In the years, when, as every immigrant of the 90s, men were either driving a taxi, or a limo, I was driving a limo in New York City. And when I did not have passengers, I would listen to the radio.
I was fascinated by a talk show by a psychologist / psychotherapist (she is still on the air). People would call with questions, and she would answer. She was absolutely brilliant, and her answers helped me to adapt to life in the US a lot. It helped me better understand how people think here.
Unlike Russia, where you get entangled in relationships and it becomes your problem for life, here she would separate what was healthy and what wasn’t and know when to cut the chord, and it was something absolutely new to me.
I remember how once a mature lonely lady called and was asking about a long distance relationship and she was going on and on and on. The host stopped her and said that relationship is when you are naked in bed, and what she was describing was not a relationship, it was a fantasy or whatever was it (I do not remember the exact wording, only the notion)…
I am on the list for Online Dominance group, founded and until recently run by by Michael Russer (Mr. Internet). It was recently sold, but they keep sending me invitations for their weekly webinars. Every time they have some interesting person to spend an hour sharing their expertise.
I have not been signing in for the last several weeks because they were all about social media. Today was no exception. It was again about how to use FB and how to affect your sphere of influence…
I think that real estate on Facebook is like a long distance relationship. It is a fantasy. And the so-called sphere of influence is pretty much a fantasy and there is very little influence if any at all. And thousands of “friends” is also a fantasy. There is no sweat and blood of real relationships.
It is simply a virtual noise on the net. Billions of us buzzing on the net and creating that noise and hoping that if we can buzz louder and buzz more it can miraculously turn into conversations and, subsequently, sales.
Immediately there emerged a huge group of gurus, who not only teach you how to buzz, but who would tell you that if you do not buzz, you would not exist in real estate.
This is a huge lie.
The lie, which is convenient to gurus and experts and it is easy to figure why.
The lie, which is convenient to agents, who think that they can substitute the blood and sweat of hard work, the love to people with distant buzzing…
The truth, however, is that a lot of really successful agents are not even using Social Media. A lot of really successful agents do not go beyond email. With very few exceptions really successful agents do not use Active Rain…
The truth is that to have sales you have to relate to people, you have to love them. Sales are the product of this love, the product of these relationships. And if you do not have it, for the most part this virtual noise is just virtual noise.
It is not that Social Media does not exist, it is that for real estate as business its importnace is blown out of proportion.
You got to get in bed have relationships with your customers to have sales. This is what real estate has always been about.
It still is.
And relationship Is when you are naked in bed.
Image by Search Engine People Blog via Flickr.com
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