Cut From the Same Cloth?
Don't you hate it when are going out on a listing appointment and a seller doesn't want to hear what makes you different from any other agent in town. They just want to hear what you charge. You just know, right there, that you have a penny pincher. They fail to look at what paying an agent more might bring them in terms of marketing and negotiations. They don't care whether you will meet the appraiser at the property or not. After all, all agents are the same in their minds.
This same thought came to mind yesterday when I was being pitched for the one-hundred and tenth time by a colleague about why I should come to work with him. He's a trusted agent, excellent trainer and all around reputable guy. His company, on the other hand, well, it seems to me they are largely 
value-less except when it comes to one-hundred percent commission. "But you could make so much more money working here." That's not an argument I buy, and there are many reasons why.
When I chose the brokerage I work for, it was after considering a handful very carefully. It was a trusted, local brand. My split may not start at one-hundred percent, but usually gets there quickly during a calendar year. I'm a salesperson and understand the more I sell, the more I make. My chosen brokerage has value and as such, deserves to be paid for that. We have an office space and conference rooms. The counter argument my colleague whips out is that I can work remotely at Panera or Starbucks. Call me old fashioned, but I think a real estate transaction, putting an offer together on a house for instance, deserves some privacy and some space. A conference table may feel old school, but to me, I see the value and the trust it brings to my brokerage's brand. And it brings a since of security to my clients.
The resources my brokerage had initially struck me with the training they offered. A brand new agent needs all the training they can get. A commission split wasn't even on my radar at that point. I couldn't sell anything if i didn't know what the heck I was doing. Now that I'm a seasoned agent, my colleague tells me that I've been trained up, it's time to leave and go one-hundred percent with him. Not so fast. With no money coming in from the office agents, do one-hundred percent brokerages have resources like corporate attorneys and risk officers who can step in when you have an issue like I did earlier in the year when my mom's condo sale sprung a post closing leak? No. They try to sell you on title attorneys being the go to sources for knowledge, but I'll tell you a little secret. A title attorney is great at understanding the contract, but being desk jockeys, they have zero clue how that contract plays out in court like corporate trial attorneys. Compare an answer with a title attorney vs. a corporate trial and attorney and there is no question. You want the corporate trial attorney when it goes any deeper than a minor dust up.
And then there is the lack of branding that goes with this particular one-hundred percent brand. No one in my Bristow-Gainesville marketplace has heard of them. "Well you can be the one to get out there and make the brand recognizable." Boy, doesn't that sound like re-inventing the wheel? I can attempt to be hired by people based on MY reputation with no brokerage awesomeness to back it up. I've done the math. I've watched top producing agents fall off in production when they go from a name brand to a lesser known one-hundred percent brokerage. I always research profiles of agents like me and see how their production goes when moving from a known quantity, to unknown when the unknown is attempting to recruit me.
So I can leave all the branding behind my chosen, large, local company brokerage, or start fresh with no power behind my one-hundred percent brokerage's name and give it a whirl. Write up my offers in my car using WiFi from Starbucks if I want privacy. Trusting title attorneys to give me legal opinions when the stuff is about to hit the fan and blow up in a client's face. No thank you. I see the value in my brokerage, which just so happens to be Long & Foster Real Estate. It also happens to be a brand that Warren Buffett saw value in when he chose to have Berkshire Hathaway invest in a real estate company and purchased us last year.
So as much as we agents complain about sellers who only look at us as bottom line commission figures, are agents any less guilty when their sole motivating factor when choosing a brokerage is commission split? You get what you pay for is also true in the world of brokerages. When you pay nothing to the broker you work for, you can't expect anything in return. As Barbara Todaro would say, just a thought for the moment.
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