Luxury Real Estate Agent
Branding: If The Shoe Fits...
By Ron & Alexandra Seigel
The author has permitted the reprinting and redistribution of this
article.
One of the best business models we have found that can help luxury real
estate marketing professionals distinguish their brand from their
competitors comes from a $1 billion dollar online shoes merchant that
“hug” their customers with spectacular customer
service. It can help you to increase client and employeeteam member
loyalty. So, if the shoe fits… take it from here.
Once you have purchased your first pair of shoes from Zappos you may
never go back to shopping in shoe stores again Zappos is a take-off on
the word zapatos, which means shoes in Spanish. They specialize in
footwear, handbags as well as niche shoes (vegan shoes and narrow and
wide shoes). They have a central warehouse and two brick-and-mortar
outlet stores. Zappos really understands how
“hugging” their customers and their employees
translates in to big profits.
The Zappos business model is based totally on loyalty and relationship
marketing. A loyalty model means that a company focuses its resources
so customers’ expectations are consistently met or even
surpassed. Relationship marketing is also about the long term value of
keeping customers but is focused on the importance of triggering
word-of- mouth advertising as a means of acquiring new customers.
How do they do that They hug their customers! Zappos builds the culture
of the company and promotes its brand through superlative customer
service. Their slogan is “Powered by Customer
Service” The result is 60% of Zappos’ customers are
repeat customers, and the rest have come from word-of-mouth marketing.
Naturally this business model reduces marketing costs.
Zappos puts the “WOW” in every customer
interaction. They do so through free 2-way shipping (receipt and
return), a 365-day return policy, a 24 hour call service. Hugs!
Zappos also hugs their employees! New employees, regardless of position
are required to attend a 4-week Customer Loyalty Training course. This
includes two weeks of talking on the phone with customers hug training.
After the first week of training the new employees are offered a
“quit now” bonus of $1,000 to leave the company
immediately, no strings attached. This ensures people are there for the
love of the job and not just the money. Over 90% turn down the buyout.
Tony Hsieh, the CEO, is somewhat of a celebrity in his own right. You
can follow him on Twitter along with over 62,000 others (as of this
writing). If you called Zappos customer service over the Holidays,
chances are you reached Tony himself. Personal CEO hugs!
In your luxury real estate marketing practice, how can you put the wow
in your service and hug your clients today Does this resonate with your
brand of doing business If, the shoe fits…
Ron and Alexandra Seigel are the managing partners of Napa Consultants,
International the leading luxury real estate marketing firm, Visit our
highly acclaimed blog, the Language of Luxury -
httpwww.napaconsultants.comluxury-real-estate-marketing. Get Fluent.
Get Affluent! Learn more about gaining and sustaining market leadership
at httpwww.NapaConsultants.com.
If
you would like to take advantage of the market and learn how to invest
in real estate and you are local to the Dallas Fort Worth area, I know
a really great teacher and mentor here in Arlington Texas. Please take
a look at his web site: DennisJHenson.com,
Dennis has a great Mentoring and training program, I know because I am
one of his former students. I learned a lot from his one on one
teaching technique. - Michael Harman 817-457-7572
mchfun.business@gmail.com
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