Letters, I read their letters

The listing on my house expired on Monday. The guy didn't call me or anything. I called him today to ask for my keys back. He didn't put up a fight, but he had some great excuses for why he hadn't called me yet. (Ironic, since the slogan on his sign says "no excuses... just results!")

Today, I got three mailings from three other Realtors wishing to list my home. I'm not going to decide anything yet, but I'm fascinated by the three very different approaches that these three people are taking.

#1: Hi, I want to list your house. All my agents speak Spanish and Portuguese!

Swell! You definitely want a bilingual agent in this area.

#2: Hi, I want to list your house. Here's my one-size-fits-all strategy, along with a graph that shows how well it works. Go to this website and check out my other listings.

My previous agent was also a one-gimmick guy, but this guy's gimmick is much better. And at least he has a strategy. The problem with #1 is that the ability to speak Portuguese is not, in itself, proof of having a strategy.

#3: Hi, I want to list your house. I have a bilingual staff. Here's a copy of my resume, listing all of my awards, achievements, and community activities. Here's a sample of the four-page ad I regularly place in numerous publications. Here's ten pages of testimonials from satisfied customers. Here's a report of my recent sales figures.

If I were in such a desperate hurry to re-list that I wasn't willing to wait for tomorrow's mail, or do any research on my own, I think it's obvious who I would choose. It probably took #3 just a few hours to put that mail package together, but it blows her competition out of the water.

This experience is also an excellent reminder of why my last few job searches were so awful. In the olden, pre-Internet days, you could make up a package similar to #3's and mail it. You can't do that any more - sending an email with lots of attachments, or an URL, just doesn't have the same effect. Especially if any part of it gets mangled or stripped off by the company's spam catchers, etc. And in many cases, they won't even let you apply by email any more: you have to fill out a form on their website. Maybe that's okay for some kinds of jobs, but I find it very difficult to distinguish myself from the other applicants when there's so little flexibility.

Anyway, I had another blog post I wanted to write, and now I don't have time for it. Too bad, because I'm dying to do it, but I was really surprised by these three mailings and how much they revealed about each person. I seldom find myself on the receiving end of a resume, so this was an eye-opener.