Zillow, the real estate boogeyman, has stumbled and the armchair quarterbacks have pulled out their keyboards and poured a beer. An experiment in housing sales turned out to be more expensive and inefficient than projected, so it will be shut down. People will lose jobs and capital lost, and lots of lessons learned.
Yet we should be gracious in our comments, for we may not realize what we have lost as well.
“Don’t gloat over others' misfortune,” my mentor said. “What seemed like a challenge may have been one of your most valuable teachers.”
Case in point: Zillow handled about 30,000 transactions a year in its iBuying program - the same as the top fifty “human” teams amongst nearly 2 million total salespeople handling SIX MILLION+ sales a year. In fact, the entire iBuying sector is barely 1-2% of the market and this one competitor a tenth or two of that.
Surely we can be successful with a shot at 98% of the total sales opportunities?
Not to mention what we gained while this so-called threat of an experiment was running: We learned to sharpen our pricing skills, to outperform the algorithm. We became expert storytellers of our value proposition. And sharpened our marketing and social presence. We streamlined processes and upgraded technologies. Heck, some of us simply copied their model and ran it on our own scale. All of which led to some of the best years in our careers.
How ironic that less than 0.1% of competition brought out the best in us!
Some years ago a man stood before me at a self-serve kiosk at a fast-food restaurant. He was complaining that these “newfangled machines” would put cashiers out of business. “Young people will lose jobs,” he said. “Who will you call when it gets the order wrong?”
“On the other hand, look how quickly they are handling the line of customers,” I offered.
“Yeah, but it’s not the same as it used to be,” he retorted.
Just then, a woman appeared behind the counter and plugged in a tablet to the machine. "Is it broken?" asked the gruntled gentleman.
“Actually, I’m upgrading the menu and adding new payment options." She had overheard our conversation. "I used to be a cashier. Now I’m a software tech. I got free training and a better paycheck. When they proposed the change, we were all worried. But I saw it as an opportunity to improve myself. Even if they don't keep them, I can now do things I'd never have learned before.”
She smiled and walked away.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Sometimes it works out; sometimes it doesn't.
Most of the time, there's an impact either way.
Often, it's something we didn't even expect.
Yes, we might lose some of this or that.
Yet, what we might gain could be even more valuable.
The challenger can help us become the next best version of ourselves - able to perform whether or not the change sticks around.
And that's the secret:
To remain open -
In victory, celebrate.
In defeat, contemplate.
In all things,
To have grace.
For while the pressure was there,
even a short time,
what really won was -
YOU!
