Notorious R.O.B.

Few months ago, I asked “What Makes an Agent Good?” and triggered a bit of a conversation.  I was after an objective standard of quality by which a particular real estate agent can be measured, but ended up in a discussion (which is still ongoing one way or another) about professionalism, understanding technology, perspectives, and viewpoints, and so on.

Marc Davison, of 1000watt, even wrote a post somewhat in response and concluded:

A bad Realtor is one whose marketing effort for a six figure listing pales in comparison to a seven-year old’s playful regard for his $11.95 pet dinosaur.

A good agent is one who says “no problem, I’ll take care of that” when asked to compensate for the bad agents job.

As much as I like that colorful description, it still raised more questions than it answered and didn’t provide a framework for analysis.  In what way does a bad Realtor’s effort pale in comparison?  If comparing two Realtors with each other, does the one who puts out more effort automatically trump the one who doesn’t?  Would the agent who hires a skywriting airplane be “better” than the one who doesn’t?

Over the weeks, I’ve been turning the question over in my head.  Then I found the answer today.

What Makes A Realtor Good: Ease of Use

The answer came from a law blog I read periodically. Dan Hull of What About Clients is one of the finest commentators on issues of client service, from a lawyer’s perspective, but other service professionals can learn much from him.

His post, Ease-of-Use for Services: Will we ever get there? is an eye-opener.  Read the whole thing.  Dan posits that companies in every sector are competing more and more on concepts of ease of use, and advocates that services companies also embrace the concept, as difficult as it is:

Law firms, of course, have always sold services. And we are a small but powerful engine in the growth of the services sector. We strategize with and guide big clients every day. While that’s all going on–day in and day out–what is it like for the client to work with you and yours? Are clients experiencing a team–or hearing and seeing isolated acts by talented but soul-less techies? Do you make reports and communications short, easy and to the point? Who gets copied openly so clients don’t have to guess about who knows what? Is it fun (yeah, we just said “fun”) to work with your firm? How are your logistics for client meetings, travel and lodging? Do you make life easier? Or harder? Are you accessible 24/7? In short, aside from the technical aspects of your service (i.e., the client “is safe”), do your clients “feel safe”?

What if law firms–or any other service provider for that matter–”thought through,” applied and constantly improved the delivery of our services and how clients really experience them?

And then competed on it…? (Emphasis added)

A lightbulb went off in my head.

Following Dan’s lead, I am ready to advocate that what makes one realtor superior to another is ease of use.  Her services are easier to use for the client than another realtor’s services.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is from a conversation I had at Inman SF ’2008. Perhaps conversation is too dignified a term for what was actually going on at the time, since all of the participants were three sheets into the wind by that point in the night. Let’s call it more like… inspired spouting of words between people who were far too happy for that time of night. I believe the participants were Jeff Corbett, Daniel Martin, Joseph Ferrara, Dr. Salvatore Giammarresi (who just might be the smartest guy in real estate), and Jessie Beaudoin from Retrove. I say “I believe” because well, see aforementioned number of sails and the wind and the effects thereunto. For all I know, Santa Claus was at the discussion and I may not remember.

Nevertheless… we somehow got onto the topic of business models because I had recently written a post criticizing Zipvo’s business model. Let’s just say that some of the folks agreed with me, while others thought I was hitting the ye olde pipe pretty hard. When you’re in San Francisco, with a bunch of young real estate tech people, discussing startup concepts, business models, and such is inevitable. I just couldn’t help but think that many of the ideas I was hearing were weak, and fundamentally weak, because of a simple definition problem: Who is the customer? Read the rest of this entry »

I think Pat Kitano at TransparentRE is one of those guys who has brilliant and useful insights to anyone interested in exploring what Real Estate 2.0 might look like.  And despite disagreeing with him on a specific thing here or there in the past, I continue to think his blog is valuable and his insights invaluable.  His latest is no exception:

Blogging is currently touted as real estate marketing’s magic bullet, but many new real estate bloggers don’t realize that the impact of blogging lies in its ability to build a social and informative relationship with its readers. Simply put, the consumer wants a social relationship with no tit-for-tat, not a business relationship in which the agent shares their expertise in exchange for the implicit obligation that the consumer owes them. This is one major difference between soft sell and hard sell… the hard sell obligation seeds the “call for action”, and  consumers cringe from this arm-twisting implication.

The brand new real estate blogger, knowing nothing about blogging culture, often uses the blog construct as a kind of daily loudspeaker trumpeting their business prowess. Every article is another opportunity to present various aspects of their business (see these two example blogs ) – foreclosure help, requesting referrals from other agents, their property listings, success stories – and are peppered with links to call and email them at the end of every single article. Almost all of the blogs I see that do this only last a few months if that long, and then these bloggers complain that blogging doesn’t work. Of course not, their blogs reinforce everything the consumer doesn’t want to see – a self aggrandizing sales person intent on bugging them as a component of their “contact database”.

That sound you hear is me standing up yelling, “Hear hear!”  And “preach it brotha!”  And so forth.

Here’s the thing, though, for both Pat and myself and other cheerleaders of the new Real Estate 2.0 paradigm.  Pat writes:

And best of all, the enlightened blogging agent doesn’t need to rely upon all those resource intensive, intrusive consumer reach out tactics to win business, he/she becomes the recipient of the “out of the blue” phone call when one of their blog readers decides to explore becoming a client.

Any proof to this claim?

In other words, what evidence is there that this “new marketing” works better for agents than the “old marketing”?  And I include myself in this challenge.  I advocate a Cluetrain method of marketing, but can’t show you any ROI comparing the non-Cluetrain companies to Cluetrained companies.  In fact, there is some evidence that suggests that the Old Way is very much alive and well, even in an industry as “clued-in” as computer hardware and software.  Apple is the furthest thing from Cluetrain or New Marketing, but their success speaks for itself.

Anecdote is not the plural of evidence.  That one agent here or there claims that blogging has completedly changed her business around is not evidence that the new non-intrusive marketing approach yields a better return on investment than the old-school hard-sell method.

What data, what metrics are available to show that in fact those agents who practice the non-intrustive New Marketing are more successful in dollars and cents terms than those who do not?  Is there any data from ActiveRain or one of the blog-focused realty companies or blogging coaches to show that the social-network marketing, soft-sell method is more effective?  I’m looking for classic lift-over-control metrics here.

If such data does not exist, then we need a marketing firm or a smart market researcher to do a comprehensive, statistically valid study on this topic.  If we’re going to advocate a New Marketing for real estate, and advocate a Real Estate 2.0, then we have to be able to prove that our method in fact works to make more money for its practitioners than the Old School hard-sell method.

Of course… as a blogger just opining away, I reserve the right not to undertake such an expensive, time-consuming study before opening my virtual yap.  But we have to have proof that what we advocate works.

-rsh