Welcome Juliet,  James Boyer Keller Williams Summit NJ here.  I have not seen you around before today so good to see you.  I am more focused on Chatham, Madison, Morris Township, Morristown, and Florham Park.

Hope everything is going well with your business.  keep on blogging, in your case I guess you probably need to reach the Realtors more than the public but not sure.

Jim

Your post proves your point!  Thanks, James.  You can be sure I'll be calling before EOD! <gr>  Iced coffee sound good?

Juliet - My goal is to find a few realtors that stage every listing.  I am trying to cultivate those kinds of relationships.  I am using Real Estate shows to help open the door for me.  I honestly don't have any competition, but hopefully when I do which will probably be in the not too distant future, the relationships I have forged will stand up.  

Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Maureen.

Juliet, Be the first and do it the best! See you already have an advantage.

Juliet,

Do you use RES? As part of my services to agents I provide the following so I will stand out: Realestateshows, a professional photographer and give them the photos for print and online advertising, Open House and Broker Opens presentations (help with food and primping house), and I will soon be offering their listings on my website, and then finally post their listing on AR Localism for extra exposure. I believe it is all about being the agent's marketing partner.  Best of luck!

Hi Juliet,  Didn't notice when you posted this, but I feel like responding.  Yes you are correct.  You have to be creative to stand out from the rest!  

Anthea - Holy smokes, that's a lot to offer the listing realtor!  Or is it?  How much does it cost you?  Are your profit margins deep enough to absorb it all?   You're quite right, though, the more buzz on a place the more allure it takes on.  I have tried Event Marketing for certain homes but it hasn't taken yet.  Perhaps a bit ahead of its time?  Perhaps there's a line in the sand when it comes to standard Retail Marketing Tactics?  How will you assess how successful each of your placements is?

Diane - I completely support you on this issue of respect but territories is different for us.  You see, we're tied in to individual realtors.  We go where they go -- consider it this way: you have dug "Jackie" out of an embarrassing hole on this one house, she's your loudest advocate, and now she gets a listing in the next county over. You do NOT want to turn that down because of an understanding amongst your peers based on geography. 

Our territory is our relationships.  We can reasonably expect our realtors to be loyal to us; though as more folks become stagers, it's only natural, perhaps, that they would like to try out something new? If I am the very best I can be, with fair pricing and outstanding customer service, I will retain the business, respect and loyalty that I have earned and is then my due.

I want loyalty from my vendors. If I work with realtor, "Jackie", I don't want her going direct to the furniture rental company.  I think that's dirty pool.  But if another stager is called by Jackie and together they go back to my vendor, that has to be business.  Pretty dumb on their part in my opinion.  It will have nasty consequences for both of them, but I've got a feeling we have to suck it up and accept that it's business.

Gosh, a bit of a ramble back at you.  Hope it's helpful?

Juliet,

Staging seems to fit into the free market enterprise model.....we don't have territories and as you said, we need to build relationships with realtor partners (and with homeowners who could be located anywhere). We're kind of like grocery stores -- some clients may be familiar with us and visit us regularly but most of the time you just go where the price is best and you like the people there or the feel of the store.  It seems in most markets there's still lots of business for all of us....especially if staging isn't that popular, this presents a great challenge to educate others about the power of home staging.

Juliet,

It is actually alot less expensive then you may think! With RES I signed up through Homestagingshows.com (thanks to Maureen Henry for her hard work on this!) which doesn't cost me a thing as long as I refer two agents within 6 months otherwise it costs me $125 per year. My photographer is paid $100 per listing for B and A photos. It may be worth going to a local college to find a photography major. You'll get good work for cheap! They are building their portfolio too! For the open houses I do very light snacks like cheese and fruit. I'll go to Costco or another grocery store and pick up a party tray.

In my area, we only have 2 possibilites for furniture rental, so everyone is pretty much using the same pieces.  It is always interesting to see the different combinations and how the individual stager's personal inventory so completely changes the look.

