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Marketing
This summer I joined the 2015 cohort of home movers by selling and buying my house.
As anyone who has ever engaged with the joy that is buying and selling in England knows, it was ‘interesting’ on several levels. However, moving also triggered a few things that made my inner marketer sit up and pay attention. Home movers are big business!
About two weeks after our agent, Tim Mayho from relative newcomers Keller Williams listed our property on Rightmove we received an almost plaintive letter from Zoopla encouraging us to list on their site too. We happened to use a agency which doesn’t favour Zoopla, and were getting plenty of interest.
Around six weeks after our property was listed online we received a postcard from another agency asking whether we were fed up yet with our not-even-local agent. It went in the bin because we didn’t like their method. Plus, we’d also already accepted an offer which would go through later.
After our property was marked ‘ Sold STC’ online, we started getting post from removals companies offering their services, a solicitor, a mortgage broker and an insurance company wishing to quote for our next home. Clearly we’d made it onto a different set of home mover data very efficiently, deftly bypassing the MPS and my religiously ticking opt-out boxes at every opportunity.
Six days after moving into our property I received the catalogue of a furniture company – I had somehow made it onto their new owner database in record time. They even spelled my entire surname right! Meanwhile the lovely peeps at Homebase sent money off vouchers twice because our new home has a name as well as a number and so occurs in their database twice. Additionally the Royal Mail kindy redirected the ones sent to our old address too. Thanks everyone!
Home mover data
All this has made me curious to see what home mover data is worth in marketing. Here’s what I found:
- 2014 saw a huge increase in first time buyers, the largest since 2007
- Home movers fell in the first six months of 2015 compared to 2014, but were still up 32% on the same period in 2009, when the housing market was at its lowest
- It’s ‘second steppers’ who are benefitting from 2014’s price rises, (still) low interest rates and sitting on a very healthy deposit in the shape of equity. They are also likely to be financially more secure and have more spending power compared to first time buyers
- Home movers are likely to spend more – up to 10 times – on their home in the first six months after purchasing than they do in five years of ownership thereafter
It’s easy to see why marketing budgets are happily allocated to the home mover.
Companies compiling and selling any kind of data are guarded about how they obtain it and where from. It is a labour-intensive and therefore expensive affair: home mover data is collected by trawling portals such as Rightmove and Zoopla, estate agent websites, and by using available data from the Royal Mail Redirection service, mortgage valuation data and electoral role updates. Some agencies even physically scour streets for ‘For Sale’, ‘Under Offer’, ‘Sold’ and ‘Let’ signs to take addresses.
What this home mover did…
So, what happened in my household with these irresistible offers?
Well, for starters we chose and stuck with our agent whom we knew before we decided to sell. We didn’t bother with Zoopla or a ‘For Sale’ board in the garden and had our first offer in a matter of days.
We did our homework on removals firms and chose a local one which came recommended by many; we asked for recommendations and were introduced to our mortgage broker who then introduced us to our outstanding solicitor, and we asked our sellers which insurance company they were using and after getting a few other quotes from more recommended insurers signed up with them for specialist home insurance.
We also have recommendations for someone to build a bespoke bench in a corner, because none of our walls are straight and/or at right angles, ruling out most readymade furniture, which tends not to fit through our doors in the first place.
The Homebase vouchers are another story however… As it turns out we have interesting plumbing challenges so having those in triplicate is handy when buying drain unblockers in bulk. Proof that marketing to the home mover works after all!
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Coaching, Leadership
Clients who arrive for coaching or mentoring sessions may not realise it, but what they will be getting is disruption. For those clients who have opted to find a coach or mentor themselves, this is almost always a welcome discovery: they were ready to have their usual way of going about things disrupted.
It takes some guts to work with a coach. Engaging wholly and honestly with the one thing that holds you back – once that ‘thing’ has been identified – is brave, because this thing may not be what you expected at all.
