In 1898 Beyer, famous today for their Aspirin, released their latest miracle. A cough suppressant known as Heroin. At the time it was a completely innocent effort to aid people with chronic coughing issues to sleep through the night and relieve pain. Shortly after, Sears and Roebuck made Heroin kits available to the public through their mail order magazines. For $1.50 you could purchase a kit that included and steel seringe, Herion doses, replacement needles, and a carrying case.
When you stop and think of the epidemic of addiction that this created, today this sounds insane. But the innocence of ignorance and the search for relief from ailments propelled this drug throughout the nation like wild fire. No one with a clue as to the damage of it's long term effects or it's addictive qualities until it was too late and the damage was done. Of course, since then it has become an illegal drug, but the battle still rages on to eradicate this cancer from society and the world at large.
In real estate, it is important that we think beyond the short term cure with our efforts to solve an issue. This may be a drastic analogy, but history is full of similar situations where people have attempted to heal the symptoms and never truly cured the cause. We have to strike at the cause, because healing the symptoms alone will only suppress the issue for the time being, and possibly create a much larger issue in the long run.
We must instead give serious consideration to our actions to insure that we don't create another problem. Take for example agents that promise sellers that they can sell their house for an unreasonable price just so they can get the listing. Like Beyer, these agents are ignorant, but they are certainly not innocent. Then from these actions to make the seller happy, they create another much larger issue. They create a seller that is misinformed and unrealistic that has little if any chance of selling their house.
Then further down the road, when the house doesn't sell, not only is there an uninformed seller but there is a seller that now believes that Realtors are the scum of the Earth. Frankly they believe this because some of them are indeed. But now, the next Realtor will have to overcome the fact that there is a huge trust issue created by the first dumb ass that lied. And the first Realtor will not stop there, they will spread through the community causing a plague of sellers who no longer trust us, all due to a bad experience with a bad Realtor.
Well, these days the D.E.A., the F.B.I., and local authorities all have to battle the affects of Beyer's little cough suppressant. We on the other hand must combat the creations of an enemy within. Unfortunately the D.E.A. will never show up and attack bad Realtors in order to throw them from our presence. Instead we will have to remain here fighting them by doing the job right and telling the truth. So before you make the decision to just say what people want to hear to get by the question, take into consideration the epidemic that you are helping to create.
JL...
Comments(15)