Are You Bright, Focused and Distinctive? Or Delusional? Take this Scrape-The-Label test and find out for yourself.

It’s important EVERYTHING…

How people perceive us…

Are we trusted?

Are we interesting?

Are we competent?

Are we attractive?

Are we memorable?

Are we referable?

Will we attract and hold attention?

Are we worth our price?

We’re in the business of being chosen.  Chosen to manage the successful sale or purchase of real estate and the everything in-between details.  In our markets, there are hundreds of choices, you and I are but one of them.

73% of  our competition is no competition, their quest for attention, relevance and selection in chaotic, haphazard and sporadic.  27% of our competition is most likely, bright, focused and uniquely distinctive.

Bright. Focused. Distinctive.

Bright:  The opposite of dull and boring.  Interesting.  Engaging.  Memorable.  Trustworthy.  Candid.  Surprising.  Generous.

Focused: Consistent in quality.  Consistent in design.  Consistent in intent.  Consistent in delivery.  Consistent in response and reliability.  Consistent in communication.  Consistent in execution.  Consistent in follow through and follow up. Consistently reinventing and evolving.

Distinctive: A combination of bright and focused, plus, unique in design, interaction, commitment, communication and delivery.

Intellectually, I believe we all understand the importance of creating and delivering Bright, Focused and Distinctive services and solutions. I believe that you and I press forward, daily, in our quest to do so.  I’m certain that how you and I might define and deliver Bright, Focused and Distinctive would vary, the more important question is, how do civilians define it and will others know it when they see it?  Would they know it was us if our labels and branding wrappers were scraped away?

To answer the questions, we can test ourselves. We can…

Take The Scrape-The-Label Test – If They Didn’t Know It Was You, Would They Know It Was You?

This article by Christopher S. Penn inspired this post.  Here’s a snippet…

Scrape off the labels, names, and brands in your marketing collateral and see if you can tell if the company/product/service is still unquestionably you, or if it could be anyone at all – maybe not even in your industry.

For me, the example that first pops into my pin-head is Apple.  Have you ever unpackaged an Apple product?  When I open the packaging for any Apple product, if the Apple logos were removed and only focusing on the clean, crisp and artful surprise of the packaging, I would know it’s an Apple package, not a Dell, or Toshiba or a Sony.  It’s the same thing with the Apple website. When I see other websites with similar features, design, layout, etc., I always think, “they are copying the Apple style”.  Apple is Bright, Focused and Distinctive.

To discern if we are truly, Bright, Focused and Distinctive, imagine that we’ve removed our logo’s, our smiley glamour shots and our contact information from all that we share, promote and broadcast.  If we did that, would our competitors, clients, friends, suspects and prospects know WE created what they are seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and experiencing?  Or, gulp, would our sharing, promoting and broadcasting be lost in a brown cesspool of average, ordinary, forgettable?

For example, if we removed our logos and personal identity…

1. When buyers and  showing agents view our listings, would they know it was one of ours by how it was priced, by the artfully staged interior, the snappy quality and rich content of our interior marketing materials?
2. When buyers, sellers, agents and prospects view our listings on-line, (remember, all identifying information is removed) would they recognize the listing as ours by the crisp quality of our photos, the engaging and persuasive copy and the wealth of information provided?
3. Would our blog posts be identified and attributed to us by the style (voice), content and tone of our writing?
4. Is our on and off the web advertising and marketing recognizable and memorable by the colors, the message, the design, layout and media chosen?
5. On Facebook, Twitter, etc., if our status updates were broadcast naked and without our avatars, would our tribe know it was us?
6. If 10 of our emails were included in a collection of 50, and all author identities were hidden, would our emails be distinguishable from the other 40?
7. If the tone, content, confidence, courteous-delivery and on-timeliness of our conversations were heard among others, absent voice recognition, let’s say all the conversations were modulated to sound the same, would people we converse with be able to identify ours as unique from our competitors.
8. If  one of our recently closed buyers was describing their home buying experience to a friend and didn’t reveal our name in the telling, and their friend had bought a home from us 3 months ago, would the listener recognize the real estate agent in the story as us?
9. If someone googled us, would our absence be surprising or expected?  Would our presence be bright and reassuring?

I’d bet my on-order iPad, that if you and I consistently run our sharing, communication, promotion, presentation and broadcast through the Scrape-The-Label Test and made appropriate enhancements, we’d electrify our business.

When should we start?

Cheers, thanks for reading.

PS.  Warning!

I remind myself that it’s possible to remove all the labels and have people recognize your communication, sharing, promotion and broadcasting as crap.  This of course would be worse than being invisible.  Why?  Because people rarely talk about, hire or refer the invisible, average and ordinary, they love to talk trash and torpedo the lame, rude, disappointing and dangerous.