

Real estate lessons from the newspaper nosedive

I caught this on boingboing this morning:

It's kinda funny. But it also reminded me that newspapers, now on the precipice of oblivion, were actually pretty quick to jump on the Internet. This piece is but one example. Newspapers were logging into (albeit proprietary) networks years before the 1990's boom. Early newspaper website efforts like Mercury Center and, later, networks like RealCities, were online early in the game.

But newspapers are nonetheless in dire straights today. Sure, craigslist was a withering blow, but I think there's more to it than that.

I think newspapers, like the real estate brokerage business, tended to approach innovation in a "same thing, different place" manner - meaning structure of the business, and its culture, remained the same even amid significant moves to embrace new media.

So, today, a newspaper can have a great website, yet still have a newsroom full of journalists from journalism schools that prepared them for a world that no longer exists. It can build significant online readership, but fail to effectively monetize it for fear of cannibalizing what remains of its legacy business. 

This is starting to change, but it may be too late.

Think about this in terms of real estate. Is a great website going to save a brokerage unless its structure and culture changes? Can its (independent) workforce be expected to help drive change when they are almost congenitally wired not to?

I have more questions than answers at this point. But the newspaper case seems to suggest that if the real estate brokerage business is to survive, deeper, more structural change -- executed now -- is in order.

What do you think?

-- Brian Boero

Don't be the "Slow Store"

"Honey, I have to run up to the Slow Store."

I utter these dreaded words about once a month when I am forced to go to my neighborhood "mail and fax" place. I had to do this last Friday to return a contract that had been mailed to me.

I call this establishment the Slow Store, because, well, everything about the place is painfully slow. Nothing there -- the people, the equipment or the transaction -- moves at my speed (which, at 37, is not really all that fast).

Have to send a FedEx? There's nothing quick about it. The clerk will write out a carbon copy sales receipt, but only after checking a laminated rate card and calculating the total cost on an adding machine. Forced to fax something? Get ready for business at the speed of syrup.

This would be charmingly antique -- like visiting one of those historical theme parks where people in period costume churn butter or make horseshoes -- were it not the case that I go here to get something done.

And it costs me money. Last Friday it was $17 for faxing 16 pages.

As I stood watching the clerk watch my contract inch through the fax machine, ZZ Top's "Sharp Dressed Man" pumped just a little bit too loudly through invisible speakers. It was the perfect bit of strangeness. I snapped the photo to the left during my wait.

I hate going to the Slow Store. But every so often I have to go there, despite the fact that:

The Slow Store's very existence is an anachronism sustained by the occasional tight spot.

It is the antithesis of customer-focused organization. The experience is driven by its needs, not mine.

It clings to old tools and price models.

It survives on the patronage of generations that know no better way.

I leave pissed every time. 

You see where I am going with this. What does the average human being experience when they walk into a real estate office (or hit a real estate brokerage website)? My guess is something not unlike my Slow Store episodes. They are sucked through a wormhole and emerge within a strange world of accordion files, fax machines and bad coffee.

They are slowed down, Steve Austin-style, by weird restrictions that make no sense. They are beset by fees that often seem as patently ridiculous as $17 for 16 pages.

And this survives, for now, barely, on the shaky ground of No Better Way. 

Don't be the Slow Store; be the Better Way

You can't make transactions happen right now. You can't market out of this thing we are in. But you can dazzle the customers you do get right now. Chances are you have the time. Craft an experience built around their needs, not yours. Eliminate artificial restrictions and pain points in the transaction. Go above and beyond.

These are just exhortations. I know that. Blanket prescriptions don't work here. What flies in one market or brokerage is inappropriate in another. But you know the boundaries. We make it our business to help you work within them.

The bottom line: If you are open to it, now is a great time to create true loyalty, to engender the cheapest, most effective advertising you could ever ask for: Word of mouth.

The people at my Slow Store seem nice. But their days are numbered. I wish for their sake they'd speed up.    