Stages of disruption
Identifying what is putting the brakes on the client achieving what they want is absolutely essential. Clients usually arrive with some idea about this, but more often than not they are describing symptoms rather than the cause at the root of them. The first disruptive moment arrives when we realise that what the client brought to the initial coaching agenda perhaps isn’t the real issue.
Although very common, this almost always takes the client by surprise. It is also very often the point when the client starts to experience the bigger impact of their sessions: they’ll return for the next session and describe having had very different interactions with people, or a significant conversation with an important person in their (working) life.
Having encountered the disruption of a shifting coaching agenda, typically two scenarios apply next. Some clients are too shocked to find they didn’t know what the real issue was and find it hard to engage with it. This can be because they are not ready to tackle it, and it is too soon, too much, too fast. Sadly it can also be that they were ‘invited’ to work with a coach, and felt unable to tell me. It fortunately doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, we have a conversation about the support the client needs and will accept and how to ensure they get it.
In the second and more frequent scenario the client responds with initial shock followed by interest, or with glee, or with cautious questions about whether they are ‘allowed’ to change the coaching agenda, seeing as we started somewhere else. These are resilient clients who decide to wrestle their issue to the ground once and for all even when its true nature isn’t revealed immediately.
The discovery that there is more to their question and that they can go and explore it, work with it, and throw themselves into tackling it often raises clients’ expectations of the coaching. It is a pivotal point in the coaching relationship where I find out the extent of my client’s engagement with their question and with the coaching process. It is also where I discover how I need to up my game to match my client’s pace!
Delightfully disruptive
A recent coaching client wanted to achieve a better work-life balance. About three or four sessions into our work together she made a very disruptive discovery: she admitted to herself that she was a control freak. Nobody was telling her this; her large team was stable and productive and would confide in her when they wanted to. Her line manager was positive about her performance and largely left her to it. The client had some challenging relationships in the organisation, but there were no signs of deep discord. She routinely worked 14 hours a day, and spent her weekends ‘catching up’. This pattern had become unsustainable.
It took this client some weeks to make peace with her discovery that being a control freak was the cause of her problem. Soon she was paining herself with questions like “Have I been smothering my team?” and “What if they think that I don’t trust them?”.
Even while she was grappling with this disruption in her world view, she was able to step back and let her team take over many of the tasks she had been dealing with herself for so long. Her team relished in the new responsibilities and opportunities. Their stunned manager discovered things were being done just as well or in clever new ways. She delighted in it all and focused on strategic tasks and felt on top of things. She was also able to cut her hours down dramatically.
When we came to the end of our sessions the client marvelled at where her journey had originated: a poor work-life balance. Where she previously assumed being on top of things meant personally controlling everything, she now accepted that although it got her to where she was in her career, it was time to move away from this to further her career. Soon after she landed a promotion to a high profile role which she felt excited rather than daunted by. Calling out the control freak had been the most welcome disruption at a crucial time in her career.
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Development, Engagement
I think everyone needs a theory to play around with. Something that interests you, an idea you are working on and like to share with other people. A ‘what if’ question perhaps, or a conviction about something you cannot quite explain, so you like to put it to other people, or spend time thinking about by yourself.
Perhaps the theory that everyone needs a theory is my theory.
So why do I think everyone need a theory? Let me count the ways.
Argument 1: Having a personal theory primes the mind to look for evidence
That’s evidence to support or to undermine your theory, by the way. It’s not just something to keep your mind occupied with something interesting when you are bored, it’s good brain exercise too. Through neuroscience we learn more and more about how the brain works, including that exercising it regularly is good for it.
Neuroplasticity is one of the current themes in coaching. It refers to the brain’s ability to create new neural pathways in the brain if old ones have fallen out of use, for example through brain injury. In coaching we often work with individuals who wish to adopt new and more effective behaviours, and find it hard to let go of old ones. In this case, neuroplasticity refers to consciously creating new neural pathways in an effort to overwrite ones we no longer wish to use.