Kim Dillon, Creative Eye Home Staging

I think that's my very concern, Kim.  So, then do you use your inventory as part of your marketing package?  Is there enough information in your market to be able to measure your results vs. someone using the same pieces?  I guess the pricing of the home, and how it is marketed contributes into this number in a way that's hard to quantify, no?

Anthea, I think you're onto something really key and perhaps not as expensive or time consuming as I had feared.  I shall look into this.  I'm about to link up with a Realty Marketing firm (website to website; network to network) maybe this is something we do together.  Great ideas, thank you very much.

Juliet those are point I had never considered before.  I have all my own furniture and props so that shouldn't ever be an issue.  BUT protecting my reputation can sometimes be a fulltime job.  I have found that either the realtor, the cleaning lady, or the homeowners, often will restage my staging.  I find it an insult that they would think they could do such a better job than I.  Why did they hire me in the first place I wonder?  So I check my vacants often and often find myself restaging at no cost, just to protect my reputation.  I had a potential client call the other day wanting to see a staged rental of mine.  I made sure to let them know, the props are mine, however, because I haven't checked the house since last month, the staging may belong to someone else :-)  We don't need to lose business because clients or their hired help can't keep their hand off our property.

You're absolutely right there, Terry.  Very often a cleaning person will move things around to prove that they've been there.  In this regard, I don't think they understand what's at stake.  I think they're just focussed on self-interest.  Understandable, but time consuming to fix, none- the-less.

You know, Terry, I used to use all my own stuff, and have been with rental companies for almost a year now.  How do you handle depreciation, things going out of style, getting nicked, etc.?

hey

very interesting topic here! i think ultimately it comes down to the individual. we all run our businesses slightly different from one another. if you give the identical inventory to 2 stagers, the results will be different based on their skills, experiences and personal taste.  it may look simliar to the consumers but as long as it looks great and sells the space, i think that' what ultimately what your clients care about.

i do my best to uphold my reputation through my professionalism and value-added services. and again, it's like realtors... there are so many of them who as a consumer would pick? it usually comes down to the rapport and satisfaction and word of mouth referral. so i think that's where your personality comes through and make you different from your competitiors.

i dont get upset about people "restaging" my jobs. it doesn't happen very often for me and i have learned not to take it personally anymore. it's just that it's their listing, they pay for it, and i have explained explicitly that there is a reason why i stage the way it is. if they want to do it their way and harm their equity potential, i can't really stop them. i always tell sellers to remove dead plants from the yard, etc. etc. but if they choose not to listen, that's their choice. i can't force them to do it. 

cheers,

cindy 

If I read you right, it's a gut feeling of rapport between you and the REA or the Seller... assuming you and the competition are "equal".  You're right in that choosing a stager will eventually (as we proliferate) become like choosing a realtor.  At which point, we had better have our stats, our photos and our salesmanship tuned up... because the one thing we all should never consider is to compete on price!

You raise the point of value-added services.  Since you take simply beautiful pictures, is that part of your value-added suite of offerings?

Althea. Do you only help the Realtor with homes you've staged or with all of them?  Thanks for your input.  I love your ideas!  And Thanks Juliet for this blog.  It has helped me a great deal.  I am one of those people that give way too much a way because I want to help them and I can't say no.  But for competition, I hope that there is enough to go around so that we aren't trying to take from other stagers.  Again, thanks for the post!

In many ways, competition is healthy.  It forces us to be the best we can be and excel at customer service.  We have to constantly look ahead  - for trends, for sleek new ways to serve our clients.  If I have learnt anything this year it is to not become complacent and think that I "got it down"!  <grin>

Yes....the many ways competition can affect our business is not really different than other industries.  Keep doing your best and putting great work out there....raising the bar and awareness will dig up more business than can be handled!!  Keep up your good work and still have that cautious nature which might push you to new ways of standing out!!  Regards-Kathleen

Cindy,

I only help agents whose listing I staged. It comes with part of the package I offer. If they only purchase a consultation - no extras. This is an incentive I offer to get the full staging job.