Are REALTORS like Vending Machines?

On the road again this week, I had s funny thought as I walked the hallway toward yet another hotel room. Taking a left out of the elevator, I encountered the ever-present hotel vending machines humming away. Thinking that maybe a candy-bar was in order, I reached into my pocket, only to find a Blackberry, credit card and room key. No change, I thought. No candy bar.

Then it struck me; how come vending machines don’t take credit cards? Everywhere else I go, I can simply swipe my card for a coffee, gasoline, even airline ticket check-in. Yet the vending machine still wants nickels and quarters. About half of the machines you encounter say they accept dollar bills; but they usually spit them out in distaste at the wrinkles. How anachronistic, that someone trying to sell candy bars and Coca Cola, mostly on people’s whims, would make it so hard to capture the consumer.

Just like today’s REALTORS.

As I stood there in the hallway, I was amazed at the connection. Are REALTORS like vending machines? Do they make working with consumers as hard as finding “correct change” in a credit-card world. In seconds, the entire analogy unfolded in front of me.

Consider how real estate today often emulates the “vending machine” encounter. Whether it’s a phone call to a broker’s office, a visit to an open house or an online email inquiry, REALTORS continue to make the rules of purchase hard for consumers. Their entire model remains the “here’s what I have, if you want it you have to put your money in first, then press the right sequence of buttons.” Otherwise, no candy – and no change.

The similarities are uncanny:

• REALTORS still only do business in “one currency” – coins and cash – and they don’t easily accept foreign coin. That’s the same as saying they really prefer to get customers by phone, not email, which is why it still takes them hours or days to respond to the Generation Y buyer online. And if you won’t sign an agency agreement or put money down on an offer, like a vending machine, they ignore you even though you’re standing in front of them, staring at the candy through the glass.
• The way REALTORS sell their goods also remains a vending-machine mentality. They only sell what has been “stocked” on their shelves by themselves or their fellow vendors in MLS. Want to look at FSBOs with a REALTOR? They aren’t available on their shelves: no REALTOR website I can find shows FSBOs, HUD, or other available “products” in the marketplace, even though their license lets them help consumers purchase any home.
• Likewise, they usually only sell stale candy and flat soda. You can never find the candy-bar you really want in the REALTOR vending machine. Their websites continue to push the overpriced, under-interesting plain chocolate bars, even though the consumer has been looking for peanuts and caramel for some time now. Vending machines don’t ask you “what you want” they only tell you “what you can get” which is exactly what happens when most REALTORS trap a buyer in their car. Sure, we’ll go see the property you are interested in. Then, I’ll show you all of my listings, which I don’t really care if you’re interested in or not. It’s like pressing the buttons for the Doritos but the plain chips fall out.
• The way most of today’s real estate agents prospect for business is not much different than a vending machine, either. They usually stand around, waiting for customers to find them. Their entire strategy is based upon being “in the right place at the right time,” which, for as any traveler knows, means the vending machine is on the floor up or the floor down. Never are they on the floor you’re on. Just like REALTORS. They sit around the office on “floor duty” hoping the right customer with exact change desiring their D-4 stale potato chips will magically call them on the telephone. You don’t see vending machines with motion sensors reacting to people passing by with a polite, “Wouldn’t you like a nice candy bar right about now?” And you don’t see REALTORS interacting with visitors at their open houses, either. they simply stand around and hum.
• Perhaps the ultimate similarity between REALTORS and vending machines is what happens when things get stuck. Sometimes when you pick a bag of chips in a vending machine, it gets wedged on the way down. You can try to rock the machine or bang the glass, but vending machines are essentially immovable and unrelenting. And there’s never anyone around with a key to help you get your prize or refund your money. You simply stand there, realizing you’ve wasted your time and money and you can’t get to what you want. You simply walk away.

If that doesn’t sound like most of the experiences consumers encounter with REALTORS these days, then you’re really not looking. It’s the primary reason most consumers walk away from agents. They encounter a difficulty – the agent doesn’t have the right inventory on the shelf or won’t find it for them, the agent won’t respond to their emails but only accepts phone calls, and there’s never a manager around to unlock the case and release the goodies when things get stuck.

Needless to say, after staring at the vending machine and seeing the faces of so many agents I’ve taught over the past twenty years, I slowly turned away and headed to my room. There it was: the heart of the REALTOR dilemma humming loudly in the hallway of my hotel. I’d seen vending machines like it, in many hallways of many hotels in many cities for nearly two decades. Many times I had walked away from satisfying my sweet tooth because I couldn’t comply with the stolid, unyielding demands of the machine. And a weird feeling crossed my mind: I actually felt sad for the machine. Sure, I wasn’t getting a candy bar or soda.

But the real tragedy was that the vending machine wasn’t getting my money.