Training your brain to be curious, open to new ideas and literally flexible about applying new knowledge – by also looking for evidence that disproves your theory, not just the stuff you want to hear – might come in handy when the going gets a little tougher.
Argument 2: it’s a great way to practice argumentation
If we have had the pleasure to meet, you’ll know I love a good argument. I learned a lot about the art of argumentation as a student activist in Amsterdam, including what it takes to get your argument respectfully yet clearly heard in the din of clashing interests, and the great satisfaction to be had when you become utterly convinced by someone else’s argument.
My own weird and (I think anyway) wonderful theory is that rabbits are essentially small horses, if you allow yourself not to be distracted by the obvious physical differences. I’ve put this theory to horse loving people, rabbit fanciers, a zoologist friend who has both a horse and rabbits, park wardens at Shotover Park in Oxford, wildlife broadcaster Stuart Mabbutt, and random people in the queue in the Coop/train station/my local.
The result of this un-scientific research is that my zoologist friend disagrees with me, the park wardens in Shotover Park warmed to the idea and decided to ponder it more, while the theory – perhaps unsuprisingly – seems to get a lot of traction in the pub. Each time I’ve had to pitch my theory differently, and received vastly different ideas back in return, shaping my theory further.
Argument 3: develop your relationships
Each time I’ve shared my theory with people, I’ve done so on purpose. I might have been in the mood for it, but sometimes I’ve chosen it deliberately to show a different side of me to someone.
My work with coaching clients is very boundaried when it comes to use of self, as we call this in coaching. Coaching isn’t about the coach, and with a few notable exceptions I will hold my opinions so that my client can form their own in the company of a skilled listener instead. At the same time I also need to build personal rapport with each client, so being too distant isn’t a good thing, in particular in the earlier stages and when the more challenging stage of the intervention has arrived.
Sharing my horse-rabbit theory with a client serves a few purposes: it shows another side of me, a more personal one, and this can be welcome. It also models risk taking and vulnerability; after all, it is a pretty daft theory to most people! But above all, it invites curiosity and questions, and sometimes I find myself faced with someone who finds it difficult to question others. Making the topic to be questioned a pretty out there one and not at all resembling anything the client themselves struggles to engage with has helped one or two people to give their curiosity free rein and ask away.
Argument 4: for fun
Everyone needs a theory for fun, too. Whether you’re the introverted type who enjoys pondering a question or an extravert who loves the input of others, having your own, slightly nuts theory is just good fun. Your brain is not just for work purposes you know!
So, on that note, what’s your madcap theory?
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Coaching, Development
Sometimes a client arrives for their session clearly carrying something with them which will get in the way of a productive session if it isn’t declared and discussed. That ‘something’ isn’t necessarily on the agenda we have established so far, but the fact that it has made its way into the session makes it part of the agenda, at least temporarily.
Take the case of the manager who arrived fuming about a difficult report she had just had a meeting with. Her anger and indignation needed to be allowed out in all its gory detail before she would be able to engage with the real issues around the report: low self-confidence, a lack of readiness to take responsibility and different definitions of work ethic. And so the session began with a volcano erupting quite spectacularly. (You can read the case study here)
In coaching catharsis helps to identify and explore obstacles, and provides the starting point for finding out what unblocks the individual. It also helps the restless coachee settle into the session. Once the vulcano has slowed down spewing the hot stuff, we can start walking across the cooling lava and start probing it for the fertile matter it is. Humour plays a big part in this cathartic process: release often comes in the form of raucous laughter, while tears of grief or relief are also a common sight.
Catharis and catalysis
Catharsis is powerful on its own, and can pave the way for the coachee to move on from an incident. Sometimes it is all a client needed, and most of the time, it is only the beginning. The next step is catalysis.
This is where I often get surprised responses from clients. ‘where do I go now?’ The illumination and relief the cathartic experience brings is already a significant breakthrough for them; to be invited to go beyond it is daunting to many. ‘You mean to say there is MORE?’ appears to be the question.
