Real estate agent spruiking the streets
By Darryl Stringer • Jun 15th, 2008 • Category: AgentsBrett Greensill is the principal of LJ Hooker at New Farm, and like all agents, he’s finding it tough to sell properties these days. So he’s started walking the streets of New Farm, spruiking his wares:
“
Do you want to buy an apartment?”
Good on him for trying, as I reckon more innovative ideas like this one are needed in real estate. However, if he approached me in the street I’d probably be a little put off by it. We all hate telemarketing, and when it’s face to face on the street well, you can’t even hang up the phone or go with any of those other tricks that people use to dissuade pesky telemarketers. All you can do is say, “No thanks”, and walk on. And I reckon that’s what most people would do.
Now, Brett probably thinks he only needs one person to say, “Yeah, what have you got?”, and the hard work is all worthwhile. But then he’s also possibly turned away the other 99 people in order to get that 1 interested buyer, and I’d have to question whether it actually does more to tarnish his brand than build it up.
What do you think?
* modified image source: Flickr - Shinex Street Salesman
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Update: June 16, 2008 - It turns out that there’s not much to this story. Here’s a reply from Brett Greensill, the agent concerned:
“For the record, the journalist wanted a photo of me standing outside my office, and I jokingly said to a passer-by, “do you want to buy an apartment?â€. I reject outright any suggestion that i’d do anything that would result in a sucess rate of 1%.”
Well, actually, what I said to the journalist, was that every selling option has to be canvassed now, in order to be sure we’ve found every buyer possible - all the options are back on the table. The old days, of listing a property and having it sold with a wink & a nod are long gone. We have to work hard to find buyers, then we have to sell the value of the property to them, and this takes time & effort & often, a little innovation. I’m hardly walking the streets hawking my wares, but if it helped, it’d happily do so For the record, the journalist wanted a photo of me standing outside my office, and I jokingly said to a passer-by, “do you want to buy an apartment?”. I reject outright any suggestion that i’d do anything that would result in a sucess rate of 1%. Maybe if you called me, I’d explain how real estate can work for you…
Brett, thanks for your reply. Your side of the story makes a whole lot of sense.
So really, it was the journalist at the Brisbane Times who set up the spruiking thing, perhaps to get a bit of a different take on the story. Typical journo …
I think your suggestion - that all options (at least those with a reasonable success rate) should be on the table when it comes to marketing real estate these days - is a sensible one. Good luck!
Thanks for the opportunity to clarify the situation, and good luck with your excellent publication.