Agents DO NOT Need Vendors – They Need Partners

All right. Time for some cardio as you are sitting at your desk: Raise your hand if you have ever paid a vendor for something, or signed up for something that ended up being:

• Not what you thought it was
• Less than what you expected
• Too confusing, and/or time consuming to figure out
• Just plain old didn't work

I'll bet dollars to donuts that every single person reading this article raised their hand. If not, you may want to read over that list again, and seriously, thoughtfully consider each of those scenarios.

The fact of the matter is that every agent at one time or another has had this experience with a vendor, be it a marketing vendor, technology vendor, etc. While many of the problems often do and many times should rest solely on the shoulders of the vendor, I do not blame the vendor for this phenomenon. I blame the agent.

Real estate agents are very busy people. To add more pressure to the cooker, they also are only as good as their last transaction, and how they have performed for their last client. The stakes are high, and if one single vendor lets them down, and the stars align just so, the ensuing fallout could be catastrophic.

So how is having a vendor help you the culprit? The way to think of it is this: A vendor is a person (or company) that generally performs one task or activity, for you, at your direction. They are in the business of selling as many of these products or services as they can.

While many of them are nothing but completely upstanding business people, because they make money selling this product or service, and because the successful ones are great at selling what they do, there are going to be times when vendors do jobs for you, not because it is what is best for your real estate practice, but simply because you asked them to do it, and it's more revenue for their company, regardless of whether or not it goes towards the greater common good of building your real estate practice.

So if you shouldn't hire a vendor to help you with your Real Estate Practice, who should you hire?

It's simple. Hire a partner.

Because my company is on the marketing side of the spectrum, I am going to stick to that side of the discussion.

A marketing partner, or marketing agency that represents you and your real estate practice is not "out for the quick buck," selling you whatever they can unload on you, as fast as they can. Because their main benchmark of success is YOUR success, they are truly invested in giving you the best advice possible, to grow your real estate practice.

The reason for this is that many times the partner or agency doesn't actually "do" the service or activity that is called for in your marketing campaign. Because of this, they don't have the overhead of keeping, say, printing equipment running, or web designers churning out websites, and therefore, they are objective and don't have to consider their own needs before their clients' needs.

Even more, if you are an agency such as ours, at Status 5 Studio, we have been able to build an end to end solution of services that will touch on every aspect of a agent's real estate practice. Since we "offer it all," we are only looking out for what is in the best interest of our client. If they are in dire need of a new website and online marketing strategy, we don't try to sell them on a print marketing campaign. We give them what they need. If they have a great website, we aren't going to belittle it. We are going to show them the things we can do to help them leverage that great website, get more traffic, and generate even more leads.

Teamwork is the name of the game. The next time you are considering what to do to fill a need in your real estate practice, consider this article. Are you bringing someone on board that will simply agree with you, in order to sell more of whatever it is they sell? Or, do you have a true "Partner" that will, at times, even to your chagrin, disagree with you, and point you in a direction that will guarantee your success, no matter what that means for them?

While some might argue that the differences between vendors and partners are on the surface, seemingly small, the results can be huge. It's worth taking a look at.

To view the original article, visit the Leading Agent blog.