Marti Hampton:

Hi this is Marti Hampton for the Restless Realtors on Coming Soon Homes radio and this is a podcast for Real Estate insiders by a Real Estate insider and that is “moi” and it's all about real estate all the time. You know I've had some questions sent to me and that's a good thing but one of the questions that I want to answer today came from a Realtor that said “Are Realtors overpaid?” And my answer might surprise you but I'd have to say yes I do think some realtors are overpaid. And of course they'd never agree with me but here's my case, I loved the book that Malcolm Gladwell wrote a few years back called “Outliers”. And in that book, he talks about the “10,000 hour-rule”, and 10,000 hours is what he says that you have to have mastery at any profession. That's about just under 10 years and but it's a very difficult thing to categorize real estate because as you know you've been in real estate for 20 years and sell 8 or 9 houses a year and that is not mastery, as a matter of fact, I think that realtor’s probably overpaid. 

So spending 10,000 hours in our business is putting buyers and sellers together and it's quite different than it was in the 90s. So if you had 10,000 hours putting buyers and sellers together in the 90s if you haven't evolved and changed for today's market, you're definitely out of mastery.

You know I think one of the biggest reasons people get disillusioned with real estate career is they don't put any money back into their training, they don't put any money back into marketing and there, I say it they don't fail enough to really understand mastery. They fell a couple of times and then they're out of the business.

So mastering real estate comes I believe when you've developed yourself and you know who's in the market to buy you're milling around, maybe you have all those websites, maybe your phone is ringing. The signs are out there, you know who is thinking about buying and you know what's an amazing thing is that you have to hang on to local buyers sometimes quite a long time longer than most agents will. Maybe a year, maybe more than that before you actually sell them. So hanging on and knowing about those buyers and then marketing to those buyers ie your services or your homes for sale, and also having an eye on your cash clients when you can you list the homes as close to somebody you've sold before, are you picking up the phone reconnecting with that past client and, offering or asking them about a home that is near them --- that all that's a part of mastery.

So having a network of top producing agents across the U.S., you know we're a global market now, that is one of the reasons I love my company because it's a global company. But buyers come to you from other agents in other areas because they respect you and they trust you to handle their referral to handle the buyer. So mastery becomes really, when you've developed relationships with those agents and also with relocation companies, they're still in business, they still transfer people all around the world.

So mastery, there's many other things I could say about mastery, but mastery comes when you increase your sales ability. We take so many things for granted but professional sales skills are one of the biggest things we take for granted. We don't continue to evolve in that area. And sales is a learned skill and its primary tool is actually a listening skill and then learning to ask the right questions. So mastery real estate shows in the way you present your properties in a compelling and imaginative way and how to create an avatar to figure out what is the target market for each home that you list in each neighborhood that you list.

So mastering focuses is where it's at, you'll enjoy your real estate career when you get to this level. Mastery comes when you know the market and you can inform the public what's coming next. You know if you sound like every other realtor in the market reading an MLS sheet, there's no mastery now.

And you know but you know by now that I'm a big advocate of comingsoonhomes.com to dominate your local market. So, yes, I think that some Realtors are overpaid! But then there's a few, a very few that are paid a very high wage and they deserve it. So don't worry about those Realtors that are overpaid, they won't be around long enough to worry you much.

So that's it for me and the Restless Realtor, please sign up to follow us and keep those questions coming. Have a great day!