3 minutes reading time (582 words)

What If There Was Another Way?

General

Wednesday, 21 January 2026

4 Hits

Bigger, Better - that's how most #estateagents think. The way it has always been done. Bigger - more branches. Better - more market share.

Category Design introduces a 3rd option - Different. Not superficially different (logo, marketing, service) but remarkably different.

Take Competition, for example. Every agent has been taught to compete. To win "awards".
I win, you lose strategy.

Walk into any estate agency training room and you'll hear the same tired sermon: sharpen your skills, prove your competence, outperform your competitors.

The industry has fostered the myth that competition is the only way to success. It's survival of the fittest ideology - very limited thinking for an industry desperately in need of evolution.

But here's what frustrates me most: this approach has created a race to the bottom where everyone loses. Except the trainers who created the problem and now offer to fix it.

"Do not look for healing at the feet of those who broke you." - Rupi Kaur.

We're operating in a sector with few game rules, (Infinite Game - Simon Sinek) where agency reputation can evaporate overnight, where public trust sits somewhere between politicians and car-park attendants.

"Competition is for losers - when it's fierce, you become winners in a losing game" - Peter Thiel.

Realtors are competing fiercely to claim their piece of an increasingly skeptical market, all while reinforcing the very behaviours that eroded trust in the first place.

And the response from the trainers? More scripts. Better objection handling. Sharper prospecting techniques. "Lead with competence" they insist. "Prove you're the best valuer, the strongest negotiator, the expert in your postcode."

It's exhausting. More importantly, it's not working.

Consider this: David Bowie wasn't competing with Bob Dylan, or Elton John. The Beatles weren't competing with The Bee Gees, or Rolling Stones.

They were artists, creating and learning from each other, pushing boundaries, developing distinct voices that resonated with different audiences.

They understood something that real estate has forgotten - differentiation doesn't come from being marginally better at the same things as everyone else does. It comes from being fundamentally different in WHO you are.

Yet here we are, an entire industry reading from the same playbook, attending the same training courses, implementing the same strategies, then wondering why they all sound identical to increasingly cynical vendors and buyers.

When everyone is reading from the same page, change stagnates.

The irony is palpable. We operate in a people business where relationships should be paramount, yet we've reduced ourselves to competence metrics and performance statistics. Essentially, a transaction. Without soul. We've forgotten to ask whether "better" is what a client is seeking.

Maybe they're looking for someone they can actually trust? Someone whose character is a match. Someone who sees beyond the commission opportunity.

But that requires a different approach entirely - one that trainers seem constitutionally unable to comprehend because it doesn't fit their competition narrative.

The frustrating truth is that as longs as agents continue to believe competence is the only differentiator, they'll remain trapped in this cycle.

There is another way. It requires courage to step away from the herd, to stop competing and start creating, to build an agency based on Character rather than performance. But first, agents need to stop listening to trainers who profit from keeping them locked in competition mode.

The question isn't whether you're good enough to compete. The question is whether you're brave enough not to.

Thanks for reading.

Chris.

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(Originally posted by thebrandwithin.me)

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