I just read a recent blog post by Seth Godin, speaker and author of such best-selling marketing and business books as The Dip, Purple Cow, and Meatball Sundae. His post, entitled “Advice for real estate agents (quit now!)“, made several good points about  how there is a tremendous opportunity now for agents who are willing and able to specialize. Seth points out that, with many agents leaving the profession now that the favorable market conditions (and ”easy money”) has dried up, those who are left have an incredible opportunity to establish a strong foothold have great success.

The key, he says, is for agents to concentrate on one niche of their market that they care about and become THE expert in that niche.  Maybe it’s urban condos. Maybe it’s catering to clients looking to relocate into your area. Whatever it is, he urges real estate pros to really take ownership of their niche. Being a generalist leaves you being not very good at anything in particular and, he implies, not very memorable, either. I think this is a very interesting concept.

I happened to run into a very good friend the other day the grocery store who recently launched her own own group of real estate agents under the Keller Williams brand. She was changing the structure of her group so that some of her agents focussed on getting listing clients (home sellers), while others would focus on becoming buyer’s agents. She felt that the model they had been using of having all of her staff trying to gain clients who were both buyers and sellers wasn’t effective. Her agents didn’t get the in-depth experience in either side of the transaction to really becoming experts in it. Winning listing clients takes a certain set of skills and winning buyers takes a different skill set, she says. When I asked how her team reacted to the changes, she said most saw right away how well it could work, but that some were very resistant to their new, specialized role. Not a big surprise there…change will always meet with some resistance!

It will be interesting to see how the changes to her group work out. Perhaps these specialists will specialize even further, such as representing only buyers looking in Spokane Valley (one section of the city we live in). To me, it seems like the message in all of this is that it’s possible to be more successful not by taking every opportunity that presents itself, but by cultivating a niche and saying no to opportunities that lie outside of that specialization.

So what do you think? Is this model of specializing in a niche market something that could lead to success in a down market? Has anyone out there been doing this already? Care to share your story?

Posted by: Kurt on March 4th, 2008 | Filed under: Real Estate, General