An Exciting New Tool to Create Perfect Brokerage Standards and Consumer Experiences

Over the past two years, virtually every sector of the American business community has been struggling to come to grips with the emerging concepts of the creating and applying product and service value propositions. This focus can be attributed to the emergence of the value proposition as the ultimate consumer evaluation tool, along with increased consumer reliance on expanded databases that demonstrate the nature and quality of past consumer experiences.

Some experts suggest that the real estate brokerage sector is a bit behind its compatriots from other industries with respect to consumer experience research and transitions, due in part to its reliance on agent centricity. However, even within real estate, there is a growing understanding that quality determinants in the provision of real estate marketing and transactional services have not traditionally been set by brokerages, are seldom set by agents, and are now being defined by consumers.

The issue before the industry today is not whether brokerage-wide standards should be set. The consumer centric nature of the contemporary real estate marketplace has mandated that requirement, which leads to the question within our industry: how have these standards have been developed, implemented and monitored?

Here again the answers are somewhat simple. Standards development, implementation and monitoring are simply not an integral element of the traditional real estate agent's mindset. Volumes could be written about why this is the case, but for the purposes of this piece, it is sufficient to say that a single minded focus on "closing the deal" at any cost is almost totally inconsistent with the creation of a real estate service experience that meets consumer expectations and demands, creates a long term positive consumer relationship and drives an appropriate risk management environment.