Liar. Cheater. Loser. Choker. Incendiary rhetoric seems to be in vogue this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe consultants are like bloodsuckers. They\u2019re ten times worse than a real estate salesman or broker, ten times, which is saying pretty bad stuff.\u201d This was the biting yet confusing commentary from Donald Trump, a real estate salesman himself, at a recent political rally.<\/p>\n
The shots at real estate agents are coming from within the industry as well. Keller Williams\u2019 Chairman Gary Keller recently said that agents who buy leads from Zillow \u201care lazy and don\u2019t want to do the work.\u201d Surely many of his top agents and teams who effectively use the leads would disagree.<\/p>\n
Zillow\u2019s CEO Spencer Rascoff recently told CNBC that the company no longer wanted to work with agents who weren\u2019t \u201cgreat\u201d (they don\u2019t spend a lot of money on advertising). So they\u2019ll be \u201cculling\u201d those agents who aren\u2019t up to snuff. While a practical business move, avoiding a term associated with slaughtering inferior or surplus animals might be item #1 for the PR team\u2019s next executive media coaching session.<\/p>\n
Before we get self-righteous about these leaders\u2019 word choices, though, it\u2019s worth noting that this kind of language pervades much of the industry\u2019s conversations on the quality of real estate agents.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no shortage of snobbery and classist speech among agents and brokers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Just ask a high volume agent how we should raise the bar of professionalism in the industry:
\n\u201cRaise Realtor dues by 1000% and we\u2019ll lose 90% of the deadbeats who bring us down.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nTalk to boutique brokers about their counterparts:
\n\u201cThat head shop will hire anyone who can fog a mirror. Their agents are bottom feeders who don\u2019t sell anything and make us all look bad.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nYou hear it from speakers at industry conferences:
\n\u201cLet\u2019s use the 80\/20 rule. We need to get rid of the 80% of crappy agents who are making us look bad, so that the good agents who do 80% of the volume are the only ones left.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nThere are some really important conversations to be had about the quality of real estate agents in our industry. We want clear answers as to how we fix them problem. We want the answers to be simple.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, big answers are often necessarily complex. When we group real estate agents into simplistic silos to try to fix our issues, we do a disservice to ourselves.<\/p>\n
Volume does not equal quality<\/h2>\n
We can all agree that there are real estate licensees without the experience, ethics, education, or conscience necessary to serve their clients well. There are bad apples in our midst. They\u2019re a poison on our reputation and should not be allowed to sell real estate.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s not overreach with our reaction, though. This rhetorical journey usually ends with lower producing agents or those with non-traditional business models being given the scarlet letter and pronounced as a scourge on the industry.<\/p>\n
Volume does not equal professionalism or quality. We\u2019ve seen sweatshop practitioners become real estate celebrities, only to later lose their businesses and licenses when their practices came under scrutiny.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, some of the lowest-volume agents often have the most experience to with which to guide their clients. Agents who are nearing retirement will often shrink their active client base significantly. The buyers and sellers who work with them are afforded all of the benefits of an agent with decades of experience and insight, as well as a greater share of that agent\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n
The client who works with an agent who has only one client at the moment may be the client who is receiving the most comprehensive personal service possible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Then there are those \u201clazy\u201d agents who buy leads, or pay fees\/splits to others who prospect for them.\u00a0 Since when was specialization of skill and division of labor a sign of laziness?<\/p>\n
Selling vs. lead generation<\/h2>\n
Admittedly, this comes from my position of personal bias. We\u2019ve brought agents on to our team who were low volume producers before they joined. Most had experience, but didn\u2019t want to prospect anymore. They just wanted to work with clients and sell.<\/p>\n
Meet \u201cJane\u201d. She sold for 30 years before joining us. She is one of the smartest, most dependable, respectful, and effective agents we\u2019ve worked with.<\/p>\n
By many counts, she should have been tossed from the industry the year before because she only sold two homes. She sold 15 homes last year, a healthy business in a market like Seattle. It still probably wasn\u2019t enough for the sales police to label her volume sufficient. She\u2019s \u201clazy\u201d because she\u2019s relying on others to generate leads and focusing on her core skills of selling. She might just be \u201cculled\u201d with the other low-rung agents who provide outstanding service and consistently receive raving reviews from their clients.<\/p>\n
It’s more complex than that<\/h2>\n
To be fair, we\u2019re in an industry that has an unhealthy obsession with sales numbers. I\u2019ve stopped counting the number of times someone asked me, \u201cWhat kind of volume do you do?\u201d within the first two minutes of a conversation (It almost sounds like \u201cHow much do you bench, bro?”). So it\u2019s not surprising that an agent\u2019s volume is often the first metric many look to for a frame of reference. Volume makes a big difference in finding out whether or not an agent is good for your team, your office, and your business model.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s just not let it creep so far into the conversation about who deserves to belong within the greater industry. There are a lot of different business models, and different roles that fit within them. Not everyone needs to be a solo, door-knocking, cold-calling top producer to provide great service to clients.<\/p>\n
\u201cJane\u201d isn\u2019t. Her clients will scoff if you tell them that her volume and prospecting system make her a bad agent. If we\u2019re going to talk about improving the reputation of real estate agents, let\u2019s stay away from oversimplifications.<\/p>\n
The answer is more complex than volume or business model.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s about education, experience, dedication, and professionalism. Those are difficult things to measure, but improving an industry isn\u2019t supposed to be easy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Let\u2019s skip the simple labels. They\u2019re part of the problem.<\/p>\n
This editorial originally published on March 7, 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Liar. Cheater. Loser. Choker. Incendiary rhetoric seems to be in vogue this year. If we\u2019re going to talk about improving the reputation of real estate agents, let\u2019s stay away from oversimplifications. The answer is more complex than volume or business model.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":337393,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[254],"tags":[900,1234],"class_list":["post-7151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorials","tag-lead-gen","tag-real-estate-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/337393"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7151"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12608,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7151\/revisions\/12608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}