The longer I am a participant in the real estate industry, the more I realize just how different it is from any other that I have been involved with. Sure, every industry has its distinctions, but real estate has a unique facet that puts it in a rare class. In most industries, whether they admit it or not, businesses are run from the top down. Real estate is all about bottom up…..and that’s a problem right now. Many will strongly disagree, but the industry is in dire need of top down changes.

The consumption of real estate technology is an illustration of the need for change. In traditional industries, technology is sold to companies, not employees. The reasons are numerous, but one is that companies want to control the tools that their employees use in order to maintain efficiencies, product and service quality, marketing messages, and so on.

In my company, if I informed each sales rep that they had to evaluate, select, and pay for their own contact management system, leads, website, and other tools, most would quickly fail. I would be asking them to divert a degree of focus away from their most important responsibility which is bringing in new revenue and providing great customer service. As a kicker, I’m going to have them pay me for the privilege of working for my company. A couple of outstanding individuals may survive, but for most, one of two things would happen.

About 80% would do a very poor job of finding and using the technologies, either because they simply can’t, or wont because of concerns over time away from sales activities. The other 20% would spend a great deal of time on the technologies, implement a couple of decent ones, and have little time left to spend servicing clients. To me, both alternatives are losing propositions. Never mind the fact that the sales reps are not even qualified to do the job that I would be asking them to do. That’s not an indictment of them; it’s just a statement of fact that that is not the skill set they were hired for.

Why then has this become the accepted model in real estate? I think it’s simple. The old adage of “If it aint broke, don’t fix it” is alive and well. During a recent conference, I spoke to several agents who pointed out that many of their peers don’t even have e-mail. My question to them was, “Why would the broker allow this”? Their response was “Those agents continue to pay their fees”. Now, I understand the fact that real estate agents are not employees, they are independents, but the bottom line is that the agent is still a reflection of the brokerage. Furthermore, the performance of the agent is the number one contributor to the perception of the real estate professional community as a whole, and that perception isn’t very good right now.

So what if the system is truly broke but nobody realizes it yet. Although new technologies have been trickling into real estate for the past 10 years, they have really just recently hit their stride. We haven’t had time yet to grasp the very real possibility that independent agents will never have the “appetite” to consume this much technology. The technologies aren’t just going away though. So what does this mean? I believe it means that we are on the cusp of seeing tangible changes in the relationship between real estate companies and their agents.

Real estate companies are indicating awareness of the issue by stating their need to do a better job of education. I’m sorry, but this is not enough. I don’t want to take anything away from excellent training. It’s critical to a company’s success. Unfortunately though, “more training” has become a cliché. Everyone says they are doing it, and very few really are. I’m personally tired of hearing the excuse that you can’t make your agents do this or that. If the same amount of effort was put into active agent management as is put into making sure the broker logo is properly displayed on every agent website, we would probably be a lot better off.

Not all is negative however. New real estate companies are springing up and experimenting with exercising control over their agents marketing and technology. I predict success for several of them. The manner in which companies provide and manage technology for their agents is going to be important when those agents are selecting their brokerage. I even believe that agents will pay slightly more for access to these technologies as long as it is measurable, and the reality is that large brokerages and companies can secure the technologies at a fraction of the cost that an agent can. Finally, I believe that the days of real estate companies relying exclusively on their brand as a way to recruit new agents are numbered. In the future, brokerages are going to realize that the way to provide the best possible service to their prospective home buyers and sellers is not to tell their agents to use technology, but instead, demand it and ensure it by driving the bus.