Love you, love you not
We all talk about Real Estate being about relationships. We all talk about the importance of harvesting those relationships so we have clients for life. We also (and when I say “we”, I mean those of us that contribute, comment and frequent Agent Genius and similar real estate blogs), see the power of blogging as a tool where we can actually interact, create dialog and ultimately harvest relationships.
So where am I going with this?….bear with me…..I do have a point
As an architect, I can tell you that in order to move up in the architecture world, sadly enough, I had to change firms every time. My sister is a well established and amazing architect and her promotions have always been due to her changing firms. This happens in many different industries – in order to grow as a professional and advance within the profession, change is inevitable, growth becomes a battle of egos. I find this extremely disturbing and it makes no sense to me whatsoever. The corporate world would rather loose a strong team player, one that is good for the company, one that has proven their worth, because of red-tape and corporate policy?
The real estate industry is changing right before our eyes. The big dogs (meaning big national real estate companies) are trying to keep up with the times, trying to understand changes, but most of them are missing the boat. Their business is about numbers, it’s about the number of new recruits and new agents they can get into their office, it’s about volume. They try to add a little technology into the mix to say they are keeping up with the times…..but what about relationships? What about treasuring those agents that have been loyal to them for years. Any chance to try to harvest THOSE relationships?
Then you have real estate agents that take listings and more listings, no matter the price, the location or the condition of the sale. They create mass marketing campaigns and their business model also becomes a numbers game – hey, if a couple of listings drop out, who cares? they still have the rest to balance off – it’s about volume. (Doesn’t matter if the old lady selling in order to afford an ALF, or the single mom who needs a new job) What happens to relationships then?
I also see this now in the blogosphere with regards to SEO. Some worry only about page rank and back-links and leads. Those things are important too, but don’t you think you should focus on content and quality first? What about relationships?
What I’m getting at is that we all need a balance. We need to take a good look in the mirror and understand what our intent is. Rick and I became REALTORS because the industry needed more people like us, that took their time to understand emotions and issues and placed the glorious dollar as a reward, not the goal. We want to work with companies that value us, we want to work with clients that see our worth, we want to blog to produce quality and know that by being smart, the SEO will follow.
I will not settle for less. I work to establish relationships and those that don’t appreciate relationships or could care less about what we stand for, please move over, there are plenty of people interested in working with you……and it’s not me.
Have you looked in the mirror lately?
**originally posted on AgentGenius.com **