Creating Advantages

A Level Playing Field

I was at Connection 2008 listening to a group of Nationally respected Mega-Brokers talk about Internet Marketing when the conversation wound its way around to the topic of MLS provided services. One of the participants from the floor began to talk about how these services could help level the competitive playing field.

One of the larger brokers responded, “I don’t want a level playing field. I have worked long and hard to assure that my company has every competitive advantage”.

Listening to the conversation , it occurred to me that the only people with an interest in leveling the playing field are those who feel they are at a disadvantage in the game. That led my mind back to a meeting of a local MLS many years ago, when I was a small, independent, start up company.

In that meeting, I was arguing passionately for a rule change to the MLS which would have leveled that specific playing field, listening to arguments from a much larger broker about why they didn’t want those changes. Frankly, I wanted the playing field leveled to benefit my agents and our company. As I compared those meetings, almost two decades apart, I realized yet again, that everyone wants the “fair thing” as long as it benefits their purpose.

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We all Want an Advantage

The differentiation that we all strive for in our blogs, farms, listing presentations, marketing materials, etc. is important to us. Each of us are legends in our own minds and yet we all know that we can learn from others in our business; no one wants to re-invent the wheel. However even though we want to know what other people are doing , we’re not so quick to share our own “stuff” with competitors. After all, those things are designed to tilt the playing field, aren’t they? Who wants to give their best baseball bat to their competitors to use against them?

Why I love the Internet

In local marketplaces, brokers don’t share their ideas or programs because they want to retain a competitive edge. For many years, large national brokerages created brainstorming groups like the “Masterminds” or the “Dozen” (the 12 largest Real Estate firms in the U.S.) that met quarterly so that those business owners could have someone to talk to who shared their problems and concerns but did not compete with them on a daily basis.  Those people were so dominant in their own marketplace that they needed to travel across the country to find others who could and more importantly would share ideas with them.

National franchises created networks where brokers could seek help from franchisees outside their market and learn new programs or get ideas to advance their business. Independent brokerages didn’t have this luxury until the Internet leveled that particular playing field; now everyone can be part of a larger electronic community where we can interact and share ideas with people that we have much in common with but will never compete with.

Because of Web 2.0 we have friends and colleagues all over the country. We tweet, we blog, we podcast, and we create a national clearinghouse of information. I can email a broker in a marketplace across the country for information on his recruiting program, and he or she knows that I will never use that information to recruit one of their agents. I can learn about tools they use to list or sell property because they know that I will never use that information to compete with them for a piece of business. 

 Luckily many brokers and agents don’t get it yet, which keeps the field tilted in our direction – Hooray for us!

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