-- Brian Boero

Barber poles and real estate

What comes to mind when you see a barber pole?

An old geezer running a blade across a leather strap.
A hot towel, thick foam and a close shave.
Clubman.
Checkerboard floors.
A great place to whack a Mafia Don.

The local barbershop was Americana, right up there with the greasy spoon coffee shop and the Rexall drug store -- endeared by all who frequented them.

But over the decades, the love waned. As new competitors grew into the marketplace, these establishments remained still in their own murky waters of services, anchored to old ways and failing to navigate their brands to the new currents of change.

Over time, despite the full array of services they offered, they drifted from the fabric of our culture, replaced by TRESemme, Paul Mitchell, Fantastic Sams, CVS and Starbucks -- "interlopers."

The older institutions suffered at the hands of their own neglect, compounded by their inability to convey the value they offered, the full services they provided and the personal attention they gave. They believed that being moored to an historic tradition is good enough to insure their place in the future. Or perhaps they believed in nothing and let fear of some unknown guide their complacency.

Barber Poles in Real Estate

There's tons of them spinning around Main Street. Red and blue ribbons of full-service, high-end value, and personal attention all buried under the sands of gloriously ineffective marketing.

Today's broker -- you might be a barbershop. You cut hair better than anyone. You service the customer better than anyone. And what you deliver is uncommon. But you've created ambiguity around yourselves, the skills you posses and the benefits derived from them. And that continues to ring the warning signal. Look how easy it was for Zillow to make the marketplace believe its home-value estimates were more accurate than yours. They marketed your intelligence right under the rug.  

A real estate TRESemme is coming

Believe it. And react as if they have already leased a storefront in your town. In some cases, this is already happening.

Believe that as things get tougher, as money gets tighter, people need what you have but will never find it if you and your agents are sharpening your scissors behind closed doors.

Believe that so much has changed in real estate and in the way consumers interact with it that your message, your brand, your entire marketing campaign is likely dangerously antique.

Believe that starting to change those things today is the only way you'll survive over the course of time.

What Davison Realty Group would do

I'd craft a new credo today. Davison Realty: "Preserving and improving the process of residential real estate."

I would then measure every single thing my firm does, every action my agents take, every bit of copy I write, every piece of technology I own and measure it against the yardstick of that statement, make sure it rings true and build brand value around it by market it with precision and skill as if my life depended on it. 

I'd begin with my Web site. If it does not make finding homes or finding the right agent really easy, I would administer changes immediately and not wait another day. Otherwise, my credo is rendered false and my brand has no meaning.

I would take a hard look at my backend system. Does it have lead management? Does it have lead routing? Does it offer my agents the ability to run comparative market analyses on the fly? Does it allow me to distribute incoming inquiries to my agents via text messages and supply them with the tools to respond immediately and properly rather than with canned nonsense?

I'd take a hard look at my physical space. I would evaluate whether my lease, my expense, my machines, and my cubicles inhibit my ability to fulfill my credo or serve my agents who have no particular credo at all. And if not, I would administer changes immediately. Otherwise, my credo is rendered false and my brand will continue to have no meaning.

I'd take a hard look at my agents. I'd find the ones with no credo or the ones who have a credo yet apply no effort to support it -- like the agent who "goes the extra mile" yet hardly lifts a finger to learn about new technology. I would do whatever is in my power to retrain them. Expose them to agents who are thriving because they live, breath and die by their credo, which just so happens to be aligned with mine. If that fails, they need to be let go. Otherwise, my credo is meaningless and my brand will continue to have no meaning.

I'd take a hard look at my marketing department and the copy they have been pumping out. Have their words conveyed my intentions? Have they oversold them or have they failed to touch upon them? Are they written in language that resonates with my market or has it spoken at them? If the copy has failed, I must administer change immediately and align every word with my intention and distribute those words out to new places -- in new ways -- and do everything to render my credo as truthful. And convey meaning.

