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VOWS - Not an Issue for Savvy Agents
For over fifty years, real estate professionals have used access to "secret" MLS information as a primary means to attract business. With the advent of Realtor.com, IDX, and VOWs, MLS information is no longer the driving force that attracts clients. In fact, both sides of the VOWs debate seem to have missed an important point. MLS information has never been the name of the game. Instead, what really matters to clients is something a website can never provide - wisdom and personal connection. Brown and Duguid in their book The Social Life of Information draw a distinction between information that resides in databases and wisdom that resides in human beings. The trap for real estate professionals is believing information is a substitute for wisdom and personal connection. A website cannot tell the seller what to do when the buyer decides to ask for a new roof when all is needed is a small repair; it can't calm first time buyer jitters; and it certainly can't solve that bizarre problem no one has ever encountered before. Instead, Brown and Duguid show how information masks what really is at the heart of all successful business organizations: trust, wisdom, and personal connection.
The Internet would give FSBOs a competitive edge and agents would be "disintermediated" as a result. We trembled at the thought, just as we tremble at the thought of VOWs taking away business from the hard working agents who created business in the first place. I believe VOWs are going to produce the same results as the Internet did for FSBOs. Just as the number of FSBOs who now list with an agent has increased from 76% to 80%, I expect to see a similar trend with respect to VOW based companies. Here's why:
Since real estate is based on trust and connection, VOW websites face a dual problem. If the site fails to state the agent/company is NOT the listing agent for all the properties displayed, trust goes out the door. Furthermore, most buyers want someone who will represent their interests exclusively. This means their website visitor is actually MORE likely to search elsewhere for exclusive buyer representation.
Because of all the spam on the Internet, most web visitors are reluctant to give out their email address for fear of someone contacting them. One of the first rules of Internet marketing is to obtain "permission" (hence the term "permission marketing") from website visitors to market to them. Web visitors want to control when they will be contacted. Consequently, the agent who contacts a web visitor without the visitor's specific consent will get the same reaction as the telemarketer who interrupts their dinner.
I just visited a VOW site that had the following language posted:
This is your computer's IP address. If you fill in false contact information our e-agents can submit it to your Internet Service Provider as a complaint. Please refrain from doing so as it can result in termination of your internet access. Thank you.
Now doesn't that make you want to do business with these folks? Unfortunately, this is worst connection breaker I have ever seen on major company's real estate website. What's worse, this site was a sponsored link, i.e. they paid for me to click through and then hightail it to another site.
Web marketing through the use of a VOW is passive rather than proactive. The company or agent who relies on people contacting them from a website has the same problem as the agent who relies on floor calls: they don't control their lead generation and they certainly don't control their income. Furthermore, just as most agents lack a specific strategy for converting floor calls into solid leads, most agents who harvest names from websites also lack a strategy to consistently follow-up on web leads. In fact, web prospects may require up to 37 contacts before they will agree to do business with you. This passive approach coupled with poor lead follow-up puts these agents in the same category as a poorly trained floor broker.
Ultimately, when I take a listing, my job is to assist the seller in obtaining the highest price possible for their property. The primary way to do this is through maximum exposure possible to the marketplace. Now, isn't that exactly the point of all MLS services as well as Realtor.com - to get the maximum exposure to the marketplace? Then why should we be threatened by VOWs? Aren't they simply just another vehicle to assist our sellers in achieving their goals and for us to earn our commissions?
To contact Bernice Ross please email her at bernice@realestatecoach.com.
