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The power of your reputation on line

Everyday as a real estate agent you build your reputation in your marketplace. Its important to understand the power of your reputation and ensure you have systems and strategies in place to ensure you are building a reputation you are proud of and is leading consumers to see you as their agent, a trusted professional who they will love doing business with. An individual they will want to recommend to their friends and colleagues when the real estate topic comes up in their lives.

Consumers are wondering why they have to pay thousands of dollars out of their sale price to a real estate agent when as a profession we are not highly regarded or respected. News channels and papers continue the mistrust of our industry as they highlight and inform consumers about horror stories from people who have trusted agents and found they wished they had not.  

Businesses exists to solve problems and provide value to consumers and they make a profit by doing that cheaper and easier than consumers can do it alone. Real Estate is no different.New businesses are emerging and taking a share of the market, businesses that are continuing to send out the same message agents cannot be trusted, they are not a valuable assett, it's something you can do yourself and save thousands, don't sign anything til you've spoken to us, read this report...etc

New agencies are cropping up whose sole point of difference is cheaper commissions and they are gaining market share as consumers struggle to see the value in what we provide and why we are worth the money we want. Many Home Owners are choosing to sell their homes themselves because they don't see us a valuable assett. They see themselves as able to do as good a job themselves.

We need to stop pretending as an industry this is not a big problem for us and as individuals we can do nothing about it. We can and we must, if we want a future.The time to act is NOW before it is to late and our industry and livelihoods are eaten away. We need to leverage our talents and ethics to promote not just ourselves but also our industry and make sure  in everything we do we are always building a reputation we are proud of.

The product we sell is not houses it is ourselves, our skills and our ability to help consumers achieve their real estate goals  and to make it an enjoyable, stress free, experience for them. Consumers need to hear that message, and the most powerful way to do that is by building and leveraging your personal recommendation bank.

 I want to help you to do just that, join us at ilovemyagent now and send out a message consumers want to hear, be seen as a real estate professional consumers will want to recommend. For a free listing in our consumer directory, and a free silver membership go to www.ilovemyagent.org/register.php .

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re: The power of your reputation on line

Posted by: craig lamar
Date: Jul. 7, 2007

I respect and am intrigued by the direction and spirit of I Love My Agent.

As a professional, we need new ways to focus and energize the unique talents of the full time REALTORS and Brokers who support their families and communities in this profession.

One concern I have which causes me to hesitate from embracing "I Love My Agent" are the numerous misspells and improper use of language in the articles. Their message is great and I thank you for them, just need to look more closely at the spelling and language usage. The improper use of language and/or misspelled words are a way that many consumers judge our content and professionalism.

Respectfully,

Craig


re: The power of your reputation on line

Posted by: Karin Hanna
Date: Jul. 23, 2007
Thankyou Craig for your wonderful feedback. As an Aussie we do share some language and spelling discrepancies with the United States, i have learned this from my relationships over there over the past 7 years. Joeann Fossland and i have laughed many times as we have collaberated together for the last 7 years at this very thing. In creating the ilovemyagent websites that is why we decided we needed to have seperate sites for The United States/Canada and Australia. I had 3 wonderful American real estate advisors collaberate and change the language at www.ilovemyagent.org so we could communicate more effectively. IS it the site or my blog posts that are of concern to you?
I write my blog posts myself and don't have them checked before i post them they are straight from my  heart to everyone, from my base on the beautiful Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. All my articles for publishing elsewhere however are checked and altered to reflect the language and spelling differences. Are they ok?
The site is designed for consumers to read your profile, see your qualifications and areas of expertise, and most importantly why other consumers love you and would recommend you, so it is really what they write that will be read and judgements made upon.  I doubt they would want to hear about me or from me particularly, that is why we have it so they can contact you directly from the site.
I have a vision of a world where REAL ESTATE Professionals who consumers will love doing business with will be easy to find, that the best way to find them is by the number of independantly verified recommendations they generate from their clients. I want to lift industry standards and get our industry globally focused on delighting consumers and changing this negative mindset consumers have of us, to one where they again feel confident they can find a professional in their area that they will find as a valuable partner and will love doing business with. I am incredibly passionate about this and i do believe it is something we must take very seriously or fall prey to more discounters and our livelihoods being eaten away.
I do believe we live in a global world and that cultural differences are less important now than they once were and i do believe that this message is needed in the USA as well as Australia.As i am the most passionate one about it and have invested nearly 2 years of my time and money to create ilovemyagent as the vehicle to deliver it to consumers i am the person who will make the time to speak out and share our message with our industry's hardworking professionals. Joeann Fossland is one of my favorite people on the planet and i love having her working with me, i would not have got this off the ground without her wonderful energy and support and sharing of my vision but she already has a successful and busy business speaking, coaching and training across America, although it would be wonderful for her to be the American voice and and do it all over there , financial and time constraints are not allowing that to happen. So i hope you will learn to love me, continue to give your valuable feedback and help ensure it is something that will resonate with your consumers.    I really hope that the real estate professionals the ilovemyagent message resonates with will use it and all the tools we provide to deliver a real point of difference in their marketing messages and businesses, and will be actively involved with us to build something very special and very valuable to both consumers, themselves and also the industry.  I look forwrad to hearing your thoughts again Craig. Love and success, KArin Hanna

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