Before I dive into the 5 ways to position your home staging business as a valuable investment to potential clients, I'm feeling the need to share a pep talk with all y'all.
First, I want to honor you for showing up here, however you landed on this page. If you haven't already discovered it, you are special. You have seen a vision of your home staging business in your mind and you are working every day to bring it into reality. So many have tried at this and not made it. But you have been willing to put yourself out there over and over again in pursuit of growing a profitable home staging business. Take a minute to bask in that and to thank yourself for believing in you.
Even if you are just starting…sharing this new seed of an idea can make so many people feel like an imposter. You may even feel that way. But you are pushing through it. That is bold and you have so much to be proud of just in that alone!
Ok, so let's work through ways to position your home staging business together…how do we show your prospective clients that your business is like bitcoin level valuable to them. Speaking of that, I'm opening enrollment soon for my RethinkYou Mentorship Program and I'd love for you to join us for more of these kinds of pep talks!
Focus on your value
One of the things I see so often in our industry, and others like it, is that we fail to value ourselves and our gifts. And don't even get me started on how women, in particular, devalue themselves. Undercharging for what we do is rampant. Some of that is because we aren't thinking about our businesses beyond ourselves (I feel another blog post there!) but a lot of that is that we underestimate how important our talents are in changing people's lives.
We are dang rockstars! You are a dang rockstar! And what you do for people is amazing! You literally help people move forward in life. You help them through divorce, death, disability, relocation, upsizing, downsizing and everything in between! And you do it with a gift unique to you. That is flipping valuable!
Not everyone can do what you do. Not everyone can see the possibility you see. Not everyone can see what the camera will see. Those are tremendous gifts that make peoples lives better. And those skills are worthy of being paid well!
When you start to own your value, everything you do is different. The way you talk about what you do changes. The way you present yourself in person and online changes. The world may take a minute to catch up to you, but they will! Start with you!
Focus on the photos
A lot of people feel like home staging is a soft skill. You go to Pinterest or Instagram and you get some ideas and–boom–you can stage a house, right? For some people that may work but what most people don't know is how rooms get captured in photos. Neat rooms, even pretty rooms, are not necessarily staged rooms and you know that better than anyone.
As soon as I started focusing my message around how I style based on my knowledge of what a camera captures, everything changed. People began to see it as a skill they didn't have. And that's legit. Most people don't have that vision.
You, however, have likely viewed hundreds of listing photos to train your eye. This makes you uniquely positioned to have a deep understanding of how a camera captures a space and the things in it.
Focus on Return on Investment
I don't actually mean sale price here. One of the objections many people have to our industry is based on what they see on HGTV. I have a love/hate with the Property Brothers! Haha! Most people are miseducated about staging based on shows like theirs where walls are getting ripped out and new kitchens are being put in. Rightfully so, that scares the buns off of many people!
In my Discovery Calls (part of my Client Onboarding System which you can read about here), I like to talk about how our team is trained to always be thinking about Return on Investment with every recommendation we make. We have even broken down Return on Investment by room and by wall. Some rooms and walls are just more valuable because of when and how they will be viewed in listing photos and in person, right?
Focus on Partnership
The clients we work with love to hear how we are their partners. Our goal is to sell houses quickly in a way that is positive and fun. One of my missions is to partner with Realtors who want to become leaders in their offices and win awards. I want them to have incredible word-of-mouth referrals from clients because they loved working with us. Bottom line, I want to partner with my Realtors to grow their business which, in turn, grows mine.
Focus on dollar dollar bills, y'all
I know this must seem like a no-brainer but the biggest thing Realtors, sellers and investors need to hear confidently is that you make them mon-ay. Money is a powerful motivator and your skills help them make money super fast! You will communicate this message so much more confidently when you start with your belief in yourself. People feel that belief and will act on it when they feel your confidence. So go back and read my pep talk at the beginning if you need a little boost!
If you don't have your own statistics yet, our trade organizations, like the Real Estate Staging Association, have all kinds of fabulous statistics for you to share. And as someone who runs a busy home staging business, I can tell you my stats are even better than most of the averages shared through our organizations which are amazing!
Come join me!
Want some support on how to position your home staging business? We are opening enrollment to the RethinkYou Mentorship Program soon–full of marketing, sales and business strategies like this–and I'd love for you to be first to know when it opens!
xo, Lori
ps–for those of you on my email list this message is for you!
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