I am listening to a motivational CD set right now, recorded from a 3 day Real Estate conference with top agents telling their “secrets to success”. One of the speakers talks about how one of the best reasons you want to stay consistent in your sales and income, is it allows you to provide better service and more honest advice to your clients. He said the reason for this, is that when you have money in the bank, you can give them the best and most un-bias advice. When your “hungry”, he says, it’s simply human nature to be somewhat bias and possibly pushy in your handling and advice with your prospects and clients. As an example (using his theory), if someone is considering renting, or selling their home, the hungry agent would be much more likely to insist that it is an excellent idea to sell, and not rent, when in fact, the best thing for that client may be to advice renting at that time.
I had a hard time with this when I first heard it. It made sense, but it also rang loudly in my head as a misnomer, and just way too overly simplistic of an assumption to make about Realtors. Am I really going to start giving people bad advice (on the biggest decision of their life) because I haven’t had a closing in a month? For me, and I think most Realtors who are experienced professionals, you would just never operate that way.
A good Realtor is really not a salesman, or atleast should not consider him or herself one. You want to be considered a trusted advisor and consultant, who always (even if the person is not buying or selling right now), gives thoughtful and honest advice regarding Real Estate. Most good Realtors realize that focusing on the quickest way to make a commission, is the surest way to have a short career in Real Estate. The way to stay productive is to always be serving everyone with your very best input and energy, “hungry” or not. That is how you build a business with repeat and referrals
So when this Real Estate “Expert” spoke about this, to me it felt degrading in many ways, and I think it spoke to the type of agents who create a bad reputation for the industry. It’s just a different paradigm. When good agent’s are “hungry” for a sale, they don’t change their advice to clients, they just get focused on how to be more productive. They do more lead generating activities, and perhaps focus extra attention on their best priced listings that are priced-to-sell, or start working even harder to find the needle-in-the-haystack home for one of their pickier buyers.
If an agent is productive right now, it does matter. But only because it shows they know how to be productive in their business in this current Real Estate market. Also, this gives them better knowledge of the current inventory and the current market trends.
So bottom line is, if I am looking for a Realtor to refer to my Gran
dmother in Utah (as an example), I would not be concerned with how many deals they’ve done in the last 2 months. If the agent is capable of being pushy in anyway to my Grandma, hungry or not, I did a terrible job picking a Realtor.
