If you follow our Facebook page, you might have noticed I periodically post agent market share reports for this area without the agent names filled in and wonder why I do it. Let me explain how it all started.
When I moved from commercial real estate to residential 27 years ago, I decided to become hyper-focused on home and land sales in Fairview, Lucas, and Parker. I knew nothing about residential real estate, this area, or a single soul who lived out here. I was a "one-man shop" for years with no big company name behind me. I had no track record of sales either, so you can imagine how difficult it was to convince sellers to give me a chance to show them what I could do.
Whenever I went on a listing appointment and lost out to another agent, and that happened plenty of times, I always made it a point to ask the seller, in a polite and non-confrontational way, whether they would mind sharing why I didn't get the listing. Was it my inexperience or something more? Could I have done something better or done a better job of communicating? Once the sellers knew I wasn't trying to get my foot in the door again and genuinely wanted to hear their opinions as a learning experience, they were open with me. I learned a lot from those conversations, and if it made sense, I'd make a point of incorporating it into my listing presentations.
I can't blame any seller for wanting to go with the top producer in an area. In fact, I'd do the same thing if we were moving to a completely different area we knew nothing about. But when I kept hearing sellers tell me the agent they chose was number one in the area for sales, I started asking myself: how many #1 agents could there possibly be? It seemed like every agent was claiming to be number one, and that's tough to compete with. But what could I do?
If you're thinking I should have known who the top agents were, I'm embarrassed to say that for my first couple of years in residential, I had no idea I could run an agent market share report off the MLS. I was brand new, with no other agent to ask questions of. I knew there was nothing like that on the commercial side, and still isn't. I don't remember how I found out I could run these reports, but when I did, I was thrilled.
I started posting the agent market share numbers online every quarter or so and also brought the agent market share reports to my listing appointments, but unlike what you see online, they had the agent names filled out. The sellers could see for themselves how much business the top 25 agents were doing in this area, rather than just being told. So, in a nutshell, that's the story behind these agent market share reports.
