The Personal Property Appraisers Post

Busting The MythsWith all due respect to Discovery Channel celebrities Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, of Myth Busters fame, these appraisal myths must be busted before one can identify a strategic approach and establish the tactical elements of effective appraisal services promotion.


Busting -- "My appraisal designation, certification and qualifications will get me business."

Your appraisal designations, appraisal experience, and your appraisal qualifications will not get you more business. Your designations, expertise and qualifications are “features,” not benefits. Nobody cares about features. Nobody buys features. People buy benefits. They buy solutions. They buy answers to their problems, but they do buy features. Every designation, every letter after your name, and every area of specialty and expertise must be turned from a feature into a benefit.

In Successful Selling Strategies: Benefits vs. Features, publicity guru Paul Hartunian and I explain that when it comes to your appraisal qualifications – nobody cares. Prospects and clients will not care about any of your designations, until they understand the benefits of those designations.
Your first step in the marketing process is to convert these features into benefits. Here are a few examples: The feature “Oriental Rug Specialist” can be presented as the benefit of less on-site time required to properly identify the rug, which means you are more efficient than the other appraisers who must take tons of pictures and spend loads of time researching and calling someone to help them. The additional benefit of an “Oriental rug specialist” is that you have probably done a similar rug before, so you have the data readily available, which saves the client money, plus you will be able to complete the appraisal sooner.

Another example of features vs. benefits relates to our appraisal report writing standards. An appraisal report that is written to the USPAP standard, or to your appraisal society’s report writing standard, is a feature. It is not a benefit. Again, the response by the public is: “Who cares.” The benefit of writing to the “standard,” is a defensible report that, if challenged, will hold up.

Here’s another feature to ponder: “Twenty-five years experience.” Who cares how many years you’ve been in business?! It is a feature. Convert it to a benefit.

The second part of busting this first myth relates to Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous quote: "Make a better mousetrap... (and) the world will make a beaten path to your door." Well, you can be certain that Emerson is dead wrong. The accurate quote is: "Unless the world knows you have a better mousetrap, and why it's better than all the others, no one will even care where your door is."

There is no doubt in the mind of other appraisal professionals (nor should there be in yours), that a professionally-trained appraiser is definitely the better mousetrap. Education sets trained and tested appraisers apart from every other appraiser in the world.

So, if you have the better mousetrap, and we all agree you do, then why isn't the world beating a path to your door? They are not lined up at your door, because your prospective clients have no idea that you have the better mousetrap, nor do they know why they should pick your mousetrap over the others. Even if you convert your “qualifications” from features to benefits, you must still let your prospects know who you are and how to find you. Promoting yourself, your firm, and your services is critical to your success.

To combat ‘Myth One’ you must convert all your features to benefits. You must then let your prospects know who you are, where to find you, and why they should select you over all the others.

Next post??? Busting -- "My professional appraisal organization is supposed to get me all the business I need."

This article first appeared in the 2008 Journal Of Advanced Appraisal Studies; Foundation for Appraisal Education, Editor: Todd Sigety http://www.foundationforappraisaleducation.org/