Who Sez You're Not Good Enough? And Why Are You Paying to Hear it?

Sometimes it takes someone else to put something into focus for us. 

Thank you.

My business partner & I "invested" in an expensive coaching program for her last year.  She lasted one day as she was not comfortable with the techniques they used.  So she felt bad that we had spent so much money for something she could make herself do.   I felt glad we had only paid for her and not me.   We went onto to have a banner year so...................... you have to do what fits your personality.

What is hard is knowing which coaches have that style that meshes with you until you are already in the program and shelled out your money.

In some ways these coaches are taking your watch and telling you what time it is. In other ways they are applying a formula that may or may not work for you. Good post

I needed time to come back and write a decent comment, so here I finally am. 

First, thanks for the mention. I appreciate being recognized by people I admire, and I admire your work. 

Second, this post had several versions. A harsher version is on another site. There are still more unpublished versions that bordered on angry. I'm glad I let those sit and came up with a middle ground.

This all started two weeks ago when I made a comment in a FB thread "my clients are unlikely to find me on Facebook" and that I didn't expect to tweet with my lawyer. It sent a guru into a rant on his own blog about the dinosaurs in real estate. Apparently his clients (all us Realtors) are an average age of 56 and they are using FB and if we didn't embrace FB and use his methods we would be left behind. 

I agree...we in real estate are all using FB...mostly to talk to each other, which I enjoy, but not to solicit business or become overly friendly with clients.

I have been around sales and marketing my entire professional life, mostly technology and consulting, and now real estate the past 10 years.

No person on earth (with the possible exception of 8th grade girls) is more likely to want to spend money to change themselves then the real estate sales person. I think the reason is that the agents are usually expected to be chameleons...we are typically empathetic "people" people who want things to work well for our clients. Real estate transactions are typically one time interactions between agent and client, and so we adapt and mold and bend. This was manageable when transaction took 30 - 60 days. Now, when listings last for a year or more, it's easy to lose track of our core selves.

This doesn't happen with, say, software salesmen, or project managers of large systems implementations, or piano sales people selling to musicians. There are usually like personalities on each side of the interactions. 

But real estate folk deal with the entire population of personality types. So while we tell agents to "be yourself" what we really mean is to "be yourself with people who will like you" OR "be the yourself the client wants you to be for as long as it takes to get through the transaction". 

As we change the way we prospect and market, usually with greater use of technology, we are flailing around more. When an agent worked a personal SOI or a neighborhood, he or she was likely to be building relationships with people who were already "like" in one or more ways. But now...now we are admonished to prospect and develop relationships with a wider range of people with whom we may not have a natural affinity.

This is where I am concerned abut the clash between the "old style trainer" (100 handwritten notes a month, please) and the "high tech gurus" (100 tweets a day, please). Even if you are able to generate new business with new ways of prospecting, can you work at your best with new client types?

Those of us who work in relo, especially relo buyers, will say that they are "harder" than our local clients. It's because we usually don't have a shared world...they are coming from a place we might never have never been to. You have to quickly develop a shared language for ideas as simple as "square footage". It an intense hybrid personal+financial transaction that must take place in s short amount of time. 

Imagine doing relo buyers all day, all the time, and you get a sense for what would happen when you let technology-based prospecting place you out of the worlds you know. You'd become either a robotic transaction manager or a raving lunatic.

I think this phenomenon explains why so many REO listing agents seemed to become cold and distant and procedural. It isn't just that they are working with banks and impersonal asset managers, per se, but the benefits of shared environment and experiences is missing from what we know how to do with traditional sellers in our own neighborhoods.

That's why so many of us are carefully using technology to grow our business. It's not that I can't or won't buy and use every new tool I can get my hands on, it's that I am mindful of the implications for me and the entire brokerage.

A post to your post on mine. Hope it's OK.

Hi Jennifer,

Right on!

If bits of your soul are being ripped out, maybe that approach to selling real estate is not right for you...

Thanks for sharing

PHil

Hi Jennifer - This is such a good post - WHY ISN'T IT FEATURED????? It's so important that we don't ask people to become something they aren't.  Why do coaches persist in this habit.

Had to come over by way of Donne's blog.    Worthy topic and I agree, this would have been a great feature as well.

Coaching is obviously a very personal thing.  I do not believe that coaching is always a "yes" for a Realtor and only subject to the constrains of a  budget.  There are people, such as myself, who do not see the value in coaching to the level it is promoted.  I am certain coaching does produce results for some people and only those Realtors can say it's worth it. 

I would bet that in most cases, the coaches come out much further ahead than the Realtors.  They are, after all, their own business. 

Jennifer-Leslie-AND DONNE-thank you all. Caught Leslie's post a few days back and it helped complete a few thoughts that were rolling around in my head, then Donne shone her spotlight here...I've not hired a coach "yet". Don't know if I ever will. I really like Leslie's comment about how the legnth of time in transactions can cause you to lose track of your core self, so hard to know-am I stubbornly resisting change, or is this really just not right for me?

What a beautiful and interesting post and the comments are great.  I have been through all kinds of trainings over the years in different fields of endeavor from rah rah, zig zigler, neuro-linguistics and on and on. They all have something to take away, but for me even the thought of having a personal coach, is not probably what I would do.  Perhaps I may need one, and if I were in my twenties, maybe...but I am not and even though different ones have a lot to offer different people I think one needs to be careful.  I believe on the whole, Realtors are a fragile sort and if the coach is not aware of the person......and gives the message somehow that the person is not good enough or pushy enough or whatever, then where does that leave them.

Jennifer ~ you have made a valid point.  I think coaching can be great, but if you partner up with someone that will make you accountable, you can sure save some money and your ego!

Such a great discussion and how I missed your post, I will never know.  Anyway, I think that if one can find a good coach, they are probably worth their weight in gold...however...I think that there are a lot of folks that do a lot of business from Real Estate Agents...

Meaning there are probably now more Real Estate Coaches and SEO gurus then ever before.  Unfortunately Real Estate  Agents are terrific targets for this kind of marketing because most of us want to do really well and most of us look to the "experts" to help us do really well and do it faster and easier.  When we see others doing so well with coaching and other such tools, we want to hop on board too....then we end up finding out that we got SOLD too and then jump to the next shiny thing...

maybe I am just talking about myself, lol :)!  Suggested (Maybe my magic touch will work, this needs to be featured)!

When I first started in real estate, Brian Buffini was a big deal.  I had an office next to someone who was doing his courses and had one of his coaches.  It was MISERY to listen to this man day in and day out brow beat (IMHO) people on the phone.  And then I would listen to him being 'coached' and wondered why in the WORLD would anyone put up with something like that?  Great post, great rant :)

Jennifer, I spent big bucks for two coaching programs and I have to say I think they were both 'one size fits all' and the first one especially wanted to mold me into someone I wasn't comfortable being. I quit after a few sessions, but they kept my big bucks. Coaching is a very personal think and unless the coach matches to the personality of the student, it won't work. I am no robot.

Sharon