Often when home inventory service companies advertise, they show pictures of fires, tornados and floods. You also see these photos on their websites, brochures and other promotional materials. Why? Because marketing professionals state that you need to sell fear!
I don’t believe that’s always necessary. We used to! We had a photo of a house entirely engulfed in flames, a photo of a huge, dark tornado bearing down on a house and a gloved hand reaching through a smashed window. Fire! Tornado! Theft! We were getting our point across on our marketing materials.
But we weren’t covering all the other reasons one needs an inventory – many more reasons than just disasters. Now we rarely sell the fear, and don’t use these frightening scenes unless it applies specifically to a topic or article in our newsletter. You hear about ambulance chasing lawyers, surveillance companies who target business and industrial parks that are experiencing an increase in thefts and security sales reps who buy police department lists that give the names and addresses of victims of burglars. There is nothing wrong with that, as they are finding their target market.
But there are so many other reasons you need an inventory, that the fear seemed to be getting in the way of our message. Our message about peace of mind! Estate planning, financial planning, divorce and pre-nuptials agreements are just a few. Determining the value of your business assets to you know if you’re filing an accurate personal property tax return is a good reason to have an inventory of your business contents. Are you planning on buying or selling a business? Knowing the value of the assets when is essential to help determine the true value of that business.
One of our customers talks about the fact that having an inventory of your belongings isn’t about fear; it’s truly about taking control! She knows that life has a way of changing unexpectedly. She states that it is not about fear or unnecessary worry. For the same reasons that you lock your homes when you leave, it is about taking control of your life and being responsible. In times of strife, wouldn’t you want to recover your losses as quickly as possible?
It’s about taking control. It’s about peace of mind, not just recovering from a disaster. It’s about knowing your estate is recorded now so your executor (usually a sibling, son or daughter) doesn’t have to deal with this later – when under the sadness of your death. It’s about control of your financials, making sure you can recover sufficiently if you have a claim so your investments aren’t tapped just to repurchase items your insurance didn’t cover.
Many people state ‘it’ won’t happen to them. They are talking about disasters. And we do have a tag line that provides a reminder that you need to know what you own if you want to recover properly. But other life experiences require an inventory, too, and we believe we must also provide marketing materials that discuss that, too. Death happens, retirement happens, divorce and 2nd marriages happen. We feel it is important to let people know that having the knowledge of what they own is about much more than just the fear of a fire, a burglary or a tornado, it’s knowing you have information that will be needed, if not now – someday. And that message would be lost if all we focused on was the fear of a disaster.
