I don't see to many posts on here that really make the distinction between the two. Are you a Realtor? Yes, you all have your license, but are you really a Realtor? Do you know your job as good as you should? Do you continue to become educated? Do your run your Real Estate business as a business? Do you have a solid customer service program? I could go on, but I think you get the point.
Or, are you a marketer? Do you spend all your time figuring out lead conversion and capture? (yes if you know me I'm an addict!) Do you spend your advertising dollars on brand marketing? Print? TV? Radio? and so one!
In the end, you have to be good at both of these aspects of business. I see many Realtors who really don't care about being a Realtor. They just want to make money from customers with the least amount of work they can possibly do. I see this all the time and it's really disheartening to me. They give the customer the minimal customer service to get by while earning a very large commission. I don't know if these people actually look in the mirror to judge themselves, I know I couldn't if I was like that.
I think if you are going to be a Realtor you need to spend a ton of time becoming the best you can be. After all, our customers are depending on us to help them through their most important purchase of their lives.
On the marketing end, there are a lot of "celebrity" Realtors. These are the Realtors you see marketing themselves all over town. In our area, these are the Realtors I that should be .... well I won't say that because it won't be nice.
I'm a believer that if you are going to market yourself as something special, then you really need to be that someone special. If you are getting tons of leads with your marketing but not helping your customers, what is your purpose? I know, to make money. To me, one of the best parts of being a Realtor is the smile and gratitude that I get from my customers when we close on their dream home. I can't imagine the Agents who really are marketers know what I'm talking about. They most likely wouldn't really care about the customer as they need to get to the bank to cash their check.
So why am I talking about this? It's an interesting question to me. Mos to the Agents that I see marketing themselves tremendously are some of the worst. Then there are companies like my company that just our Internet marketing program, don't worry about branding, and do an incredible job of taking care of our customers. I guess I wish the "celebrity" Realtors would take a lesson in life and start helping their customers and not selling their customers because of their marketing.
Ok, I know this is a little negative for me, but I have seen a few things lately that disgust me. I've seen so many bad Realtors in our business totaly ruin our reputations and frankly I'm sick of it. I think it's time to start building our reputation back as good business people that are knowledgable and ready to help our customers.
On another note, I think most of the Realtors are basically good. Its just those 30% of evil ones that are bad! If you are one of us, the good ones, give yourself a pat on your back from not selling yourself to the devil to make a buck!
