This Is Marketing: You Cant Be Seen Until You Learn to See

Nobody needs your product

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It doesn’t make sense to say “people need a white leather wallet,” because:
1. People don’t need a wallet. They might want one, but that’s
different.
2. People might decide that they want a white leather wallet, but they
don’t want it because it’s white or because it’s leather; they want it
because of how it will make them feel. That’s what they’re buying:
a feeling, not a wallet. Identify that feeling before you spend time
making a wallet.
Marketers make change. We change people from one emotional state to
another. We take people on a journey; we help them become the person
they’ve dreamed of becoming, a little bit at a time.
No one is happy to call a real estate broker
Not really. Despite what the broker is hoping, this isn’t often a joyous
interaction.
They’re afraid.
Nervous.
Relieved.
Eager to get going.
Anxious about moving.
Stressed about money.
Thinking about status gained or lost.
Concerned about the future.
Worried about their kids.
The broker is a speed bump on the way to their future. And most of what
he or she says is merely noise, a palliative, because it all costs the same
anyway.
According to statistics given to me by the National Association of
Realtors, more than 80 percent of the people who hire a broker do so by
choosing the first person to return their call.
Given that, here’s what I’d ask a broker seeking better: How will you
choose to show up in the world? Will you reassure and soothe? Will you

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probe and explore? Will you claim that you’re better, faster, more caring?
Just as no one needs a drill bit, no one needs a real estate broker. What
they need and want is how it makes them feel to get what a broker can get
them.
(And the same thing is true for waiters, for limo drivers, and perhaps for
you . . . )
• • • • •
Like real estate brokers, most of us do our most important work when we
traffic in emotions, not commodities.