Real estate agents, for the most part, tend to have professional photos, with smiles and dressed to the nines, designed to impress recipients of our business cards as to our integrity, honesty, and professionalism.
More casual photos have been appearing here on AR which, perhaps, show the more personal side of who we really are - and that's a good thing.
So many of our business cards, and our photos, look alike. You can always tell a real estate agent simply by looking at the photos. And consider that most other professions do NOT include a smiling face of the card's owner. If you spy a card with a photo, 99.9% of the time it is a real estate professional's. And of course the same smiling photos appear on most websites, in newspaper ads, on billboards, bus stop benches, postcard mailers, on pens, and on and on.
But I wonder? Are you wearing a mask of deception? Does that smiling face bely the truth that lies beneath...the desire to get the deal no matter what, the concern only for the commission, the emphasis on your personal agenda rather than the client's, the need to control and to win at all costs?
Am I reaching here? I don't think so.
- How many times do we hear, or experience, agents who engage in unethical or dishonest behavior, or who sabotage the very activity they are presumably hired to protect?
- How often do we see deliberate deception by agents through withholding information, promises to get an unrealistic price to obtain a listing, failure to disclose but knowing full well this is required?
- How many agents claim to be the best, and to have a great marketing plan, only to do nothing of the sort to further the interests of their clients?
- Don't we see agents who promote only themselves, rather than focusing on the needs of the consumer?
- Do we not experience rudeness, failure to return phone calls or emails, name calling, degrading others, gossip or worse?
- And what about those who do nothing in the transaction, leaving the work to others, even those on the other side of the deal?
Our business cards, and our smiling faces, are intended to promote our business, and ourselves of course. And to inspire trust. And to let prospects know who we are, to recognize us amongst a sea of other agents, and to remember us.
Yet aren't many in our business being deceptive? Our industry suffers a negative perception on the part of the public - and that's their reality. Are there not agents who contribute to this reality and further harm the consumers' attitude toward who we are, what we represent, and what we do?
That simple smiling face on a business card. For some, is it not a mask of deception? Does the public not know who we really are behind that smile?
Or is that smiling face a true representation of who you are and how you operate. You decide.
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