Selling Confusion in Solihull.

Selling confusion in Solihull.

A door-to-door leaflet dropped through my letterbox last night.

"Have You Seen The Signs?"  it read

And there, in front of my very eyes, was the admittedly impressive site of a street with not one, but four Estate Agency Boards.  All within the space of one hundred yards. Not houses For Sale, mind you,  but all with a Sold Subject To Contract Sign. All apparently "Sold" by the same estate agency.

It's amazing what you can do with Photoshop these days. Tell me I'm wrong, but the implication was that these were real homes that had been sold by this agency. If they weren't a figment of their creative imagination, all credit to them, but I'm not convinced.

Flip over the leaflet and on the reverse is a heading: " More Sales, More Clients, More Buyers."

Is that even relevant?

It's pointless comparing a "sale" if the asking price achieved for a property was 96% compared to a competitor achieving 100% of the asking price, just weeks outside the arbitrary period of comparison.

"The information is based on Rightmove statistics taken from 01/06/2020 to 31/08/2021" , apparently.

But here's where it gets confusing.

The "Sales Agreed Report" illustrates the following results:

B94  - 6

B94  - 5

B92  - 0

B93  - 9

B93   - 8

B93   - 0

B93   - 3

B91    - 1

B91    - 2

B91    - 3

B92    - 7

B92    - 8

B92    - 9

CV7    - 7

The affix apparently refers to the postcode. There was me, confused, thinking that it referred to a sale.

But no, postcode it is.

How much more clear would it have been to simply say B91/2/3/4 and CV7?

Unless, of course, it's confusion they are really selling.

Estate agency has a bad enough rap without these boastful missives.

"Have I seen the signs?"

Did they ever exist?, would be my response.

By their very nature, statistics can only be misused when the audience doesn't bother checking them. They are simply a numerical summary of evidence that has been collected.  By not presenting all of the information and selectively choosing definitions and periods of time, such claims will not stand up under cross-examination.

And, of course, most people aren't emotionally invested in data, however it is presented.

It remains, for those estate agencies that prefer to operate in the shadows. Not for them transparency and the relevance of what is being said. But instead the confusion playbook. Hoping that they can fool some of the people, some of the time. Enough that those unfortunate vendor/landlords are added to their ever growing positive statistics.

In the race for attention, it's easy to target the people that are most susceptible. Those that don't know all the facts before they have to decide.

Is it any wonder that an estimated 60% of vendors choose the wrong estate agency, first time, before finally selling their home with another agency?

When there is doubt, more data doesn't alleviate it.

Data doesn't drive change.  Instead, emotion ticks that box.

Resulting in two forms of Data story - informative and persuasive.

What we have in the example above are the cold-hard facts - manipulated as they have been to tell a story.

"More Sales, More Clients, More Buyers" - an unsubstantiated claim because all of the evidence isn't available.

Persuasive data, on the other hand, introduces the human element.

More Sales because ....

More clients because...

More buyers because...

Persuasive words that support the conclusion.

The leaflet that dropped through my door?

Filed under W.P.B.

"I don't know, I don't care and it doesn't matter."  - Jack Kerouac.

If estate agency can't think of anything interesting to say, about themselves, they're better off saying nothing than relying on data to move the hearts and minds of those they seek to serve.

If I'm 'Confused from Solihull', with quite a few years experience of both vendors and agencies, what hope is there for those less informed.

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Thanks for reading.

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