A True Story that Changed My Business Forever

2008-09-03T07:44:46-07:00

I was showing multi-million dollar homes to a client of mine about three years ago, when, at the end of the day, we were sitting in my car and she was shuffling through these flyers that we had collected at each of the properties. She was frustrated because they did not give her the information that she wanted, and after looking at so many, she could not remember the attributes of each property. Some of them didn’t even have the price. One of the flyers was even run through a black and white copier with a file folder label stuck over the old price and $2,100,000 handwritten in felt pen. (I still have them!) They really were an embarrassment when I look back on this! Karen and I had done a number of move-ups over the years (she is a marketing genius and had proven that in her own company) so she felt like she could level with me about my industry. She said, “How do you think the sellers of these homes feel about the way that their homes are being marketed? Don’t realtors know that sellers in this price range want marketing that mirrors their status? Think about the way other luxury products are marketed.” She took me inside her home and got down a box from a shelf that was full of marketing material that she and her husband had collected when they were being solicited for purchases of luxury cars (yes, the bought the maserati), yachts (yes, they bought the top of the line Sea Ray cruiser), resorts, jewelry, etc. She said, “Look at these marketing pieces. They are exquisite, and they gave us all of the information that we needed to buy these things.” She went on, “Laura, we just looked at homes that cost considerably more than any of these products and all I have to show for it are these [poorly crafted] flyers. It should be embarrassing to your industry.” Then she said it, “You guys make so much money off of the sale of these homes, how can you justify this kind of marketing and service?”

Well, I don’t guess I had given it much thought. After 27 years in the business, I think I had become complacent with the status quo and not looked at what we were doing for our clients through a consumer’s eyes. So, I challenged Karen to help me design a program of the caliber that she expected as an upper tier consumer. She agreed, and the Platinum Marketing System was born.

Platinum Insights

A True Story that Changed My Business Forever