The industry is at the beginning of a massive rebuild. An agent exodus, artificial intelligence, and pending industry mandates will feel like a cold plunge in 2024. Sacred cows are getting slaughtered, and the broker/agent relationship (as it relates to marketing) may want to be put on the chopping block.
Before diving in, we should agree that there are realtors who are practitioners and realtors who are professionals.1
I’ll define practitioners as agents who rely on their brokers to speak for them. Their marketing is mass-produced or bought. I’ll define professionals as agents who speak for themselves or curate material. Both fit the ethos of their chosen firm (hopefully); however, they’re in different phases. The practitioner is early in their career. The professional has matured.
But what if the early-stage practitioner never evolves?
What if they stay a teenager forever?
Do we (as an industry) enable that?
Or is that by design?
The answer depends on what you believe. Do you believe the agent's role is to promote the corporate brand? Or do you believe agents have their own brand? More importantly, and the only reason it really matters, how do you believe a consumer decides to hire us? Because of the broker? Because of the agent?
The answer is hardly straightforward. It probably isn’t an “either/or” question. It’s more “both/and” thinking. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship. However, that doesn’t mean the broker should pay all the bills, cook dinner, and clean the kid's room.
At some point, shouldn’t agents take ownership of their marketing voice?
Better question…amidst all the continuing education, daily deluge of deal-saving, and a million other things, is it the broker's responsibility to do the agent's marketing, too?
Yes - if you want your agents to be the same.
No - if you don’t.
Today, I think most brokers are too busy to even contemplate this question (bless all of you.)
But here’s the danger in ignoring it.
If brokers and agents aren’t clear on who does what (and how), we end up with a dysfunctional marketing relationship that plays out like this…
New agents depend on the broker (or any other system) to speak/market for them
They blend into the sea of sameness and don’t evolve their marketing voice
They never differentiate
Their business never grows
They’re scared to speak for themselves, or worse, told not to
They never understand their true value proposition and can’t answer, “Why me?”
The result? Agents leave the business or reduce their fees in desperation
Which leads to a recruitment nightmare and/or shrinking profit margins
As I see it (and full disclosure, I’ve never sat in the broker chair), a broker’s identity or brand is home base. They say, “This is how we do things around here.” They hire and onboard practitioners who mostly match their ethos and provide initial marketing ideas, encouragement, and boundaries.
It’s what happens next that’s so important.
Do we enable the practitioner? Or do we grow them into a professional who has a strong answer and an even stronger marketing plan? One that tells people this is why you should hire me and why I’m worth what I charge.
I believe the future of real estate will consist of professionals (not part-time practitioners) who want to grow from canned marketing material. They’ll speak for themselves because they believe in themselves - and we can’t possibly ask our brokers to do that for us. To do that would be like sending Mom or Dad on your interview and expecting to get the job.
Maybe I’m wrong. I’m open to the possibility (lol). But imagine the power, time, and budget that could be redirected if a broker's marketing department wasn’t expected to create and tell every agent’s story - just their own.
What if agents went to brokers with “Please produce this” versus “What should I produce?” Those are two wildly different asks of your marketing department.
So, are we dysfunctional? It depends on who you are, what phase of business you’re in, and where you hang your license.
I’d love to hear what you think. After all, questions like these (asked with genuine curiosity vs. judgment) can produce better conversations. Those lead to better outcomes and, in turn, a better future for real estate.
Credit to Rob Hahn, who coined these two terms in his latest post, which was, as usual, a doozy. In one portion, he writes, “What I can say is what the real estate industry needs today and into the future is a revitalized understanding of and embrace of itself as a profession. Or, let me put it differently: what the REALTOR Movement needs today and into the future is to return to the understanding of itself as a movement of those real estate practitioners who wish to become professionals, not merely claim to be.”
I've heard from some that without significant marketing support from thier broker, agents wouldn't send anything to their sphere or advertise. Not because they don't want to, but out of fear. They don't know what to say. True? False? I'd love to hear what you think.