Project Bloodhound: Marketing into open hostility, blank indifference or firmly-entrenched error: How do you get people who already don’t intend to listen to you to listen anyway?

I mentioned the Saturday Afternoon Marketing Circle yesterday. Richard Riccelli, Jeff Brown, Teri Lussier and I have been talking about an ugly marketing problem and how to get around it. I left off last night with this:

You can’t market into indifference or into firmly-established error. You can only persuade people who are listening to you.

I could go further than that to say that people only change their behavior in significant ways when the pain of their errors exceeds their inertia in emending them. In that respect, this real estate market is a good friend to Realtors like us, who intend to do a whole lot more to earn the business. In a normal market, no one is listening. Right now, a lot of people are tuned into the idea of better and worse results.

That notwithstanding, Teri offers up this observation to the idea that “you can’t market into indifference or into firmly-established error”:

Why not? I’m not being a snot, I really don’t understand why you’d say this. Can’t great (legendary) marketing overcome a wide variety of objections?

We want to teach salesmanship at Unchained in Orlando, and this question illustrates why we want to cover this stuff. To wit:

An objection is a buying sign.

If someone raises an objection to something you’ve said, they’re not only already listening to you, they’re listening hard. If you can pull out every objection and address them satisfactorily, you’ll make a sale. In many ways objections are better than placid acceptance, since the placidity may be masking unstated objections.

But that’s not what Teri and I are talking about. The issue is this: How do you get the attention of people who are already consciously or subconsciously convinced that they don’t want to hear what you have to say?

Teri put it this way in our discussion:

So your weakness is not marketing listed homes, but marketing to convince the seller to do things your way from the beginning.

But exactly. Our efforts are remarkable. Our results, even in this market, have been very strong compared to the agents we compete against. But as I discussed with Jeff the other day, most sellers aren’t paying attention to the factors that make a difference in getting their homes sold. It’s not that everyone is not paying attention at all. The problem is that many of those who are don’t know how, objectively, to judge the results they see.

So how do you break through that wall of silence — indifference and entrenched error? How do you get people who already don’t intend to listen to you to listen anyway?

As it happens, this is what Richard Riccelli does for a living. As Realtors or lenders, we are lucky enough to sell a product that our customers already know they want. Richard’s job is to sell products — magazine and added-value web site subscriptions and renewals — that his customers are already all but certain they don’t want. How does he overcome what is not just indifference but actual aversion and get them to write the check anyway?

Richard’s answer is Teri’s answer: Make an irresistible offer. Lend me your mind for a few minutes. I’ll give you a gift now, and I’ll show you how to reap even more benefits in the future.

In other words: I acknowledge that you are indifferent to my message or convinced in advance that I am wrong. I want to compensate you for indulging me in my madness for a brief moment.

This is direct marketing. Richard does it by mail, but you can do it by telephone or by email or face-to-face. You haven’t actually solved the problem of indifference or error — or outright hostility — you’ve just attacked it with a lateral move. If I can induce you to listen to me, I have a chance of persuading you. So if I can’t get you to listen to me as a consequence of your own perceived long-term self-interest, let’s change the game and give you something else to be interested in for a few minutes.

We haven’t done these things, but here are a couple of direct marketing ideas we have considered:

• Buying wholesale quantities of a book that would be of interest to homeowners in our target markets and handing it out door-to-door — face-to-face — belly-to-belly. It won’t do any good if they don’t look you in the eye.
• Offering a Starbucks gift card in exchange for a ten-minute appointment to talk about the real estate market and how to sell homes quickly and for the biggest return. “You give me ten minutes, I’ll give you ten bucks.”

Here’s a direct marketing idea Richard and I have discussed that I can’t do:

“Dear Home Seller: Here is why your house isn’t selling. Call me so we can discuss how to correct these defects in your marketing strategy.”

Richard did exactly this in a post about Everywhere magazine. He got one comment: “This is brilliant!” Who sent it? The circulation guru for Everywhere magazine.

This is capitalism, right? Here’s a way my company can help you get better results. The seller of a home that is not moving could not possibly be more interested in learning what’s going wrong. Indifference? Not hardly. Error? Possibly, but it’s no longer firmly-entrenched. It’s one good kick away from sailing into the gutter.

So why can’t I do this? This is obviously the most effective kind of marketing we could do, selling directly to people we know are avid — ravenous — to hear a better way of doing things.

The problem is is the National Association of Realtors Code of Ethics, of course:

Article 16: Realtors shall not engage in any practice or take any action inconsistent with exclusive representation or exclusive brokerage relationship agreements that other Realtors have with clients.

That one sentence is enough to convict the NAR of being anti-consumer, ant-competitive and anti-capitalist. The recently entombed DOJ/FTC suit was a complete joke. That one sentence is an abomination to the principles of free enterprise.

This is what the NAR is saying in that sentence: Homeowners can go to hell. It doesn’t matter that their most precious asset is being squandered away by incompetent marketing. What matters is protecting incompetent Realtors from competition. This is the purpose of the real estate licensing laws — written by the NAR — and it is the motivation behind everything the NAR does.

That one we’ll have to leave, for now. I can’t think of any better way to flush the bums out of our industry that to point out, in no uncertain terms, why they are bums, but this is not permitted by the NAR cartel. So be it.

Let’s go back to Teri’s question instead. I said: “You can’t market into indifference or into firmly-established error.” Teri’s retort:

Why not? I’m not being a snot, I really don’t understand why you’d say this. Can’t great (legendary) marketing overcome a wide variety of objections?

What answers can you offer to this question? How can you penetrate either indifference or an erroneous certainty in the minds of your prospects?

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