Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

“People, even those without a lot of money, will afford the things they want.” - Dr. Lowell Catlett, economist and futurist

I agree with Dr. Catlett - to a point. As regular readers know, I’m an HGTV junkie. I’m particularly fascinated with the shows where people get their houses staged so they can sell ‘em. Of course, in many cases, the genius staging really comes down to a little common sense and a lot of cleaning (like, store the 5,000 beanie babies, trash the 60s-era plastic flowers, get the dirty laundry out of the sink and change the cat litter boxes more than once a year. Who are these people???)

Of course, until recently you could have kept farm animals in your Manhattan walk-up or operated a toxic waste dump in the backyard of your LA bungalow and still sold the thing for megabucks. The real estate market was totally insane. (Tulip bulbs, anyone?)

Now there’s a new show to feed the junkies - Get It Sold, where yet another perky young woman (I’m getting old - all these “design pros” look about 12 to me) spends “only $500″ to work miracles. First episode they call in a realtor who reduces the price $20,000 to $30,000; spend that $500 and - KA-ZAAM! the house sells. Second episode, they call in a realtor who reduces the price $20,000 to $30,000; spend that $500 and KA-ZAAM! the house sells. Third episode, they call in a realtor who reduces the price $35,000; spend that $500 and…

Can you see a pattern here? I’ve now watched four episodes and the magic just keeps happening (and the price reductions increasing.)

And so it goes in other businesses too. You can fluff and puff until your brain and budget bleeds, reposition…renovate…relaunch…but there are some economic realities that just can’t be ignored. If a customer truly only has 50 cents to spend, no amount of value speak is going to get you 50 bucks. Particularly, if your $50 “solution” doesn’t look much different than one they could get for 50 cents. (This is a common problem in web site sales.) And, nothing is worth more than what people are willing to pay for it. (Then there’s that little deal killer called greed, on both sides of the transaction.)

If you’d like to leave a comment, please do so. It may take a bit to show up since I hate making people type in little letters (I can’t read most of them myself) - so I moderate all comments. Feel free to disagree - debate is healthy. However, I’ve blacklisted the worst obscenities, including the “f” word, as part of the troll wall.

Tags: marketing, marketing troubleshooting, pricing, real estate