: )

For the last 15 years, I’ve worked to help families with counseling, childcare, education, better schools, nicer neighborhoods, less crime, and healthcare. (Google it.) I’ve most enjoyed advocating for children with special needs (our son has Down syndrome) and Adoption (we adopted a “drug baby”). These have included taking phone calls and emails from parents at all hours from parents who had just found out their child would be born with or had a disability, and taking apart a County Foster-care agency that had let a pedophile staffer be quietly discharged to go work at 2 local schools.

I practiced as a real estate agent for only 1.5 years because I was disgusted by what I saw agents and lenders doing. EVERYONE with half-a-brain knew houses were over-priced. EVERYONE (except one guy I know) sold people homes and got them financed anyway.

Predatory-lending and Predatory-Realtoring was rampant.

How many people reading this right now went right along with it?

How many houses did they sell to families under the ethics shrug, “Well, it’s their choice… they’ll just buy one from someone else anyway?”

Financial stress is the #1 cause of divorce. Broken finances = Broken families. I’ve worked with these families and have felt the consequences. I quit the real estate business rather than skip away with commission checks.

Seriously. I’ll put my track-record of treating people up against anyone’s including his-most-awesomeness-Jay! lol Everyone loves Jay.

Anyway, I don’t much concern myself with with what people “say”…I like to dig into what they actually do/did/done.

I’m a misfit and when I’m not bouncing onto blogs like this … usually to do what many people do at bars on weekends i.e. let off some steam and end up acting inappropriately …

…I’m deadly serious about driving every bad real estate agent who did this stuff and has no clue and no remorse…out of business.

And, yup, this has pretty much to do with real estate search sites that capture leads and dominating the search engines.

P.S. No, I’m not really trolling for business here. I’ve taken “Social Media Strategies 101″ too – hell, I’ve taught it – and am perfectly capable of acting “appropriately” in order to “build relationships and generate business.”

Hey Benn, don’t forget that “101″ chapter about how to allow criticism of one’s self on one’s own blog so as to give one’s self more credibility. Not that that’s what you are doing…I’m just sayin’. (That’s a Jon Stewart reference.)

I’ll check back here in a week.

Jay, see the next post.

Whatever, Ben.

Why don’t you try taking a look at what people are offering before whining about them offering it.

You’re in Benn’s house, and some modicum of respect for him seems prudent. (Which includes, IMO, taking 2 seconds to spell his name correctly).

You’ve spoken volumes about how you approach business and customers. And people.

Sometimes selling is disguised as sharing, when it’s done poorly, it screams “spam”. I hear “screaming”.

My other comment, when I get busted for a misdeed, I repair my relationship by apologizing sincerely, not blaming.

My 27cents.

This is true in the Real Estate industry where very few agents could actually claim and prove that they could sell homes for more or help clients buy for less better than other agents.

So instead of helping agents to focus on their Unique Value Proposition which has to do with Product Selection, Quality, Service, Price, Likability/Trust and reflecting that via a good copywriter and a little work collecting statistics and testimonials – vendors first sold people on lousy technology gizmos.

Now vendors are selling agents on Social Media strategies.

Most of what I see is not “respect” for the consumer – that should be about improving the quality of your product/service – but rather fooling the consumer by focusing on the “Likability” part of the UVP and/or communicating things that have nothing to do with why an Agent’s service is better.

For example, Agents are told to post about local market statistics. That’s fine for generating traffic, but doesn’t say a thing (usually) about how the agent will use those statistics to help, for example, a seller realistically price their houses, or proof that the agent knows how to do this better than her competition.

It used to be that your friends were your friends and the sales guys were sales guys and you could tell the difference. Now courses are being taught on “how to pretend to be friendly and helpful so you can sell your junk.” I understand it and even have advised on people how to do it when I couldn’t get them to improve their product/service…but it’s a little distasteful.

(BTW, my last home sale after 1.5 years of being an “agent” was a 1.25 million home but I soon quit working as an agent because I thought my taking business away from really experienced/great agents was a crappy deal for consumers i..e my product wasn’t the BEST and I didn’t have time to improve it, so I Stopped Selling It.)

If you are not doing at least 6 transactions per month – stop worrying about Wuffie and Twitter and Blogging. Learn how to improve what you offer so it is better than your competition, how to succinctly communicate that (hire a copywriter), and get yourself a Home Search site “that captures leads,” and then follow-up instantly and constantly.

I’ll get off IDX sites for a moment, and recommend Matt Jones Favorite Agent “Listing Presentation” and a few of his Calculators that can help you show Sellers why other agents are lying about the effectiveness of their marketing strategies and when they say the home will sell.

Ari Galper, who is not a real estate guy, has the best way to offer a service or product in a straight-forward way without either False-Relationship Building or coming off as a sleazy salesman.

And yes, pick up a book or too on Usability in website design like “Keep it Simple”, subscribe to Marketing Experiments, hire a $15 php programmer out of India, and download the ListingPress plugin and design your own search website.

At any rate, my apologies for my spammy “sales pitch”. I actually really care about helping people and have seen a lot of agents hurt by bad advice and so when I see something that has the potential to “democratize” and “effectivize” realTech then I get excited.

Matthew and Diane, I really appreciate your comments.

P.S. Are “ideas” forums really about sharing good “ideas?” I can’t stand Bloodhound Blog’s nasty libertarian politics and bad business advice…but at least he’s honest about saying agents are stupid for building his business by posting on his site rather than on their own websites.

Ben, I am very curious. How much of your business comes from how this blog positions you as an expert? Are the ads a money maker…or is all this just a break-even thing?

We are all trying to make a living, and for us- all of us-, it involves sales. Regarding sales: I think we are not seeing so much a change in triggers regarding purchase; we are seeing a higher expectation of respect during the sales process. (I wasn’t an adult in the 50s either, Matthew, but have looked at a little of the advertising that worked, apparently, and it involved humiliation and more peer pressure than is overt now.)

That said, is a blog an appropriate forum for advertising? There are spots for it in sections so you can ignore it, just like when you use Google products for “free.”

But wouldn’t it be nice to keep an ideas forum as pure as we can? Respect me enough to realize that I can Google you to find your links. And I will.

Some time ago I posted a comment on AG that included links. I was curious as to why there was a delay in seeing my comment appear so I inquired as to the policy and Benn explained it exactly as he did above. I respect both his approach and wishes.

As the phrase “Real Estate Magazine” indicates that something – notably advertising – is being offered for sale, I wouldn’t think it appropriate to make too detailed a selling proposition here at AG; we have are own site for that.

That being said, I am damn tired of all the hypersensitivity about what is “right” regarding “selling”. I may not see the sea-change Benn sees regarding selling in the modern world, but I am willing to be wrong and Benn be right if it helps make me better at what I do. Discovering *how* to be effective in getting and keeping customers may change, but *that* getting and keeping customers is our intention has not. Are we really more sophisticated now than we were in the 1950′s? (I can’t answer that with certainty as I was not yet an adult at the time.) Perhaps so, but surely all accumulated knowledge regarding business-building did not pass away with the advent of the internet.

As I’ve seen other blogs eviscerate their guests while demanding perfect civility from them, I think Benn has offered a reasonable balance for valuing vendors for what they bring to the industry while offering good, objective analysis of tools that may be useful to readers.

A few years ago we participated in the-industry-biggy trade show. I climbed some stairs for an extensive view of what struck me as a showroom floor full of crap. So, I can’t really blame real estate practitioners from being vendor leery. I can, however, state that some provide real value, obviously.

We’re all in this together to some degree and cordiality is key.