Build a tribe - can real estate have true fans?

Seth Godin posts about a great post from Kevin Kelly where he discusses having a 1000 true fans

The post aims at finding 1000 true fans for your product/business.

The post is directed towards musicians and artists and Seth asks whether there is a business case for developing this theory.   Taking it one stage further, can we identify a business case within real estate?

No doubt, to find and organise 1000 people can change your world and can earn you a living.  Seth points out that 1000 people each spending £1,000 is a million pounds.   Moreover, 1000 peopel willing to spend £250 on a seminar gives you ‘…the leverage to invite just about anyone you can imagine to fly in and speak…’.

1000 people can change many things, but how can we apply this to real estate?  Certainly at the learning level and social networking level we can aim for 1000 members.  Indeed, Juciy Red Apple (Property Owl) is aiming for this magic number.   We hope we can become indispensable for the community and develop a true fan base of 1000 members.   That of course doesn’t mean just 1000 members it means many more, but with a core of 1000 ‘true fans’.   The number may change a little but the principle remains.

So, back to real estate.  Can an agent (for example) adopt this strategy?  Why not?!  The question is how to build a true fan base of house buyers/sellers/renters/landlords.   I guess it comes back to loyalty, ensuring that your customers come back to you.  With musicians one can see how a true fan will buy every album, even the platinum version with the same tracks they already purchased, but it is less easy to see how to breed such loyalty in house sellers with agents.   Yes, good service, fair price, efficiency and the like all come into play, but how do you reach that true fan, the one who will always use your firm no matter what.

Seth says focus on ‘… long term relationships and life time value. You don’t find customers for your products. You find products for your customers…’  But real estate agents do find customers for their products and products for their customers.

Now you will probably say we have heard this before and it is what we do already, but can you actually identify these ‘true fans’ can you say confidentially they will come back to you when they next sell/buy/rent?   Will that landlord continue to use you?

This is the year to build that loyalty, but by being different.  And I mean different, push the envelope.

Your number one fan!