I want someone to send me to NAR in Sacramento Anaheim next month. I don’t want to do anything even remotely NARish, I just want to commune with the grunts on the ground. I have lots of interesting ideas about innovation in real estate, and I am lucky enough to know a lot of very clever people. Put us all in a room together, and we can make magic. We’ve done it before.
This would be cool: A double- or triple-sized break-out room in rounds of eight, each table its own little Scenius. Some formal presentations from the front of the room, with web and slide support, all that stuff. But also a lot of time for real work at the table level. I plan on throwing off a lot of product ideas, and I would love to have a leavening of people from the development side of the on-line real estate table. I want to sell some very serious ideas, but I want people to go home with new product plans, new marketing plans, too.
Here’s a true fact: This is the most propitious time for revolutionary change in the residential real estate business. Why? Because things could not possibly be any more screwed up than they are now. There is no sane argument to be made against any attempt to right this flailing beached whale we scheme to call a profession. I have ideas. You do, too. I want to talk about how we can be the drivers of real change in our business.
Am I too vain to think that someone would put together a show for me? I know how to do all this myself, after all. But: I don’t have the time or the money to put anything together. I loved doing the BloodhoundBlog Unchained events with Brian Brady, and with all the hard-working dogs who graced us with their presence. But all that is way more than I can do now. It comes down to this: I’ll do this if someone will take on the logistics and costs, and not if not.
But what I’m promising is a Scenius, a synergy of shared genius. I’ve got a bunch of strage and dangerous ideas in my head, and I know how to tease a roomful of smart people into getting a lot smarter a lot faster. I would love to come to Sacramento Anaheim to play, and I would love it if the people reading this who are most interested in getting smarter would come to play with me.
So: I need a sponsor. Give me a room and I’ll make it glow.
PS: Social media butterflies: If you want this to happen, tell your friends to make it happen. I’ll deliver the goods if you will.
PPS: How much attention do I pay to the NAR? A couple of folks have pointed out by email that the NAR convention is in Anaheim, not Sacramento. I don’t know how I got the towns mixed up, but I think Sacramento would have been the better choice: The membership could have seen the NAR’s handi-work at its most effective. Whatever. I’m still game to play Scenius.
Tim Riggins says:
I would agree that that current state of the real estate market shouldn’t get anymore worst then it is, therefore any new strategies or chance to the market could only help turn things around.
October 4, 2011 — 9:54 am
Sean Purcell says:
This, from my email to BHB’s own Teri Lussier just yesterday:
I hope someone at NAR takes you up on your offer Greg (though I’m not holding my breath); what I’ve learned via you and the Bloodhound Scenius, in its many forms, has transformed me as an agent. I go into every appointment knowing I’ll accomplish at least two things: I walk in knowing I’m going to raise the clients’ expectations to a level few in the industry even understand, never mind will compete with; and I walk out knowing that whether they choose me or not, they’ll possess the tools to effect their own best outcome in the coming real estate transaction. That being said, I’m 90% sure of one other outcome too: the listing is mine if I want it…
Maybe that’s the marketing hook for your presentation: “Close Your Clients Immediately, by Opening Their Eyes Immensely…” All I know is, by the time I’ve covered divorced commissions, the unethics of dual agency, custom signs vs brokerage billboards, my 5 Step Marketing Campaign and the implied accusation… they’re asking for a pen. Then I hit them with a professional pricing model option (the natural outcome of Disbrokeration) and they literally, 100% of the time, say “No one has ever told us this before…” which excites and saddens me all at the same time.
If you are an inlooker who doesn’t realistically expect to close almost 100% of your listing appointments, you should be clamoring for a Bloodhound Scenius… you have nothing to lose but your chains.
October 4, 2011 — 10:57 am
Erion Shehaj says:
Would you mind sharing your professional pricing model?
October 4, 2011 — 10:14 pm
Greg Swann says:
> Would you mind sharing your professional pricing model?
Clarify that, if you would. Are you asking what commissions we charge?
October 5, 2011 — 5:52 am
Greg Swann says:
Ah… Never mind… I didn’t recall the pricing model from Sean’s comment.
October 5, 2011 — 9:26 am
Sean Purcell says:
My professinal pricing model is the outgrowth of a number of articles I wrote a few years ago called The New Real Estate Model wherein I describe the problems with, and eventual downfall of, the brokerage model of real estate.
The ideal model following this disbrokeration is one that looks a lot like a law firm with its billable hours.
Details of this pricing model are beyond the scope of a Comment, and I’ve not sensed any interest in a post about it. The idea is straightforward: agents charge 2 to 3 times what their inputted value is because they take all the risk (an eminently fair equation, to be sure). But the client, once made aware that they may share in the risk, has the option of paying for actual time and expense, thus lowering their costs while guaranteeing the agent’s pay. The real benefit: mutual accountability, something sorely lacking in every real estate listing relationship.
October 5, 2011 — 6:41 am
Erion Shehaj says:
I can’t argue with that.
As well as loyalty and commitment…
October 5, 2011 — 6:10 pm