Are Realtors Salespeople? Should They Be?.....YES!!!!

We are the experts! We spend our professional lives working in Real Estate....with escrow officers, home inspectors, contractors, appraisers, lenders. Yet how can we explain the unexplainable? Every transaction is different, even if the theme is the same. One of the things I love about my job. I love solving the unexpected.

True sales people are rare and valuable. In any economy, they are the last to leave a company....they are the hope. If they have the skills, and they are skills....not merely personality.....they can facilitate the ideal of win-win. That's what we are doing everyday. Looking for the win-win, at least we should be. Somewhere along the line "sales" became another name for "trick" and a salesperson was someone to shy away from. Yet this couldn't be further from the truth....and a skilled salesperson is exactly what Real Estate needs in this unusual market.

Sales technicians (I like this word) are those who can run a sales cycle. This is the searching, finding, and closing of a transaction. Isn't this what our buyers and sellers want to do? It's not forcing a deal through in spite of the obvious defects. It's the ability to detect these defects from the beginning....and if they appear during the transaction, then how to handle them correctly. Sometimes this means walking away and mitigating damages.

For example....a true salesperson who is WORKING for the buyer would never allow that buyer to remove contingencies until they were all truly satisfied. Yes, there are time frames, and we all strive to make sure we meet them, but we've all seen "agents" rush to remove them regardless of whether they have really satisfied the conditions. This does a great disservice to all parties. The buyer might lose their deposit if they cannot complete the transaction and the seller might put detrimental reliance on the soundness of the deal.

A true skilled salesperson, Realtor, is going to answer the phone and email and be there to handle the situations as they come up. There are specific techniques which help facilitate solutions....which can negotiate compromises and allow a deal to continue which might not otherwise. Is this trickery? No....not if both parties want the deal to continue. This leads us back to the win-win where an unprofessional "sales person" might throw up their hands in distress....or worse, yell and scream at the other party (unbelievable).

A strong Realtor is skilled in sales and the methods of sales. They learn the techiniques needed to run a successful real estate transaction.