Lastly, I will perform a complete investigation of my services. If I have to, I will hire a firm to conduct a study. And perform surveys. And determine if what we offer is understood and experienced by those who have used us in the past or those who may require services in the future. I would do everything I can to discover what people want today from a real estate brokerage. Do they still need the hot lather and shave or do they view that as old fashioned and unimportant? I would consider that info to be my holy brand grail and serve as the basic building blocks of what will become tomorrow and secure my position.

This is what I do right now. Today. Otherwise, all that I am would be defined by a credo that would read: Davison Realty, we are the roulette wheel of services and skills. Come, bring your money. Good Luck!

And while that may be acceptable to many barber pole brands that surround me, it's just not good enough for me going forward.

-Davison

Twitter: 1000wattmarc

The truth serves. It will prevail. And it will inspire

One can follow Twitter to size up the positive sentiment blanketing the United States right now. Obama told it like it is: Times are tough. They are going to get tougher. We are surrounded by hardship. And have been lead there by greed, foolishness and irresponsibility.

And the crowd applauded.

That's new. We are tired of the whitewashing, the shoveling of the shit under the proverbial rug.

We are ready to hear the truth. We don't view it as negative, or bad. It serves to lift the veil of confusion and frustration we feel.

The truth will serve. It will prevail. It inspires. And I am convinced it will set you free.

Real estate marketing departments, pay heed. And ask yourselves these question:

Is the voice with which my company speaks believable?

Bad news is not necessarily negative. You customer is ready for it. They might actually be attracted to it. And seek you out to provide the necessary decision support, guidance, and service to help them through it.

This morning, history was made. Obama dished out a little truth. We took it. Gladly.

Brokers, you can do this.

Yes you can.

- Davison
Twitter: 1000wattmarc

Crumbs from real estate's table

Humanitarian and U2 front man Bono can now add "columnist" to his list of accomplishments. He published his first op-ed piece in the New York Times this past weekend.

Considering his access to the world from places unattainable to most of us, I've been wondering why he would choose a newspaper over the stage, his band's website, One.org or the myriad social networks that span the web.

Bono chose the Times.

Granted it's a well respected newspaper. But it's still a newspaper. And for those of us here in real estate, it's a medium many in our industry have all but forsaken. 

What does Bono know that we don't?

I know real estate's experience with newspapers has not been all that congenial or rewarding over the last decade. But perhaps your lack of success runs on a two-way street. Consider how, over the last decade, despite massive shifts in consumer interests and branding and communications practices, real estate continued to use the newspaper as it always had.

With double trucks framed by agent faces, generic copy, empty messages and pointless Realtor of the Month ads, what did real estate advertisers honestly expect from the paper? After all, what exactly was it your ads were trying to say? And toward whom were they geared?

Certainly not consumers.

Perhaps what Bono understands is the simple fact that people still read the paper. Lots of people. And while they may not always respond well to the array of ads within it, they might respond well to a thought provoking editorial. 

Crumbs

Real estate leaders. You know so much. Some of you have lived lifetimes in the housing business. You understand the cycles, the ebbs, the flows. You have a vast understanding of how markets trend up and down.

Is it too far-fetched to believe that newspapers might be the perfect medium to carry your occasional op-ed piece? Think of them as a platform to share your feelings, analyses, sentiments and, perhaps, even a vision.

All these years you have tried to build a brand based on modes of communication that offered only crumbs from your table of real estate knowledge. Perhaps going forward, you might want to take a page out of Bono's book and consider another look at the newspaper and the impact you could have on your marketplace if you leveraged it properly.

Sure you can write a blog or publish a letter from the desk of the CEO on your Website. That's probably not a bad idea. But until your blog is delivered to the door step of homes throughout your marketplace, this may very well be an option worth considering.

-- Davison

Twitter: 1000wattmarc