Unique Value Proposition

What the hell is a UVP?

Well, it's not a disease, so good news there. It is actually the most important thing that separates you from the pack. It is your unique value proposition. Let’s dig into how we can enhance ours and enable clients to remember and value you more.  

Real estate has been getting increasingly vanilla-ized. I'm certainly not going to point any fingers, but there are companies just buying up all sorts of companies, and in my opinion, vanilla-izing the entire industry. This is great for the guys who tend to be entrepreneurs.

Our industry is becoming massively commoditized. But there’s room for everyone. Additionally, in the wake of this imperial army that’s sweeping across the Unites States, there’s room for entrepreneurial real estate agents to really triple down on who they are and what they’re about. And this is when your unique value proposition comes massively into play.

Once you have established to yourself what your unique value proposition is, it's going to be a hell of a lot easier for you to then convert that to your potential client base so that they can understand what your unique value proposition is. Because at the end of the day, if we can't differentiate ourselves from everyone else, then it's kind of like luck of the draw. Whereas if you can differentiate your unique value proposition, you are going to be able to clean up.

When I was a new agent coming up through the ranks, I wanted to have a differentiator—and so I made it very clear that I served the music business. It soon expanded to creative businesses and people of Los Angeles, but I initially started with a really small niche

The Golden Circle

Now, some of you might know Simon Sinek, and you might not. I highly suggest that you jump onto YouTube, go on to TED Talks, and watch a bunch of his stuff because he's brilliant. He is absolutely brilliant. He coined something he calls “The Golden Circle”.

The golden circle is the following. If you can imagine a target that has a red bullseye, a yellow ring, and then a white ring, like a traditional target, the outer circle is the “what?” That’s what we do…what each organization does. The next ring in, the yellow ring, is the “how?”. These are the things that make us special and set us apart from other people. But the most important one is the bullseye. It's the “why?”. And this is what drives us, right? Many real estate agents will say to you, for example, what drives them is getting big, fat commission checks.

I always try and think of something that I can do to maybe leave a little more on the planet than I take. For example, the why could be, "I am in real estate because I really like taking part in people's lives," or, "I really enjoy the massive stressful transitions people take from one home to the other." No mention of commissions, no mention of goals, no mention of being the number one agent in a certain area. And if I hear somebody's why rather than their “how?” or “what?”, I’m more drawn to them.

Most businesses start out with the what and then go into the how. Here’s an example:

“We sell houses better than everybody else because we're the number one team in Green Hook."

That's a very typical real estate slogan. Whereas something like this may be a little bit more appealing to your client base.

"We enjoy helping families transition from one massive section of their life to another." How? "By helping them through the process of a difficult transaction." What? "By the way, we sell houses."

The subtle difference is, there is a very minuscule percentage of companies that start with the why, and then the how, and then the what. And if you want to learn more about this, I strongly recommend researching Apple. They’ve always started with the why:

“We want to change the world with innovative products." How? "We create ergonomic, user-friendly interfaces." What? "And we also sell computers."

It’s about emotional traction, and that’s what makes people want to work with you.

Here’s a challenge: research everything you can about a unique value proposition.

A blog I read, Conversation XL, wrote this, "Our unique value proposition is a clear statement that describes the benefit of working with you, how to solve your customers' needs, and what distinguishes you from the competition."

It is your time. It is our time. Together we are going to clean up. There is going to be more and more technology vanilla-ization of this industry. People are losing sight of the fact that we don’t sell houses. We sell trust. And if we betray that trust, it turns into a transaction. And it should always be the long game.

When we focus on our businesses as transactional, we're dead. When we focus on them as a unique value proposition that carries water or carries weight in our communities and in our client base, that is when we win.

Having a unique value proposition is as important as having a name, because if you are a real estate entrepreneur, please mark these words: it is your time. This industry is getting crushed into zeros and ones, and everything's becoming vanilla. So, if you are a company where you can be the brand, it is going to be the greatest time in real estate for realtors in the United States. I believe that to my freaking bones.