Regular readers of my monthly contribution to Property Industry Eye will know that I am a big believer in “ the rule of three” – the idea that in order to emphasise a point you need to produce THREE reasons to illustrate your contention. This is a tactic used by numerous politicians (the late Tony Benn being an excellent example) as well as effective sale people.

The rule of three is a principle stating that things presented in groups of three are more effective, memorable, and satisfying in writing, storytelling, speeches, and even jokes, because three is the smallest number needed to establish a pattern which the human brain seeks, creating rhythm and emphasis.

It’s a technique that I frequently use when attempting to sell my own estate agency services at a marketing appraisal appointment or trying to summarise the benefits of a particular property to a potential buyer – and it generally works REALLY well.

There are three reasons you should use Simon Bradbury Estate Agents powered by eXp and they are… 1… 2…3…

There are three reasons why you should buy this property and they are … 1… 2…3…

Features/ benefits – you know the drill.

Imagine my surprise when one of the very best (he’s in my top three) of the world’s marketing guru’s, Rory Sutherland, outlined a story on how to gain advantage over the competition – with the rule of TWO! I have heard him recite this tale on numerous occasions and can honestly say that I have used the lessons contained within the story to my significant commercial advantage.

Here is that true story…

Once upon a time there was a man called Will Guidara who owned the 50^th best restaurant on the world – Eleven Madison Park in New York. Will had aspirations to become number one and settled on a simple strategy to achieve this objective. Apparently, he took his team to experience what the then number one restaurant had to offer and asked the team for feedback.

As you would expect, his colleagues were very impressed by the venue, service and food quality of what at the time was considered to be the very best restaurant on the planet. They proceeded to share their feedback and provided a long list of all the things that made the experience so amazing. Apparently, this didn’t impress Will who insisted that simply listing and copying those items would not achieve what he wanted.

Instead, he asked the team to list the things that the restaurant did to a simply mediocre level. They reported on TWO things – firstly, the coffee which was served was “OK” but not exceptional and secondly there was a very small selection of beers, as the world’s best restaurant catered more for wine drinkers.

Armed with this information and using what Rory Sutherland refers to as “reverse benchmarking”, Will focused on these two factors instead of trying to copy everything else that was good about his competitor. He appointed a “Coffee Sommelier” to offer guests a huge array of high quality coffee options and a “Beer Sommelier” to advise customers on the craft beers that went best with the incredible food. I’m sure you can guess the end of this story – yes Eleven Madison Park in New York eventually became the number one restaurant in the world… but so what?

Well, as Rory Sutherland says, “This is something anybody can do…”… and I did it in my own area. However, as a slave to the rule of three, I set about identifying which THREE activities estate agents in my locale achieved to a mediocre (or below) level. It actually was not as easy as I had envisaged. As I suspect is the case in most towns and cities in the UK, the overall level of estate agency services in my area is generally very good and competition is fierce. Yes, there are the usual selection of mediocre and poor estate agents but there are three or four that are (annoyingly) excellent. After careful analysis, I settled on three things that I believed my competition did that I could do better… MUCH BETTER!

Now I’m not prepared to share with you what those items were, just in case my competitors are reading this. However, I would advise that you think about the basic activities you conduct as an estate agent every day, analyse those activities from the customers perspective and think how you could transform those activities into something outstanding and memorable.

I am absolutely NOT claiming that I am now the number one estate agent in the world or even in my area following the implementation of reverse bench marking. I can however legitimately claim to have substantially increased and improved my business as a result.

Of course, you have three choices (see what I did there!)

You can do nothing – always an option.

You can take the advice of a simple estate agent like me and use the rule of three.

Or you can take the advice of one of the world’s greatest marketing experts and use…

The rule of two.

PS

If you would like to view the short version of the video with Rory Sutherland telling this story, here it is:

Simon Bradbury is a consultant specialising in securing new instructions and runs a (very) small estate agency powered by eXp.