Driving
along a local road recently, I spied a sign that read “Dog Waste Removal
Service” with a phone number handwritten below.
Somewhat bemused by this advertisement, I began to guess at its meaning. Is this is a service that comes into a home
and cleans up after your Shih Tzu has a weekend-long kegger,
and the new boss is coming over for dinner tonight? Failing that, the other mental image I got
was of two guys hip deep in someone’s backyard just shoveling load after load
into a large dump truck. Either way, two
questions leapt to mind: (1) How many friends can Chairman (Bow) Wow have, and
did he invite ALL of them over last weekend?
(2) How much fiber are these people feeding their dogs?
Regardless
of the answers to these questions, it’s clear that we’ve fully played our hand
in the universe. We’re done! We’re obviously starting to go backwards. Humankind has broken the hold of earth’s
gravitational forces and escaped our stratosphere to explore outer space. We’ve created nanobots
that are so tiny that about a million of them can fit on the head of a
pin. We’ve created a great technological
mountain, ready to take in the grand vista of the future and all that it
promises, and yet we’ve allowed the creation of a “need” for a dog waste
removal service? Perhaps I can sum up my
utter bewilderment at this development with a quote from Bill Murray’s
character in Ghostbusters
about the impending apocalypse: “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together
. . . mass hysteria!” Okay, before you
call the nice men with the padded ambulance and a crisp white jacket with arms
that buckle in the back, I’ll get to my point – and I do have one, I
promise.
All
kidding aside, I actually applaud the fact the person behind the sign in
question saw a niche and wedged her or himself right in there before the
corporate fat cats saw the chance to exploit yet another industry and ruin it
for the little guy. Ha ha. But seriously, good for them! So, with that said, I put the question to
you: what are you doing that’s slightly different than everybody else either to
make yourself stand out or create a niche?
If you’re a prospective seller or buyer of a house, I would highly
recommend that when you interview agents AND lenders, ask us what makes us
different. What do we have that’s going
to make your transaction as successful and smooth as possible? And then ask us to give you concrete,
real-life examples of what we claim we can do.
Let
me give you an example of an agent I know who does something to stand out. I’m not going to give away his “secrets” –
that would be bad manners. He’s had a
number of his clients come to him after their transactions (buying AND selling)
and tell him almost an identical story: other agents, when they found out that
these clients had gone with my friend, had asked if it was hard working with
him. All of his clients were stumped by
this question and responded that their dealings with him were phenomenal, and
then they asked the agents why they would ask such a question. These agents, with a sort of crooked smile,
would say, “Because I’ve been the agent on the other side of some transactions
from him, and he’s . . . tenacious (fill in your own adjective for a
“no-holds-barred” approach to getting the deal done).” Before my friend can say anything about these
comments coming from his fellow agents, his clients say, “I’m glad to hear that
you fought so hard on my behalf. I never
would have known that by the way you were always so calm when I dealt with
you.”
I’m
not suggesting a client should expect dog-waste-removal services from her
agent. But agents (and mortgage folks)
need to break away from “the pack”. In
other words, if they’re all being Shih Tzus
and Poodles, we need to be Labradors and Jack Russell Terriers (that don’t lick
ourselves in public, EVER).
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