Sales Meetings for Real Estate Agents

I usually avoid these things like the plague because, in my experience, the instructor usually tries to impart neat tricks that are supposed to bamboozle the customer and get them to buy what they don't want and don't need. The whole concept reminds me of why I hang onto my cars for ten years - I hate, absolutely hate, enduring the agony of dealing with an uneducated car salesman practicing Cheap Tricks 101, like "what will your neighbors think when they see this new car in your driveway?" I don't care what my neighbors think and I don't need to visualize owning the car, no matter what you were taught. Give me a good price and let me out of here.

But yesterday's meeting was refreshingly different. The instructor,a woman with 35 years experience, emphasized treating people decently and well, developing a rational schedule to select, view and eliminate houses for showing and bringing value to the transaction by knowing real estate - inventory, neighborhoods, the cost of improvements - cold. I'm not sure I learned all that much because I already try to employ those skills to the best of my ability but I left feeling much better about the firm I'm associated with and the training it's imparting to its agents. The best agents, by the way, are often exactly this type, regardless of where they park their shingle. The instructor claimed that 97% of all real estate is sold by 3% of all agents and suggested that that meant that 97% of all agents don't know what the hell they're doing. I think she was a bit harsh there, but I won't disagree that there are a lot of licensed agents who don't put much effort into keeping up with this business. Perhaps they're too busy writing blogs about non-real estate related matters!