How to Compete in an Overcrowded Industry

Real estate agents are constantly bombarded by loan officers. Their mail slots are overfilled with flyers, they're hounded by loan officers willing to enter their office space, and they're schmoozed with special offerings - some ethical and some not so ethical.

How do you stand out and get noticed within this sea of competition? It's called positioning. Positioning is a powerful communication tool to reach real estate agents in a crowded marketplace. It is an outward expression of how you want to be perceived and creates a place for your services in their mind.

Evaluate Your Position

Take a moment and assess your current position. Begin with your marketing materials, such as; your website, flyers, postcards, newsletters, brochures, ads and your business card. What position are you advocating?

If your position is similar in nature to your competitor's, pushing within the same context, you're competing in an overcrowded place in the real estate agent's mind. Basically, all the time and money you've put into your marketing efforts are going unnoticed.

If you want to be more effective when marketing to real estate agents, you have to understand you are in the business of serving them. This means they don't care about what you can do, what you have or what you know. What they care about is what's in it for them.

The lessons in this section are designed to help you find a position that makes you unique and different. Your first goal is to communicate your differences, not similiarities, so you stand out and get noticed easily. And your second goal is to identify problems you can help agents solve. When you help agents solve difficulties they face you create added value and this measure pushes you ahead of competition.