Know-How Exchange : Taglines/Names

Dawn

Are you principally working for sellers to attract buyers, or for buyers looking for a specific property?

Are you targeting a particular geographic area, demographic group, property price range, or some other niche?

If you met a potential seller (or buyer) in an elevator and had 20 seconds to say one sentence that describes the unique value you could offer them, what would you say?

ChrisB

Why do you want that catchy tagline? What do you expect it to do for you? Do you think people select realtors based on how catchy their taglines are?

You need to start by really thinking through the key issue Chris laid out: Why should someone select you as their realtor? (Your elevator speech.) Once you have a good answer to that, then you can deal with whether you need a tagline or not, and what it can (or cannot) do for you.

Right now, we're flying blind. We don't know what you're trying to communicate or how you're going to decide which of the tagline candidates we come up with will be a winner. How will you decide? What are the criteria?

We'd love to help, and we're good at this. But we need more information from you if we're really going be helpful.

Dear Dawn,

First of all, no one's buying catchy. "Catchy is Not a Selling Strategy"™

Where are you selling real estate, what kind of real estate are you offering, and who are you selling to?

Phil's observation about "... if I can ever help you" is bang on.
You need to be more confident than this. If you don't believe what you're saying no one else will. The only way through here is to declare victory as you march out onto the battlefield.

To be known as an authority you must be authoritative: you are either appointed as an expert or you claim expert status and you use or acquire the knowledge and the chops to back it up.

And all this stuff about you being 55. So what? Dawn, no one cares. And all this stuff about you wanting "somewhere in the tag line I would like to use the word "CREATE" or "CREATING"

Why? Although this term might matter to you, what relevance does it offer your potential clients?

The thing here is to position your service so that it aligns with your prospect's most deeply felt needs and compulsions. All the stuff about honesty, integrity, hard working, innovative, dependable, persistent? How will any of these things set you apart?

Today, all these things are EXPECTED so what you need to consider is a new, fresh, vibrant way of making Dawn Deford STAND OUT from all the other realtors. You need some foil, some element that connects you to your prospect's needs that no other real estate agent offers:

Flowers. Milk and cookies. Cake. Door to door service? Lunch? Music? What is it about you that says to people "Buy from me. I'm the queen of real estate"?

Your name could then come from there. Failing this, just tell people who you are, what you do and what kind of real estate you offer, to whom, and where.

Could you offer more information about you? Hobbies? Interests? Accomplishments? Unusual claims to fame? This thing, trait, or quality, whatever it is, could hold the key to your future.

Tell us more about you.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

Dear Dawn,

Brutally honest? Guilty as charged. But what would you rather
have: cloying sweetness that tells you what you want to hear?

Or bone honest truth based on 25 years experience that's all designed to help you?

As for catchy tag lines, yes, I AM sick of people asking for them. But I give every one the same answer because it's my experience that it's true: catchy is NOT a selling strategy™.

Position your offers and align them with your prospect's most compelling urges. I hope this helps. I'll give more thought to names and get back to you in a day or two.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

The Dream Home Finder
Wisdom & Passion For Buyers & Sellers

Dawn

In real estate the first thing you are selling is yourself. The houses sell themselves, if you match them correctly to the prospect.

So if Pat's ideas about finding the prospect's 'pain' resonate with you, then read Neil Rackham's book "SPIN Selling" as soon as possible. Finding the pain is a crucial part of the selling process and Neil was one of the early proponents for this methodology.

As to what to say in you elevator pitch, you just gave us some amazing information in your last post.

If you've raised seven girls and have sixteen grandchildren, and have been a foster parent for fifteen years, seems to me you might have influenced dozens (maybe hundreds?) of lives and gained the experience of ten, twenty, fifty or even more regular nuclear family lifetimes.

This - in my view - is your core value to a prospect - that you can probably understand their family needs better than even they do.

Mostly, I suspect, your clients will be families, although you probably never engage with the whole family, as you will be 'found' by the husband or wife who will buy what you're selling (yourself) and inform their other half about who their new realtor is going to be.

So I think your elevator pitch needs to be something like "I'm giving you my card because I truly understand every family is different. I've raised "X" children and helped hundreds of families with their lives and dreams, so give me a call because I can definitely help your family find the best home for them to fulfil their dreams".

"X" is however many children, foster chilrden, grandchildren etc that you've had a hand in raising. It's a very powerful claim and one I think can work for you if families are a key target segment. One thing is certain if the elevator has time left to travel the prospect's first question is going to be about how you came to raise so many children... Which means you are already engaged in the conversation.

BTW you could easily modify the claim to suit single mothers, single fathers, blended families as required. Your expertise is in making the family unit work well. And a home environment is a crucial part of all that.

As a tagline you might want to think along the lines of one of the following:

Dawn Deford
Expert family homemaker
Specialist family homemaker
Serial family homemaker
Expert family home creator
Specialist family home creator
Serial family home creator

...you get the idea?

Good luck

ChrisB