I always tell my daughters that the best part of my life is watching them grow up. I then follow that by telling them the hardest part of my life is watching them grow up. Life as a new dad had its challenges, mostly because it was difficult to communicate with a baby that didn’t speak my language. Instead, I had to change and learn to speak Toddler. Toddlerese? Toddlerish? Whatever, you get my drift.
I found it amazing to see how quickly my daughter responded with seemingly simple tweaks in how I communicated with her. I knew I couldn’t say, ‘Hey Allie, look at the moon!’ and get the desired result. But if I picked her up in my arms and made a grand gesture of pointing and saying ‘MOOOOON’, she’d follow my arm skyward, see the moon for herself and smile a smile that would knock an angel to their knees.
You see, no matter how loudly or how animated I was in speaking to my girls, they just didn’t get it. But with gestures, pantomimes and slow annunciation, I started reaching out to them in a manner they could comprehend, and then we were off to the races.
This is about asking you to re-examine how you communicate with those who matter to you, like your consumers. Are you getting your point across in a way that totally communicates the entirety of your intent? Or are you just screaming English to somebody who prefers to communicate in sign language? Yelling at a dog to turn on the TV (and getting mad at them when they don’t) makes about as much sense as offering to fax a feature sheet to a consumer while they’re holding an iPhone sitting in the driveway of your listing. Welcome to 2016! Consumers don’t want to talk fax. They want to text, view mobile-centric content, and when appropriate, speak on the phone.
Understand—your message is vital, your services are valuable, but if consumers aren’t responding, you better make sure your delivery is given in a way that is comfortable, familiar and conventional to your audience. We help our customers tweak the way they speak with their consumers and we’ve seen some incredible results, from huge spikes in buyer sides to large increases in GCI. Note the agents didn’t change, the homes remained the same, but the way we communicated shifted, and it made all the difference in the world.
So, if you would like to talk to somebody who understands consumer communication traits better than anybody, feel free to give us a visit at www.dotsignal.com.
Oh and go hug your kids, they’re getting bigger by the second. Ask me how I know.
Tim Street is EVP of Client Development at Dotsignal.