Well, yes, if you want there to be – and as your coach working to your agenda, I might already know there needs to be more.
The coach’s ambition for the client
Harvard psychology professor Robert Kegan famously wrote:
Among the many things from which a practitioner’s clients need protection is the practitioner’s hopes for the client’s future, however benign and sympathetic these hopes may be.
Robert Kegan, The Evolving Self, 1992, p. 292
While this is true, I also know my clients come to coaching not because they want things to stay as they are and have nice chats about it, but because they need change. They didn’t invite a mate down to the pub for a good old rant, but chose a a professional with a deep understanding of the processes involved in adult development. Fully engaged clients do want their coach to stretch them further. To do that, I do need to have a view on things. It is a well-known dilemma among us coaches.
Catharsis and catalysis working in tandem can truly be a transformational experience. Illumination, insight, dots being joined to form a whole new scene the possibilities and consequences of which were previously unimaginable. Seeing how it all fits together, even if the edges remain blurred and more, new questions are generated in the process. I do harbour this ambition for my clients, knowing they will choose to take it or leave it. Perhaps that is precisely what Kegan means.
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Business, Engagement, Facilitation
Last week while facilitating a morning’s group work with an 18-strong board of directors, one of the delegates came up in a break to ask how chairing versus facilitating sessions differs. It is a really good question which I am asked more often, so here is how I explain it to my clients.
Let’s have a meeting
Meetings are gatherings of people who come together to discuss important things in person. Really good meetings progress those important things and find answers to questions, solutions to problems, or generate new ideas to go away and explore after the meeting.
Meetings suffer from bad press, and in some sectors even more so than others: the public sector comes to mind. I am sure every one of us will have attended a meeting at some point which we left in a state of frustration, bewilderment or despair, or a combination thereof.
A brilliant book which picks apart the reasons why meetings fail is the classic Death by Meeting by Patrick Lencioni. It sets out a way to organise and structure meetings so that they become valuable collaborative sessions instead of dreaded time wasters. Making sure the meeting is led well is a key ingredient, says Lencioni, and this starts with being really clear about the purpose of the meeting, and agreeing the desired outcomes.
Which brings me to the differences between chairing a meeting or event, and facilitating one.
Chairing versus facilitating a meeting
There are some real stand-out differences between the two roles. That of the chairperson is to be a full participant in the meeting as well as to oversee and manage the proceedings themselves.
By contrast, a facilitator is an outsider joining the group or team to guide the session through the different phases while remaining neutral throughout. They do not contribute to the content of the meeting itself, but they do use techniques to tease out contributions and ensure all angles of the meeting content are explored. To be able to do this successfully, it helps if the facilitator has some understanding of the matter under discussion. Crucially, this is not the same as having extensive knowledge of the meeting content.
The focus of a chair is also different. While controlling the progress of the meeting is part of their responsibility, the chair’s job is also to set the agenda and ensure that decisions are made where necessary. They have the last say if a decision needs to be negotiated. A chairperson is often someone with some authority over other meeting participants.
A facilitator also focuses on ensuring the process of the meeting works well, in particular to allow participants to successfully concentrate on the matters at hand. However, the agenda is set beforehand by the group or team, and the facilitator sometimes gives some practical guidance where needed to ensure the meeting goes well. Facilitators do not ‘enforce’ decision making or make the final call on decisions, except when it comes to the running of the session itself.
Finally, a key difference is in the responsibility of the chair after the meeting. A facilitator may be contracted to help with writing up meeting notes such as brainstorm flip charts after the event; they do not follow up to check actions are being followed through. Chairs and facilitators are both guardians of the process of having a meeting and aim to fulfil the projected outcomes, but it’s the chair who has an ongoing responsibility for the team or group’s work.
If a facilitator is tasked with tracking progress and holding participants to account on progress, while remaining the outsider, we’re talking about team or group coaching instead.
