OK, we are in a tough time right now, and every piece of business in important, but I still feel that in a "karmic" sense, educating the public needs to be priority number one.
I am in a rather unique situation at my current brokerage, the agents are busy! My partner and I are two of only a handful of agents that are doing any on-line marketing. As a result, when someone sees a sign in front of a home and "googles" our company name, our info tends to come up. We do get a number of qualified leads this way, and for the most part, the listing agents are too busy to field all of the calls, and are pleased that we are working the business. After all, the buyers are contacting us directly through OUR private website, or AR, so I do not feel as though we are poaching any leads.
This scenario leads to usually 7-10 phone calls per week. I continually marvel at the percentage of those calls where the buyer thinks that they are saving money by contacting the listing brokerage directly, and even more, the number of people that actually verbalize that thought. All that I have to do is explain that if they contact the listing agent directly, they are not represented, and the listing agent gets paid twice! Today, the lead did not go to me...it went where it belonged...to an agent who had been working with this client for weeks (apparently without a brokerage agreement...but that's another story) and was about to get cut out of the deal because the buyer thought they could save some cash.
How as an idustry can we get the idea out there to the public that buyer representation is important, and for all intents and purposes, free. Any thoughts, short of "one buyer at a time?"
