This editorial piece was originally published here on AgentGenius on 02.11.08 and is still timely exactly three years later.
I made it through just under three minutes of Saul Klein’s how-to video on marketing before I called it quits. It wasn’t that the points were thoroughly irrelevant – to the contrary, it goes to the heart of what all the old-time sales trainers tell you. It’s just that I’ve heard it before.
If I had a nickel – the hell with that – if I had a closing for every time I heard that agents need to “go back to the basics,” I’d be writing this post to you from the beach. This a tough market, we’re told. Go back to the basics and you’ll succeed.
Some of those basics make sense – price homes well, pass on unsellable listings, etc. But there’s an undercurrent in the “go back to the basics” theme that’s disturbing, and that is these new-fangled methods such as the web and blogging and such are little more than diversions from true income-generating activities.
I can walk around the supermarket with my name tag on crooked and hope to start a conversation with someone who’s not actually a real estate agent – you can’t swing a cat by its tail without hitting three – or I can post to my blog and know the message will be seen by 100 or more people a day.
I can send out postcards destined for the trash heap or I can provide something of value – an IDX-based home search without registration required.
I can knock on doors or I can skip the front door and go straight to your monitor.
This isn’t to say there’s not value in the former; if such things work for you, do them. But stop telling me and everyone else that we have to “go back to the basics.” Looking back never is the solution when you need to move forward.
