The Odysseus Medal: “We Realtors are ironically, the easiest people to manipulate because we count the money before it’s printed”

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Here’s the thing: I am a complete sucker for good writing. I like big ideas, I like radical ideas (ya think?), I especially like profoundly and transparently ethical ideas. But if you can write entrancingly about just about anything — I am duly entranced. We live and learn by telling stories, and all of the arts, at their best, are most fundamentally literary. The burnished word is the reflection of humanity’s godhead, the breath of the sublime made manifest in speech, in poetry, in prose, in the drama, even in the cacophonous news of our everyday lives. We are animals, and so we sleep and scratch and snuffle. But we are a spectacular genetic accident, a thing of nature that cannot exist except as an artifact, a man-made thing. By dint of our conceptualization, given form in speech and in abstract notation systems, we are a thing apart from nature, the god-like consciousness that gives nature meaning beyond mere randomness. In our words, in the works of our unprecedented minds, we celebrate all we are and all we can become. And so it would not be wrong to say that I am continuously in the thrall of human life well celebrated.

Hence: This week’s Odysseus Medal goes to Geno Petro for Memoirs Of A Big Fat Liar:

I won’t promise ‘lightning in a bottle’ to a potential client but I will pledge to use my resources (spend my own money) in the most efficient manner I see fit. Let’s face it, the Listing Agent is in the hole the minute he walks out the door with the Exclusive and only collects when the property actually sells–correction: …when the property actually sells under his watch. Phone calls from Vegas are never good under any circumstance, I’ve found.

I’ll try not to promise the Moon no matter how much I allow myself to be manipulated by the situation (potential paycheck). And that is why we do it, you know. We Realtors are ironically, the easiest people to manipulate because we count the money before it’s printed. We may say we don’t but most of us secretly do. After all, we have BMWs and college to pay for. (It also stokes our Ego when we nail a Sold placard across the For Sale sign. I usually wait until rush hour so everyone stalled in traffic can watch me perform the ritual. It usually takes a good half hour depending on whether or not I have to find and unbury St. Joseph.)

I may be big, and I may or may not be fat depending on the season or what I’m wearing, but a Big, Fat, Liar I am not. Not all three. I won’t promise ‘lightning in a bottle’ but I will do my best to catch a ladybug in a juiceglass. Oh yeah….and work for free until I get the place sold, just like every other self-respecting Realtor.

I accidentally sold a house again yesterday, and I couldn’t help but smile and think about this as I was hanging the ‘Sold’ rider.

The Black Pearl Award this week goes to Krista Baker for Negotiating Commissions with Buyers:

If you work with buyers, you should consider creating a buyer’s agreement that highlights:

• The buyer is entitled to negotiate your fee. When the buyer understands that they are paying your fee, they are more likely to take the home buying process more seriously. Too often, buyer’s agents explain that working with them is essentially free because the seller pays their commission. When people believe they are getting a service for, in essence, free, they tend not to value it as highly as if they were paying for the service directly.
• The buyer agrees to work with you exclusively. Just as the buyer would hire an accountant, lawyer or doctor, they should hire you exclusively to represent their best interests. However, you should also include terms in the contract that allow you or the buyer to cancel the contract if one party is unhappy with the relationship or if differences cannot be resolved.
• You agree to represent the buyer’s best interest. When the buyer is paying you, it is your duty to represent them as best you can. That means showing them homes listed at lower commission rates if that home will be a good choice for them.
• You agree to only represent the buyer. When people negotiate contracts, both sides usually have their own legal representation. In the case of real estate, you are negotiating on behalf of the buyer – so it would not be in the buyer’s best interest if you also represented the seller. How could you negotiate a fair price for both when you have vested interest in both sides?

This is not news — or god help you if it is. But it bears constant repetition. Until we find a way for buyers to control their half of the process, they will continue to be stuck at the kiddie table at the housing feast.

The People’s Choice Award goes this week to Gary Elwood for The Curious Secret to Getting People to Believe You:

Remember the old Volkswagen sedan with the rag top that hadn’t changed in 20 years, the round top one?

One of the ugliest cars ever made.

In addition, it didn’t have any extra features that any ad man could talk about. Only later years did it have a gas gauge.

You could get so many miles on a tank of gas that you simply drove it until you ran out of gas and then switched to a small reserve tank that held more than enough fuel to get you to the closest gas station.

When the Doyle, Dane + Bernbach agency was given this account, they must have groaned.

What could you say about the car?

It only had two features: it was cheap to run and it was reliable. But everyone already knew that.

What more could they say about it?

Then they hit on a brilliant flash of inspiration: they decided to tell the truth.

I can imagine every ad man in America coming off their chairs and saying, “You are going to do what?”

Doyle, Dane + Bernbach ran a whole series of ads that said, “This car is ugly. It looks like a bug. A beetle.”

“This car is slow. You’ll be lucky if you ever get a ticket.”

The results of the campaign?

Phenomenal. People loved the campaign and sales shot up.

The truth. Simple, pristine truth is an astounding force. And these ad men had touched on a very important key of persuasion: if you point out the disadvantages, it makes everything else you say more believable.

That’s a Black Pearl, too.

If you didn’t look at this week’s nominees for The Odysseus Medal, you should. As always, if you catch a kiss of the sublime, nominate it.

Deadline for next week’s competition is Sunday at 12 Noon MST. You can nominate your own work or any post you admire here.

Congratulations to the winners — and to everyone who participated.

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