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Pucker Up

Recently, I saw an infographic either on Facebook or Instagram (which means it HAS TO BE TRUE) that read something like this: “80% of all plane crashes occur in either the first 3 minutes or the last 8 minutes of a flight.”  Hmmmm.  I guess that’s one way to look at the data – and I guess it’s encouraging to those nervous flyers who like to play the odds – that if you have a 120-minute flight, you have a high percentage of living blissfully for the 109 minutes between takeoff and landing.  However, the infographic would be more accurate if it read something like this: “100% of ALL plane crashes occur in the last 10 seconds of a flight.”  Before you curl up in the fetal position and hide under your desk in light of this grim statistic, take a few deep breaths, and let me explain: no matter how you couch the truth, it’s still the truth. 

There’s a new website out in Internetland (I’m sure that’s what Al Gore wanted to name it when he invented the Internet) with the domain name of First.IO.  Yes, just type that into your browser without a “www” or a “.com”, and you’ll be taken to this new and very interesting place.  In essence, the website asks real estate agents to upload their databases of contacts.  Once this is done, the website starts mining all the data that’s floating out there (in Internetland) as a result of everyone using social media, buying things from Amazon, reading their favorite blogs, scanning other websites, trolling through Pinterest, etc., to determine when an agent’s contact is ready to buy or sell a home.  Yes, it’s happening.  I don’t bring this up to launch a formal protest or throw my support behind it – I bring this up simply to point out the obvious: the technology is only going to get more sophisticated as time goes on.  However, no matter how sophisticated it gets, there’s a rock-solid truth that still exists: it’s only as good as the person who’s using it (no matter how you couch the truth, it’s still the truth).

Let me use a cheesy sports analogy: golf club companies are continually coming out with new drivers and irons to help a player hit the ball farther, but if the player has a crap swing, it doesn’t matter how much he spent on that club – the ball isn’t going to fly off into the stratosphere.  In the real estate world, as technology continues to develop to do more and more of this “grunt work” of database management, prospecting, etc., it still comes down to the agent’s skills.  The flashy websites and mobile apps are great, and they can really help attract and garner attention, but what keeps them is the agent’s local knowledge, negotiating skills, connections to other professionals, etc. 

There’s an old saying that goes something like this: if you put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig. Just because someone invests the money and time in the latest and greatest doodad doesn’t make them a great agent.  Technology can certainly enhance a great agent’s talents and skills, but if an agent doesn’t take the time to develop and hone talents and skills, they’re just a pig looking to kiss someone – and no one needs that.

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