Far too many Realtors have bought into ideas and products based on the sales pitch despite the lack of real, street tested consumer data.

Imagine being able to walk past a vendor booth at NAR and interrupt the slick pitchman who is knee deep in hyperbole with facts that stand in direct opposition of his or her fiction.

I agree completely that is real estate would simply look at how other industries treat consumers they would not need it own survey. But real estate doesn't do that. Or if they do, they seem to only study the airline industry that appears to have a equal amount of disinterest in the consumer.

Anyway, great post Jon.

I don't think that consumers take on a wholly new persona when they wade into today's murky waters known as "real estate". They probably want the same things that they have come to expect in other areas of their lives:

1. Greater transparency.
2. Give them credit (literally) for their willingness to do some of the work online themselves.
3. Justify your prices (or, in this case, commissions).
4. Create a great customer experience (see #3 above!).
5. Create relevant brands (launching a "Better Homes & Gardens" brand in 2007?..Who is your customer and how much longer will they be alive?)
6. Stop telling them about our expertise. If you have it, it's apparent and if you don't, it rings so hollow as to destroy all remaining credibility.

The one area that a consumer survey could actually be helpful in is determining whether or not consumers see their relationship with their realtor as transactional or ongoing…this would probably stop an awful lot of recipe post cards from getting mailed this year and get us to focus more on the customer experience over the life of the transaction as opposed to coming up with new ways to try to add value in between transactions, when we're not necessarily invited to the party.

And if it turns out that our relationship with our customer is more "transactional", it's going to help us define when the "transaction' begins. When someone talks to you? When they visit your website? Once we determine this, we can start building those customer experiences that lead to the kind of customer relationships that define a brand…but then we don't need a survey or even a business school do we?

We just need the courage to execute on the stuff we're already pretty sure of.

I am as eager as you to see it as well as see the results from respondents.

1) Poking into the success formulas of top producers who succeed despite any market shift
2) A serious of powerful questions that woudl serve as the cornerstone of a consumer survey.

The folks at the Keller Center and Baylor University are crunching the data derived from the event to create the next step which will focus on people and learn what it is they like and dislike about real estate.

The benefit to this will brings to real estate is huge.