if you’ve been in this industry even a short time, you’ve noticed the onslaught of letters – a.k.a. designations – following behind many agents’ names. achieving these designations can represent quite an accomplishment and an investment of time and money, not to mention gathering some worthwhile knowledge and skills to provide a higher level of service to our clients. and many of those can provide a competitive leg up in a difficult market.
alphabet soup
but it would appear we’re headed overboard in our pursuit of designations in the real estate industry. some agents have taken to fold-out cards to accomodate all their designations, and there are new designations being marketed each month to an insatiable market of letter hungry real estate practitioners. when is enough enough?
‘splain please
i know. sounds funny coming from a guy that’s got enough letters behind his name to ensure a win at scrabble, but seriously – do we really need all those designations? sure, the education’s worthwhile, but after you’ve got 3 or 4 under your belt, is it necessary to promote the other 3 or 4? who’s going to care? or even know what they mean?
i’ve had my crs designation for 15 years now, and although the council of residential specialists does the best job at promoting their designation to the general public, i still find myself explaining to clients what those 3 letters behind my name mean. now add abr, crb, gri and e-pro, and you can see how i’m spending even more time explaining what those letters mean. still, i find value in the designations and the education i received in achieving them, but i’m not too wild about taking more courses just to get some more letters behind my name. in fact, i’m currently working on other designation courses, but will likely choose not to promote those designations for fear of needing aforementioned fold-out card.
i don’t know. is it just me, or is this crazy?
22/07/2009 at 8:52 am Permalink
Testing to see if a comment left on a post changes the layout of the “comments” graphic on the page.