these codes could be huge in our business, as more web content is viewed using mobile devices.  while less than 25% of cell service customers have smart phones and other mobile devices make up an even smaller percentage, the mobile web won’t stay in its nascent stage very long. in fact, current estimates place the number of web pages viewed on mobile devices higher than those viewed on desktops.

scratching my head

within days of posting that blurb i had the good fortune of meeting with the folks at toor.me, a company that generates qr codes as part of its virtual tour offering to real estate agents. their director of business development, nick smoot, shared with me a story of a presentation he had done for a mid-size brokerage.  nick had finished his presentation to the broker of the firm, showing the owner how consumers are using their smart phones to access information on listed properties.  at the end of the presentation, the broker told nick that he was impressed by the service. “but my agents don’t have smart phones” were the next words out of the owner’s mouth.

for the last time, it’s not about you

if i would’ve been there i would’ve sprayed coffee through my nose at that remark. nick was very diplomatic in his reply, but the fact that the broker even said it is evidence of how the vast majority of this industry still thinks – it’s about us.

newsflash. it’s never been about us. this provider-centric mentally has hung on far too long in our industry and needs to have a stake driven through its heart.  it’s about the consumer. the highest life form on the planet.  let’s get over ourselves and start focusing on what the consumer wants, how they buy and what they use in their decision making process.  cuz if we don’t, someone else is going to step in front of us and help the consumer.

but then, that’s my opinion. maybe i’m just nuts.

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if you’re relatively new to social networking, let me offer one word of advice: don’t talk business all the time.  ok, that’s more like six words of advice, but it bears repeating: don’t talk business all the time.  there.  now you’ve got twelve words of advice.

what i’m talking about here is the status updates so prominently featured in all social networks – facebook, linkedin, plaxo, ecademy, twitter, etc.  you know them by various questions – “what are you doing?” or “what are you working on now?”  invitations prompting you to tell your network what’s going on in your life at that moment.  handy little snippets of information to help your connections keep up with you.

some take the status update literally, offering up every nuance of their day, such as “having pancakes with my 9 year old,” or “going for my 3rd cup of starbucks this morning.”  not that there’s anything wrong with that.  just as long as these types of updates are done in moderation and with a modicum of taste.  believe me, when you start telling me about your dog’s bm’s, i’m gonna have to pass and say tmi.

others take the status update opportunity as an open invitation to smother you with marketing messages.  in the real estate industry, i see this all the time, and especially on facebook.  realtors who throw every listing into their status updates, hoping to expose their property to a buyer lurking in their network.  these same realtors place every price reduction, open house, buyer tour and offer they’re presenting in the feed, thinking that their network wants to hear about it.  well, newsflash kids.  they don’t.

would you subscribe to comcast if they only showed commercials?

the reason i accepted your friend request on facebook or decided to follow you on twitter was that i wanted to get to know more about you, the person.  heck, even connecting with you on linkedin i had hoped to learn something more than the product or service you were selling.  i was looking for some value in our connection.  instead, you give me spam.

you see, i’ll take a promotional plug every once in awhile, but if you’re going to pollute my stream with advertising constantly, why would i want to stay connected / continue following / be your friend?  i mean, would you pay comcast a monthly subscription if their programming only offered commercials?  didn’t think so.

stop social network pollution

if you’re currently using your status updates, wall posts and tweets to talk business incessantly, stop it.  stop it now.  do it before i unfollow / unfriend / disconnect you from my network.  and if you run across someone within your networks that’s bombarding you with marketing, send them a nice note encouraging them to provide those messages a little less frequently. and if they continue spamming you after your friendly warning, nuke em.

if you don’t, they’ll make you crazy.

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oh yeah?

it all started with a comment from one well intentioned realtor to an agent that had been posting listings on facebook without using the state required information for real estate advertising (brokerage name, etc.). the well intentioned realtor pointed out, nicely, that the posting agent should consider adding that information so as not to run afoul of the authorities. the response back from the posting agent was less than polite, spurring other agents to jump in and respond in agreement with said well intentioned realtor. after some discussion (public, no less, on each party’s wall), the final response from the posting agent to one of the commenters amounted to a very public insult, likely a violation of a standard of practice from the realtor’s code of ethics.

if you can’t say something nice about someone…

my mother always told me, “if you can’t say something nice about someone, at least wait until they leave the room.” well, social networking sites like facebook are big rooms, and even though we may think we’re talking directly to someone there, we need to remember that other ears may be listening. conversations or posts placed on walls and through status updates are very public, and can be used against us if we’re not careful about what we say. to air a personal beef in such a public forum not only tarnishes the image of the person hurling epithets, but brings the rest of us down to that level, lumping us all into the back-biting, opportunist, i’d-step-over-your-body-to-close-a-sale image that many in the public have for our profession.

leave me outta this

i’d just as soon not be categorized into that group, thank you very much, so for those of you engaged in this type of “smackdown engagement,” please stop showing your lunacy and childish behaviour in public.  take your disagreements and petty arguments offline.  pick up the phone and yell at someone in private if you must, just don’t malign the rest of us with your antics.  we’ve already got enough of an uphill battle to convince the consumer we’re not crazy.

and sometimes that’s not an easy task.

