There’s a great fondness for new buzz words but inevitably their overuse leads to misuse and meaninglessness. The term “fake news” is now bandied about as a denial of inconvenient truths or an alternate to a more apt term such as “big fat lie”.
The changing workplace generated a vocabulary of its own to describe a bunch of things that had been going on in successful companies for eons. Things like the sharing economy, collaboration, integrated platform, flexibility, ecosystem, innovation.
And remember when viral was the word on every marketer’s lips. There were huge expectations around digital campaigns that were meant to send the internet into meltdown yet garnered a dozen or so likes at best.
“Disruption” is the buzzword of the moment and one that’s becoming especially irksome just ahead of another D word, “demise” that’s supposed to follow said disruption.
Nobody would argue that technology has wrought enormous change but you wouldn’t label all of it disruption. In many cases it has led to an evolution, making certain tasks redundant, others more fulfilling and improved delivery of product and service to customer.
Real estate falls into that category, despite the multiple claims of disruption. The disruptive force of the internet hasn’t led to a demise of the real estate agent; it’s heightened the role if anything. And the agents who are good at their job have simply found new ways of doing business taking advantage of the opportunities to reach a broader audience, give greater effect to their marketing and negotiating skills and broaden their service offering.
Attempts at disruption by bypassing the agent are not exactly new. There have long been schemes out there promoting DIY property sales but they’ve had limited appeal. The internet makes such schemes more feasible of course, with the ability to effectively reach a large audience. But it can’t replicate the contribution a talented sales agent makes to a successful property transaction – the networks and database, the negotiating skills, the marketing prowess and ultimately, the level of trust that true professionals engender.
However when a franchisor chooses to provide consumers with a service that is intended to take market share from its own customers – it’s franchisees – there’s a D word that deserves to be trending. Dishonourable.
The establishment of a “disruptive” business model that enriches only the parent company raises the question of what it is in business to achieve and whether it truly believes in its core business.
A franchisor’s primary responsibility must surely be to its franchisees, those who pay the fees and levies that allow it to be in business. Any activity that undermines or undercuts franchisees deserves to be questioned.
One commentator who supported this latest disruption made a telling observation, “A company that is not prepared to cannibalise their own business to meet customers’ changing needs will eventually fail”.
Fair enough except it is not the franchisor’s business that is at risk here but the business of the independent owners who make up its franchisees. They might rightfully question what’s going on when their franchisor spends its research funds setting up an enterprise that’s designed to take a cut of their market share.
When it comes to disruption there’s nothing more disruptive than an exodus of franchisees. To quote a few biblical buzz words, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap”.