There’s a handy little framework I use when talking to Realtors who are considering hiring our agency to rebrand them — and you can use it in your closing opportunities with buyer and seller leads, too.

Some might call it a “sales tool,” but that verbiage makes me grimace. Because the lexicon of sales cliches is brimming with language designed to convince people they have a problem that only you (the salesperson with a service) can solve…when really, it’s never about “problem-solving.”

I’ve talked about this before, but I’m a big believer in approaching sales as a way to present possibilitiesto your people, rather than as a means to problem-solve or “convince” someone to act.

So when I’m on the phone with a Realtor who wants to engage our studio, or I’m doing marketing around our offerings, I don’t claim to be the world’s best real estate branding problem-solver.

I use the tool of reassurance statements instead.

It starts with this:

01 – CLAIMING EXPERTISE

Your reassurance statement should be used in conjunction with your positioning statement to describe exactly how your business helps its clients.

Here’s how I do it at BLUEPRINT.

POSITIONING STATEMENT:

“BLUEPRINT is an expert creative agency serving sophisticated real estate brands.”

REASSURANCE STATEMENT:

“We help Realtors and real estate groups, emerging and storied alike, to do three things:

> Communicate their worth;
> Become the obvious choice;
> Storytell to STAND OUT and SELL MORE.”

Notice that our positioning statement makes an obvious claim of expertise (“an expert creative agency”).

Then our reassurance statement follows up the claim with a narrower description of how my agency helps specific Realtors reach specific desired “destinations” in their branding. It’s like a double benefit statement.

Married with each other, your positioning statement and reassurance statement create what is often referred to as the elevator pitch — those few, mindfully-crafted words that you deliver in the short ride between floors when the person next to asks, “So what do you do?”

These tandem sentences should be among the first words delivered on your real estate website, in your brochures, in your phone introductions. Your office admin should be able to recite them in his/her sleep.

Honestly, simply the exercise of writing both your positioning + reassurance statements is highly beneficial.

Here’s how the statements might marry together for a real estate team:

POSITIONING STATEMENT:

“INHABIT Real Estate is Charleston’s leading boutique real estate firm.”

REASSURANCE STATEMENT:

“We help you ditch the overwhelm and upgrade your lifestyle by equipping you to buy or sell without the fuss.”

Your positioning statement, by and large, should be cast in stone and not change.

Reassurance statements, however, are more fluid.

You may have a “motherhood reassurance statement” (the one that goes on your website header and in your pitch packs, for instance), that rarely changes, BUT you may also develop additional reassurance statements that are tweaked for specific campaigns or to overcome specific buyer/seller objections.

For instance, suppose you run a 5-email series designed to capture and convert the military relocation buyer. Your reassurance statements within these emails may be more specific to that campaign, that specific buyer, even though your positioning statement — your overall claim of expertise — does not change.

I’ll wrap up with a final tip on how to use reassurance as a positioning tool with clients and leads.

Sometimes you’ll get asked, “Tell me why we should hire you [to buy or sell a home].”

These kind of invitations seem especially prevalent (and annoying much?!) in real estate. I remember fielding the question, or at least some version of it, fairly often back in my agent days. How many times are you sitting across the table from stressed or skeptical sellers who are interviewing multiple agents, and they ask you to pitch yourself as “the best” for XYZ reasons?

Even if someone isn’t asking you directly, you likely feel the pressure to tell people “THIS is why you should hire me as your agent” in marketing materials.

But instead of answering the question directly, take a pause.

You’re an expert, not a vendor.

Counter with something like —

“How about instead of trying to convince you, I can tell you why our current clients hire us? You can see for yourself if these reasons make sense for you.”

When you refuse to relegate yourself to Vendor Agent Status, and instead bring your clients’ peers into the room, you have effectively swapped your own self-serving bias for your prospect’s bias to be influenced by others.

Use this tool in your print and digital marketing, too (in your client Guides, on your Instagram, etc), in the way you bring in past buyer + seller case studies and social proof to position your expertise in real estate more powerfully.

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P.S – What’s BLUEPRINT, again? 

We’re a gaggle of designers, writers, and creatives on a mission to change the branding narrative in real estate.

We offer a signature branding service and the industry’s most elegant and high-converting digital products to help modern, stylish Realtors do three things:

➝ Communicate their worth;

➝ Become the obvious choice;

➝ Tell the right stories to stand out + SELL more.

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