I do explain my designations to my clients and prospective clients. However, some agents don’t and I think that is alright.

Some agents are bad agents no matter what designations they receive. You have to do business as well. However, I will say, I have never worked with a bad CRS designated agent!

My point is that more education for agents is needed. I think it is too easy for people to practice real estate. Getting a designation is just one way to achieve better agents, it is not the only way! I don’t think it is necessarily important to explain to your clients what each designation means, as long as you practice what you learned for their benefit.

Thanks for the discussion.

I am now enlightened!

How about “OAW” – “Only After Work can I show you those properties because real estate is only a part time gig for me” (Client told me his previous agent actually said that to him)

Thanks for the laughs!

Sadly, not everyone does. Some of the WORST agents I have ever worked with have the MOST designations.

The point of my post is that a designation is no longer an indicator of a quality agent – even though it should be.

Furthermore, I understand your point that you choose not to explain your designations to your clients. If you can run a successful real estate business w/o explaining the benefits of your designations to your clients, then awesome!

I just know that most consumers have NO IDEA what all those designation initials mean and therefore cannot/will not be able to make educated pre-decisions about an agent, when deciding who to work with.

Real estate is about the consumer, and I believe that if someone is going to take the time and effort to GET a designation, then they should “use that power for good” and explain what it means to the consumer – otherwise the “abrgricrsetc” just looks like agent-to-agent bragging rights.

I understood your article the first time around.

The very act of an agent spending time and money furthering their real estate education, through a professional designation, benefits their client without the WIIFM. Yes, explaining this to the client would be recommended, but even if they don’t explain the benefit of a particular designation, doesn’t make it meaningless. Their client will ultimately benefit by a MORE educated agent!

However, since I do not make any apologies nor defenses for the humor of my posts, I will just remind you what I wrote:

“Real estate designations only MEAN something if the agent actually uses the education that it TOOK to get the designation to better the real estate world around them and then goes onto explains the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) to their clients. Neither of which most designation-heavy real estate agents do… leaving their real estate designations relatively meaningless.”

You don’t have to explain to your clients what these designations mean because ultimately they benefit from the additional education their agent has over the other guy.

More education for our Realtor community should be praised, not made the butt of a mindless blog post!

schweet, Mariana!

These are really funny, and I love the 6th one that Matthew added in his comment! There certainly are plenty of the 2′s and 3′ floating around, and loads of the FOTB’s from Matthew.

Something about the ‘real’ NAR desigations – I hate it that you work really hard to earn some of them, and then you have to pay yearly to keep what you’ve rightfully earned. I finally gave up paying because it ticked me off that I was paying over and over for what should have been mine, since I did the work for it to begin with.

I fondly remember the doctor/professors I’ve worked with who, while having longs strings of very-hard-to-obtain designations appended to their name still wanted to be called “Bob”.

Some designations in real estate can get a bit hyperbolic, don’t you think? Oh, and here’s another for ya (from a post I just read on *another* real estate blog: FOTB – Full Of Themselves Blogger.

What a fun post! I love this. I hope I am already qualified for #1, 4 & 5. I’ll leave #2 & 3 for the others out there. Unfortunately there are far too many #2′s & 3′s in our industry.

You’ll notice I’ve already taken the liberty of adding eTwit to my business cards… http://www.flickr.com/photos/dalechumbley/2926574434/ ;?)