Question for Y’All (Especially You Realtor Types)
Hey everybody -
So I’m supposed to be helping Jason organize the program/sessions for REBlogWorld. I’m sure I’m butchering it, but had a thorny little issue pop up. Not being a realtor, I figured, the best thing to do is to ask the possible attendees. Here’s the issue.
If you are attending a seminar or a panel discussion on social media, and a real estate agent is put forth as an expert on using social media in real estate… how important is his/her production for his/her credibility?
I’ve heard now from various folks that production is either very important, or not at all important, or somewhat important, or “depends on their other experience” and some such. Basically, no answer at all.
So I wanted to ask you for some thoughts/feedback. If REBW puts realtors on a panel to speak on whatever topic, is it important for you (if you were in the audience) to know their production in total? Just range/rankings (e.g., Mr. Smith is in the top 5% of his state/MLS/brokerage, etc.)? Do you need to know what % of business comes from social media? If the number is not top producer type numbers, does that impact the presenter’s credibility or not at all?
Please feel free to respond in the comments here, or if you’d rather not discuss this publicly (I can see how this might be a bit sensitive), email me at rob -at- notorious-rob -dotcom-. If I’m following you on Twitter, you can DM me as well (@robhahn).
Thanks,
-rsh
Comments
11 Responses to “Question for Y’All (Especially You Realtor Types)”Speak Your Mind
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Personally, I don’t care.
If they are smart, and know their stuff, I’m gonna learn something. I’m not asking them to sell me real estate, so I could care less about their production. Plus, I know all the ways in which production stats can be inflated, manipulated, and hard to verify.
I care about the person, not the stats. I know enough “top producers” to know that production volume doesn’t tell the whole story.
Opted to send my comments to your email. Thanks for bothering to ask!
My opinion: I think if someone is supposed to be an “expert” at something and teaching others “best practices”, then they better damn well be able to prove that they have been using it to get at least a little bit of business from it. If not, I see very little credibility.
In my opinion if someone is speaking as an expert on using social media for real estate, it’s their production resulting from using social media which is important.
So, this is a (hopefully) brief follow up to the phone call we just had on the subject. While I think it’s obvious that ROI in the form of production results certainly matters, it’s not an absolute one to one relationship.
Here’s what I mean…
If agent A has $50k GCI and agent B does $200k GCI, there is no way you can assume that social media advice from agent B is better. As an example, agent A may have done that $50k with “the perfect set of clients” that she found through facebook. Good friends, very similar interests. Basically “fun business”. Agent B may have done a bigger business, but it might be a shotgun style of social media marketing. He’ll do business with “anyone”.
The undeniable truth is that social media marketing can and will amplify who you really are and what you are really about. The resulting business will reflect that.
Another big point of discussion is measuring social media results.
Just because someone contacts me through facebook doesn’t mean that this opportunity didn’t or wouldn’t have come through another channel.
It’s great that FB keeps me more connected and it probably helped me
get that opportunity, but I can’t put that deal in a SM catagory only.
Likewise, if someone calls me on the phone, I can’t say that they were not impacted by my online presence. In fact, it’s more likely that they were.
This is what our friend Jeff Turner has called “ambient presence”.
Social Media keeps you more connected to a larger potential client base with less effort. This will result in increased business (while difficult to measure) — assuming what you’ve amplified is appealing
If a teacher instructs the student how to use social media and the student applies it to get results, whom should sit on the panel? Einstein postulated the theory but he’d didn’t build the bomb (he wasn’t good with his hands).
But then again…. http://tr.im/uFxB
I would be just as interested, or more so, in listening to an agent that has tried 50 different ways to use social media and failed at every one of them than to listen to a top producer that tried one thing and succeeded.
It’s the, “I succeeded by doing it exactly this way so it must be the only way” type people who disinterest me.
But I do think it’s important that it is an agent trying this stuff. I think there are way to many “experts” out there that don’t know what it’s like to sell real estate or originate mortgages. Experience counts a bunch in my book.
I think production is irrelevant to the topic. Being a social media expert does not mean you have to be a top producing agent.
The thing that ties the two together is the fact that he IS an agent, so he can speak at their level and relate what he does to their business. Being a Social Media expert means you are a good marketer. Marketing is only one piece of the puzzle.
If I were in the audience i wouldn’t care about his production as much as I would care about his presence on Social media.
Does he have a good network?
Does he have a good blog?
Is he providing valuable info?
That’s what really matters to me.
Results are important. One of the credibility issues the entire SM community has is the lack of hard ROI numbers. With that said, SM offers multiple channels for “R.” Is the Realtor well branded? Are they highly visible? Have they dramatically increased their Sphere?
As long as the Realtor has proven whuffie, then they should be valuable to the panel. PROVEN.
Sooner or later the SM expert, consultant, trainer, etc. thing will shake out. THIS is the beginning of that conversation…
As a newer agent (call me naive) I don’t give much thought to experience. Why? First offer I ever received was from a 19 year veteran. It was on the wrong form and barely filled out. If you suck but have experience you still suck. I’d rather hear a new social media based agent talk to new users of social media about their trials and tribulations then hear someone tell me their numbers. I think @tcar and Matt’s answers are excellent.
Give me the true honest picture. Tell me what you’ve learned the hard way. Not what you learned from a website that promises you to get rich quick.
Social Media encourages experimentation. Don’t be afraid to hire a speaker who is still experimenting. There is no hard fast system to social media. It’s much like life. I might enjoy a conversation with you, bit not with the next guy. I recently wrote on AgentGenius about what I learned in social media. My best nugget?
I learned to sell while keeping my mouth shut.
Social Media is not about production numbers, it’s about connections that can lead to production numbers. If you skip the connections you won’t get the numbers.
Great question, but it still depends, I guess.
What are you presenting?
If a session on what social networking is, get familiar, branding, etc then the strongest qualification is a social network expert or marketing expert.
If the session is how to use it to improve/grow your business then I’d expect the presenter to have some solid credentials in terms of production. Mostly because there are so many people pitching it as a business panacea. If this presenter can’t show that it works and speak to how to make it work for me, too, then he’s not the right guy.
In that regard, I’d echo jfsellsius’ comments above.