Comments on: How Product Marketers Are Like Bad Real Estate Agents

By: Dave Daniels

Dave Daniels — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:52:37 +0000

From @crankypm – "Why Product Marketers are Like Bad Real Estate Agents – http://tinyurl.com/lxdz2s – Ouch, but true. #launch #prodmgmt

By: Mike Rothman

Mike Rothman — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:53:31 +0000

If you are vendor, you must follow @crankypm. She speaks the truth about how the sausage is made. And it ain’t pretty. http://is.gd/12CgF

By: Marcus Daniels

Marcus Daniels — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:53:00 +0000

How Product Marketers Are Like Bad Real Estate Agents http://bit.ly/QkiR6

By: The Cranky Product Manager

The Cranky Product Manager — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:32:43 +0000

Luke, thank you. The Cranky PM will now gawk at YOUR lovely intellectual and physical assets. From your photo, you look like a hottie. Same for you, PuristPM.

Mark, you hit the nail on the head, and succinctly said in three paragraphs what the Cranky PM struggled to express in 30. Kudos!

Thanks for the tips, Adele! The Cranky PM enjoys your blog and wants you to post more often.

And Mike, the Cranky PM is totally with you. She is currently looking for a real estate agent and is instantly disqualifying any that use these type of tactics in their advertising. It is bad for the buyer and bad for the seller, and ultimately (hopefully) it will prove bad for the realtor as well. When selling her current home, the Cranky PM will not reimburse the agent for any ads running in Homes and Land.

That said, the CPM does not think print ads are entirely wasteful – especially if you are dealing with vacation locales or areas where people might buy second homes. These print books are often very good for giving those buyers who are early in the process a feel for the local real estate market, and I do know of a few transactions that originated from ads in those magazines.

By: Mike S.

Mike S. — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:52:16 +0000

I despise real estate “ads”! They are, by design, not meant to advertise houses, but instead realtors. I refuse to pick up these books or to use realtors that use this as a way of getting customers. It tells me that when they claim to be marketing my property, they’re really just using my property to get access to other customers. They are purposefully keeping interested buyers from self-qualifying and making the sales cycle longer (BAD idea in these times).

By: talltodd65

talltodd65 — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 07:01:10 +0000

RT @jbrett: Finally got around to reading How Product Marketers Are Like Bad Real Estate Agents http://bit.ly/lkHDL

By: Jason Brett

Jason Brett — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 06:47:40 +0000

Finally got around to reading How Product Marketers Are Like Bad Real Estate Agents http://bit.ly/lkHDL

By: Rachel Hawley

Rachel Hawley — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 03:02:22 +0000

Laughing out loud at another fab @crankyPM blog, and as always finding myself agreeing with her entirely: http://tinyurl.com/mprece

By: Mark Sigler

Mark Sigler — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 19:02:40 +0000

How Product Marketers Are Like Bad Real Estate Agents http://bit.ly/Aac85

By: Adele Revella

Adele Revella — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:02:10 +0000

Tips on how to interview buyers? There are too many to describe in a comment, but here are my top two:

- Interview buyers who just made a purchase decision either for or against your product (win/loss analysis). Ask them what questions they had at the beginning and each subsequent step of the sales cycle. They’ll tell you which resources they consulted (analysts, peers, an Internet search) so that you can not only provide the right info, but know where to focus your marketing efforts. DON’T ask your sales people for this info – the customer lies to sales people. Plus sales people always say that they lost the deal because the product is flawed or too expensive.

- For new product launches you don’t have wins or losses, so either get on the phone (hardest) or attend a conference (easier if you have the budget) and talk to people you don’t know! Product marketers really resist talking to people they don’t know but this is actually easy and fun once you get started. Don’t ask them about the product — they don’t care about the product, ask them to tell you what’s not working about their “content management processes”. The first one or two are hardest but after that you can say things like, “we’ve been talking to people in the content management area and they say that the biggest problem is indexing the content — is that an issue for you?”

This is a great post — the number one flaw in product marketing is that the people who are doing this job don’t know their buyers.