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but when you’re closing transactions that require 6 pounds of paper to fulfill every party’s legal and business requirements in order to make the file “complete,” doesn’t it seem like we’re missing something?  the focus to this point in nar’s green programs has been primarily on green building, sustainable living, energy-saving appliances and reducing the carbon footprint of buyer, seller and realtor (don’t drive buyers all over town without qualifying properties).  it would seem to me that we should be highlighting the tremendous waste and inefficiency of our transactions first, reducing the number of trees we grind into pulp from three to less than one for the paperwork required for each closing.

how far does this go?

i used to teach classes to realtors in california on how to work with first time home buyers.  one of the early sections of the course dealt with the angst first time purchasers felt with the process and the paperwork.  to illustrate how daunting it seemed to the uninitiated, i taped, end-to-end, each of the required documents (only those required to write the purchase contract with the realtor, not the required documents from title, lender, etc.), and unrolled the result down the center of the classroom.  it unfurled about 25 feet.

it was a great learning tool to illustrate the number of documents required to initiate the purchase.  it didn’t take into account the fact that these forms were produced in triplicate (if not more!), and didn’t address how many of these documents would be faxed and copied for distribution to other parties, increasing the amount of paper needed to ensure a successful (closed) transaction.  looking back, i think if i would’ve added the lender’s docs and title company’s forms to that roll, i would’ve had a paper trail that would’ve encircled the building!  now that would’ve scared some first time buyers, and it likely would’ve caused some of those newly licensed realtors to reconsider their new vocation.

in a recent transaction, i had to print each document out in hard copy, fax it into the transaction management system provided by my office (does anyone else think this is wrong?), then forward it on to the listing agent.  she in turn emailed a copy to her client, who then had to print it out, sign it, scan it and return it to her agent.  the listing agent would then forward back to me, and both of us would print the document out and place it in a file folder.  if you lost count, that’s four documents reproduced from one.  multiply that by several necessary forms, many with multiple pages, and you can see how a transaction file can go from a thin folder to the size of the denver phone book in short order.

now, to be fair, shame on us for being enablers.  but when it’s acceptable practice, and the offices, agents, title companies and lenders are not equipped to perform in the digital age, the transaction will flow like water – taking the path of least resistance.  in this case, pulping three trees into paper.

a novel concept

why not implement some new ideas that might get us moving more quickly into a more environmentally friendly transaction?  borrowing a page from the compliance market, let’s implement a similar program to the carbon offset approach, in which companies (and now individuals in the voluntary market) can mitigate their own greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing offsets.  it’s kind of like, “i know i’m going to be bad, so let me pay for being bad.”  not that we’ll change our “bad” behavior, but we’ll have our penance.  and salvage our conscience.

an even easier plan would be to provide a disincentive for paper use to all parties involved in a transaction.  for every pound of paper produced, the closing company will assess each of the offending parties for their overindulgence in paper.  realtor – three pounds of paperwork will cost you $300.  title company – your hit is $600.  problem solved.

now we’ll have to get the state’s department of weights and measurements involved.  i smell a new tax.  crazy.

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albert einstein is credited with the quote defining insanity as “…doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  a lot of people refer to the real estate business as “insane,” but most are referring to the dramatic cycles of the market and the frenetic pace at which business is conducted when making that reference.  personally i’m wondering if the use of that term in explaining the real estate industry isn’t an apt use of einstein’s definition.

Photo from www.istockphoto.com

i’m not suggesting that the real estate industry is rife with lunatics, but i’m often perplexed why so many agents (and companies) in real estate cling to old, unproductive methods in plying their trade, especially in light of the market in most parts of the country.  yet so many agents, brokers, lenders and other service providers continue to do business the same way it’s been done for many years – same methods of prospecting, same methods of marketing, same manner of dealing with transactions.  and somehow, many of those same individuals and companies expect they’re going to see different results from those efforts.

insane to think consumers will continue to respond to the same old marketing tactics. crazy to ignore what consumers want or how their buying behaviors have changed. demented to think that, in the new world order of doing business in a streamlined, efficient fashion, the byzantine and plodding real estate transaction as it’s now carried out will continue without challenge by consumers.

it can’t continue.  the real estate industry has got to move beyond the old methods and embrace the new, paying particular attention to what consumers want, where they congregate, what messages are relevant to them.  stopping the madness of the property flyers stuffed in real estate agents’ mailboxes, submitting a property to the mls and praying that it will sell, using web 1.0 to market in a web 2.0 world.

unless there’s a change in the thought process, the methods of interacting with consumers, and a willingness to engage consumers through blogging, social networking and the other tools of social media, many in the real estate industry will slowly go mad, doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

if you’re in the real estate industry and reading this, my hope is that you are not one being fitted for a long shirt with sleeves that tie in the back.

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