I’ve been working with Peter Knight and Leaders Inc over the past few weeks. One of the areas that we both touch on is how hard it is and how important it is to be really different.

Peter has this fantastic quote in his deck which is from Nordström and Ridderstråle’s Funky Business:

“The ‘surplus society’ has a surplus of similar companies, employing similar people, with similar educational backgrounds, coming up with similar ideas, producing similar things, with similar prices and similar quality.”

Let me share a pitch on a valuation appointment.

1. We sell properties like yours – let me show you some examples
2. I have great reviews from other customers – let me show you some examples
3. We are going to get you a great price for your home
4. We have fantastic marketing, coverage on all the portals, professional photos (maybe a video?)
5. I pride myself on keeping you really well informed about how your sale is going

How many of those elements above does your valuation pitch have? I would imagine that it’s most or all of them.

Do you think your competitors also have a version of this. Put it this way, do any of them do this:

1. There are lots of agents more suitable to sell a property like yours, we don’t really sell many
2. I only get reviews from happy clients and I have incentives for my team to get them
3. We achieve less than the market average in terms of price
4. My marketing is exactly the same as everyone else, and to be honest, I just put it on Rightmove and hope it sells quickly
5. You are never going to hear from me again.

In the absence of a clear difference, we become a commodity, where the only point of differentiation is our price. Perhaps this explains why agents fees keep falling.

There are proven strategies to create differentiation. Peter and I come at it from slightly different angles, but if you want to start thinking about it then start with Seth Godin and his concept of the smallest viable audience.

Peter and I will be doing at least three more dates for free learning mornings where you can come and spend a morning exploring how to build a more profitable and distinctive business.

I’ve really enjoyed doing them and the feedback has average 9.4 out of 10 so it seems that people enjoy coming to them as well. We will be in Birmingham, Cardiff and Edinburgh next and you can find out more from Leaders Inc by clicking the link, or drop me a whatsapp and I can pass your details on.

https://leaders.inc/contact/