Author: cunninghamsyndicate

Sales Series Part 5 – Advertising Options

cunninghamsyndicate April 7, 2022
Advertising options
Our fifth and final installment of the sales series is all about location, location, location. It’s as true in horse sales as it is in real estate. Where you place advertisements for your horses will have a huge impact on how quickly your horse sells. There are a number of sales websites out there, each with their own niche that they serve. If you place your horse in the wrong one, you may not get much traction. That doesn’t mean you should simply place ads in all of them though. I know, I know, I can hear people screaming at me about how you never know where a buyer is going to come from. But in reality and in my experience, that is just not the case.
Time and money should be spent marketing your horse in the place that is most likely to produce a buyer quickly. The more time I spend answering emails and phone calls from someone with a $5K budget that just wants more pics of your pretty $50K horse, the less time I’m able to spend engaging with buyers who actually have the budget to buy him. (That means you’ll be spending more money while it takes longer to sell him!) So choose your websites carefully, and post the horse in the place most likely to generate interest from serious buyers and not just a bunch of tire kickers.
Social media is another important avenue, but it has gotten rather tricky to market horses in most social media platforms as they’ve cracked down hard on any type of animal sales. Pages, groups, and even personal profiles have been shut down, restricted or banned, and posts are constantly being deleted. It’s still possible if you know how to work around the systems, but it gets more challenging by the day. Still, for those savvy enough to stay one step ahead of the ban hammer, social media, and especially Facebook, are still the priority place to display your horse.
Also of note are the vast connections that a professional has. In addition to posting the horse in the right places online, we can get in touch with the dozens of trainers all over the country and even the world to let them know about the horse. And often times, they’re contacting us on a regular basis too to see if we have anything currently that fits the needs of a client they’re shopping for. So while that’s “free” advertising, it is not something to discount because a lot more horses sell that way than through ads.
All in all, you can have all the other parts absolutely spot on, but if you don’t put them in the right place to be seen by the right people then you’re going to be sitting on the horse, and all it’s associated bills, for quite some time. After all, you wouldn’t go to the middle of the Amazon rain forest to buy an Aston Martin DBS Superleggera, would you? It doesn’t matter how nice the car is, no one is going to see it, and thus no one is going to buy it. (But if anyone wants to buy that divine specimen of magnificent machinery for me, I will *find* a way to get to the middle of the Amazon!)
I hope this little series has helped you somewhat in marketing your horse better and more successfully! There is definitely a lot that goes into it, especially when you need consistent results and want to get top dollar. Of course, if it’s left you a bit overwhelmed, or if you have a horse that just doesn’t seem to be selling, I’m happy to chat with you to see if I can help. The market is red-hot right now for quality dressage horses, so if your horse has been sitting on the market for a while then there’s something not right about the way it’s being marketed. Just shoot me a message, or give me a call at 815-861-3005 and we’ll get a plan set up to get your horse sold

