Why You Should [NOT] Stop Building Your Own Brand

Real estate agent holding a FOR SALE sign

My boss arrived at work in a brand-new Lamborghini.

I said, “Wow, that’s an amazing car!”

He replied, “If you work hard, put all your hours in, and strive for excellence, I’ll get another one next year.”

I thought of that joke when I read this article in Inman recently: Why You Should Stop Building Your Own Brand

The article was written by a seemingly frustrated Century 21 Broker who was trying to make the case that agents should NOT build their own brands.

He claims that personal brand building is too expensive, too confusing for consumers when combined with the broker’s brand, and too risky from a compliance perspective.

(I think he also wanted all of his agents to stick around so he could buy a new Lamborghini 😊)

PERSONAL BRAND BUILDING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER

Our entire sales and marketing team read the article with amusement because personal brand building is more important than ever in this day and age.

Despite that fact, I should make something abundantly clear: we work with many excellent brokerages with tremendous brand positioning that clearly assists agents, so we are not knocking brokerage branding in any way.

We are, however, emphasizing the extreme importance of personal brand building once again – no matter how awesome an agent’s brokerage might be.

REASONS TO BUILD A PERSONAL BRAND

Consumers demand it. Every client you get will google you before engaging you, and if you don’t stand out on page 1 of the search results, you will lose clients – guaranteed.
Every “super agent” has a “super brand.” Every super-successful agent we work with has an enormously powerful personal brand. Two examples are Renée White and Kenny Truong. I encourage readers to google either of them (no matter where you are) and to note the search results. Both agents dominate all of the page 1 results when you google them.
Mobility. If an agent’s brokerage is no longer a fit, she can move to a new brokerage far more easily if she has an established personal brand.
Business Value. Agents and teams can establish tremendous value in their own brands as well, and actually build a salable business.
Showcase of Values. A personal brand allows agents to showcase their own values that set them apart from the brokerage and other agents, e.g. speed, neighborhood expertise, property type expertise, focusing on seniors, focusing on minority buyers, etc.
Differentiation from other agents. This is particularly important for agents who are part of large brokerages with thousands of agents.
It is cheap. It is FREE in fact if you work with JVM, and it is easy because we have an entire personal-brand-building program that is both powerful and effective. We know because we have now seen it work for almost 600 agents! Every one of our Business Development Officers (BDOs) is a brand-building expert in fact.

Final Horror Story. I have several friends who did a beautiful job building a very powerful brand for their mortgage team. But, the mortgage bank they were aligned with talked them into giving up their team brand and to roll under the mortgage bank brand that was relatively effective and powerful at the time. The mortgage bank, however, was sold to a large commercial bank that had very poor service, high rates and vastly inferior branding – making it impossible for my friends to remain aligned with that bank. So my friends were forced to leave the commercial bank with no brand at all because their previous brand had been dead for too long. If they had kept their brand though, they would have been able to retain team members much more easily and to negotiate much better terms when they moved. They would also likely have had a very valuable salable entity today.

In any case, if you are interested in personal brand building, please contact one of our BDOs today.