Well I’ve opened a can of worms with this one and at the risk of my peers throwing stones I’m curious to see what the consumer really thinks about how most real estate agents go about promoting themselves in the market place.

You often see the plight of the real estate agent as one where they feel they’ve got to get out there and tell people how successful I am with huge billboards, TV ads and full page advertisements in the newspaper about their sales prowess or their recent award. Is it really relevant though in today’s world or has this style of marketing had its day?

Don’t get me wrong I think self promotion for a business or an individual is a vital part of survival though do we really need to continually ram down the consumer's throat how good we are? Would a better measure be to let the owner decide from experience and then they’ll recommend you to others?

I mean multiple agents will tell you “we’re number one”! Well how can we all be number one? The answer is we can’t, or we can if you look at different sources for the criteria. Just telling people you’re number one does nothing to advise the consumer why you’re number one. Like one recent billboard, I passed this week, the agent claimed he was number one because his Grandma said he was (I appreciate this was tongue in cheek).

Platforms like “ratemyagent” are great methods of promotion for agents to demonstrate their ability and sales success in particular suburbs though its rating is through testimonials. Agents invite clients to rate and review their experience and like any testimonial that is provided they’ll never promote a bad one. The other thing to consider is that this site isn’t industry regulated so not every agent is on the system therefore the results don’t analyse every single agent across a region or an area. So if you’re NO.1 and only a small number of your competitors are being measured well it's not all that exciting.

Some agents in a presentation will spend 75% of the time telling you how good they are when what they really should be asking is “how can we best help you”?

I don’t think you’ll ever remove the ego style marketing from many agents thought process, however for all of us here at Altitude we’re going against the grain and heading away from the brag. We don’t need to tell you how good we are, we would rather you just discover that for yourself. What we’re really about is leaving an extraordinary mark on the hearts of everyone we connect with.

So I guess the question is how do we convey to the public that an agency is worthy of the opportunity to assist them with the sale of their property without bashing them with all the ego and bravado? I’d love to hear what you think.