Sales Series Part 4 – Pricing

cunninghamsyndicate April 7, 2022
Pricing
Part four of this series is about pricing. This one is a bit tricky, and typically everyone’s least favorite part of the process. There are so many things that can influence the price of a horse from breeding to competition history to potential, from the economy as a whole to the actual location of the market you’re selling in. It’s highly subjective, and often times the number one thing that stops a sale from happening. But if you can price your horse accurately, along with the other pieces of this puzzle being in place, quick sales can and do happen quite often.
When it does stop a sale from happening, it’s almost always because the price is too high based on the presentation of the horse (pictures, videos, misrepresented, etc.), as well as the other outside influences listed above. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, no one is gonna pay $50K+ for a Frankenhorse.
That said, it’s also one of the easiest things to get right if you work with a professional who knows the market, knows what horses are selling for, and knows how to price your horse to sell quickly. This is one of the most challenging things I have to discuss with sellers though. Everyone wants to get the most money they can, sure. And as an agent, it’s in my best interest to do so as well since I’m getting a commission. But it’s also in my best interest as a professional to make sure you’re not stuck paying several thousands of dollars more in board and training over the next 6 months just to get a couple thousand more on the sales price. That goes directly to my reputation as a seller’s agent, and I take it seriously.
Contrary to popular belief, I (and I’m guessing the hundreds of other trainers who sell horses, though I can’t truly speak for them) do not want to keep your horse there for those extra 6 months to get the board and training money out of you. Why? Because then you go and tell all your friends that I couldn’t get your horse sold, and they should send theirs somewhere else to sell. I want your horse to sell quickly, at a good price, so you go and tell all your friends that they should send their horses to me to be sold. But if you demand $50K for your Frankenhorse when the market will only pay $40K max, then it’s going to be hanging out for a while until that one buyer out of 10 million comes along who is willing to pay that price, or until the value of the horse increases. And in the meantime, you’ve spent an additional $15K on board, training, farrier, vets, shows, etc.
When you place a horse with a professional to sell, part of their job is to price the horse, based on all the other factors, in a place where visits start to happen almost immediately, offers start coming in within a few weeks, and the horse is sold ideally within 90 days. Less time is better, but that’s the max. If you’re not getting that, then your horse is likely overpriced and/or undermarketed. So then you need to ask yourself which it is. If your sales agent has been suggesting you drop the price, that may be the next step. If it’s a problem of being undermarketed, meaning the videos, pictures, etc are either not good enough quality or simply aren’t being distributed strongly enough to generate interest (ad distribution is coming up in the next post), then it may be time to find someone else to sell your horse.

Sales Series Part 3 – Ad Copy

cunninghamsyndicate April 7, 2022
Part three of our sales talk, the ad copy.
For those unfamiliar with the term, ad copy simply means the written part of your advertisement. This is also an important piece of the presentation, though for me not as much so as the pictures and video. Buying a horse is far more visual in the ad, and kinesthetic in person. Couple that with the fact that nearly every single ad you’ll ever read sounds exactly the same… FEI Potential! Uphill mover! Olympic Gold Medal Prospect! Great hind leg! Etc. Etc. Etc. Then you look at the pictures and the horse looks like it hasn’t had a bath since it’s mom first licked it clean when it was born, and the video shows a horse that’s lame in all 4 legs and is so hindquarters-high that you’ll get a nosebleed if you were to stand up on it’s rump like it seems so popular to do these days.
But still, some effort should be put in writing the copy. There is nothing that buyers hate more than a misrepresented horse, so don’t say your horse has FEI potential if it fits the above description. That’s not to say you should make your copy a laundry list of the problems it has. Again, we’re trying to leave the buyer wanting more information so they call you. But barn blindness is a real thing, and the best thing you can do for your reputation as a seller, and to keep people coming back to buy more, is to honestly and objectively represent your horses.
Psychology plays a big part here though, so do try to word your ad to play more on emotion than logic. There’s a common saying in marketing that when someone comes in to buy a drill, that’s not actually what they want. What they want is a hole in something. You don’t sell them the drill by listing all it’s technical features. You sell them the drill by showing them how easy and wonderful of a hole they’ll get with it. Sell the hole, not the drill.
If your horse is being marketed as a pleasure horse that is easy to ride, never spooks, is low maintenance, etc, then paint a picture of how the buyer can enjoy peaceful trail rides where they can just let their worries disappear for a while. Or perhaps it could also be marketed as a “husband horse” so you can spend more quality time doing things together. If it’s truly a top quality competition horse, paint the picture of the rider progressing through the levels with the horse and going to championships.
Be creative, but also be honest in your ad copy. Again, it’s the sellers that misrepresent their horses that give a bad name to all sellers. But for the seller that can create an honest picture of how their horse will help the buyer achieve what they want, there’s a deal ready to be made with that buyer who is desperately searching for your ad after 6 months of frustration looking at bad ads and misrepresented horses.