Form any of you that have been in the industry for any amount of time a title that involves “21st Century Top Producer” can probably give you visions of the half human, half robot agent that so many believe that you have to become going forward if you want to experience any kind of success. But I am not sure that this combination is necessary.
Let me back up a little bit though. Currently I have the great opportunity to keynote events for REALTORS all over. This is a topic that I see, and have spoken about, quite often and it is amazing just how much the content behind it can vary. Some believe that to be a 21st Century Top Producer you must transform your whole life into a mobile tech lab ready to fire off an email or download the latest iPhone app at a moment’s notice. Others believe that going forward we have to get back to the basics of what real estate has always been about, which is people. So which side do you fall on?
The truth is that I don’t pledge allegiances to either side. While I believe greatly in the latest technologies and applications that are released on a daily basis, so much so that I educate REALTORS about them every month in a program I call THE PULSE, I also hold firm in my belief that the real estate industry really hasn’t changed in the last 30 years. It has been and will always be about people, relationships, networking, belly-to-belly and face-to-face. Whether we were going door-to-door ten years ago or sending out emails to our database last week, the ultimate goal is the same; we are trying to connect and engage in a way that keeps us top of mind with our consumers when they do eventually make the decision to buy or sell. So while the industry may not have changed,what has changed is how we get to the point of conversion. So how do we accomplish this in the “new world” in which we are currently living?
In my opinion, there are two areas that REALTORS are going to have to master if they want to compete going forward and earn the title of 21st Century Top Producer. The first is that they must not only remain updated on the newest tools and technologies coming out, but they also must be able to decipher which ones are here to stay so that they can implement them into their businesses.
Let me start off by saying that the core mission of any REALTOR must remain the same. It is to assist people in buying and selling homes. It is literally that simple. But how we do this has got to change as we go forward. Take the door knocking example I used above. It was not abnormal just ten to fifteen years ago to hear a knock on your door and be greeted by someone trying to sell you a set of encyclopedias. It seems crazy today but that was the norm for that time frame. Can you imagine if someone did this now? I don’t know about you but I am not only not buying whatever the salesman at the door is selling, I am actually angry that they came to my house uninvited and interrupted my time with my family! And yet many REALTORS have still found success in today’s world with this door-to-door strategy, so the question is not whether it works or not. The real question is whether it could be more efficient. This leads me to my first example of a 21st Century Top Producer being aware of and implementing the newest tools available to them to bridge the gap between the way things were once done and how they are done now, which will ultimately benefit their clients.
There is a new technology out called predictive analytics that I think is going to change the way that REALTORS operate. We all know that certain life scenarios can make people more likely to buy or sell than at other times. For example, if a young couple gets engaged or finds out that they are pregnant, statistics tell us that they are far more likely to buy or sell than if they hadn’t gotten engaged or were not pregnant. This is true for many scenarios. Even in situations where someone has passed away it is likely that a member of their family is going to take power over their possessions, including their house, and eventually end up selling it. What predictive analytics does is track these types of life scenarios through “big brother,” the internet. Every time someone updates a Facebook status, tweets, writes a blog, or even posts engagement pictures in their local paper which end up in their online version, predictive analytics makes a note of it. In the end what they do is sell lists to REALTORS of people that, based on their current life scenarios, have a twenty to thirty percent chance of buying or selling in the next six months. This is amazing!
www.garealtor.com GEORGIA REALTOR I 11
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