When talking with a recruiting prospect, it’s easy to get drawn into a tit-for-tat feature dialog. Does your office provide leads? What technology resources do you provide? What transaction management resources do you provide? These exchanges rarely turn out well because there’s always someone ready to undercut you with features that are similar to what you’re offering. In a recent post, Seth Godin explains why high-performing organizations don’t play this game. Benchmarking involves looking at every element of what you offer and comparing it to the very best element of any of your competitors. So your door handle is as good as the Audi’s, and your brake pedal is as good as the Volvo’s and… It’s pretty tempting to do this. Who wants any element of what they do to be inferior to a competitor’s? And yet, that’s almost never what makes something remarkable. So, what do you do instead? What makes something remarkable is a combination of its internal synergy—the parts work together as a coherent whole—and its imbalance. Something about it is worth talking about. Something about it is hard to find. Something about it helps us achieve our goals if we talk about it. Agents will rarely talk about their feature list to a competitive agent. But, they will talk about how much they love their office, love their manager, and love what they’re accomplishing by working with you and their high-performing peers. It’s the buzz of an office that attracts prospects and makes them ask: I wonder what it’s like to work on their team?