Do Your Prospects and Clients look and sound like they are made of money?

Do Your Prospects and Clients look and sound like they are made of money?

Once upon a time, I was dating a disgustingly successful hedge-fund owner dude.  He was very, very good at what he did and was basically worth a fortune one could buy a small country with.  But you'd never know it by looking at him.  He wore those used-to-smack of sophistication professor jackets, with the suede patches on the elbows, and a few loose threads lining the bottom here and there, blue jeans and a pair of old torn up snickers.  It was not deliberate on his part - he just absolutely hated shopping, and his wardrobe remained largely unchanged since maybe college.  There was also not time for routine haircuts, facials or any of the general comforts one pays dearly for that can make a grandma look like a high end hooker or your average looking guy into a CK model.  Add to that a small yet often missed fact that he simply and in earnest didn't give a hoot about what he looked like or what people thought of his ‘dress'.

He did, however, have a great sense of humor and once, when the matradee at a newly opened posh NY City establishment refused to seat us, cause my guy was wearing his snickers, he apologized, humbly, took off his snickers and handed them to her, and proceeded to walk to our reserved table.

The matradee was kissing our collective behinds in short order, as I am guessing she learned something about the contents of the guy's bank accounts, or the fact that he booked a few corporate parties at the joint.  We laughed.  The business lost the corporate parties.

None of this, in and of itself, is relevant to real estate, other than to say that we do judge people by a variety of factors.  What a potential client wears, drives, smells like, and speaks and writes like.  We presume that polished and well dressed equals money, and accented speech and casual or sloppy dress equal lack thereof.  In short - we profile.  A few recent (some featured) blogs pointed to the prevalence of this phenomena among real estate agents in the comments.  The profiling was blatant, and the agents were smug in their justification for  it.  I am not going to link to the posts, as they themselves matter little to the discussion.  What I would like to do is a little informal study of sorts where agents think about all the deals they closed last year and their very first impression of those clients.  As a counterpoint, I'll like to have agents think back on all the leads or prospects that contacted them whom they chose not to pursue, and give an honest reason for their decisions.

I think if a study of this kind was done on a large scale, agents might be surprised by the results, and maybe, just maybe find the financial benefit of NOT PROFILING to be worth it.  Because sometimes profiling of this kind smacks of not just snobbism, but bigotry.  It's not illegal to think what we want about people based on superficial criteria.  In my humble opinion, it's wrong, but that, too, is irrelevant.  I simply wonder if money can ‘fix' something that is wrong more aptly than an ethics course can address.  A tangible benefit of greenbacks for being a decent human being, and treating EVERYONE as you'd want to be treated. 

Your thoughts?

**photos courtesy of: thephotoholic & Simon Howden of freedigitalphotos.net