THRIVING IN THE ERA OF SOCIAL industry gained a strong professional foothold, which was followed by the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s and the emergence of franchises and electronic MLS systems. Changes in the industry were for the most part internally driven. Fast-forward to the 2000’s. The industry underwent rapid changes that were no longer internally driven. External dynamics had shifted control to the home buyer from a position of dependence to one of choice that established a new benchmark in the value proposition expected from the brokerage. As each new generation is offered choices their standards go up. As an industry we haven’t necessarily kept pace. Home buyers and sellers have a choice of communication mediums and easy access to data. They expect a choice not to commit and possess an increasing sense of entitlement. An agent's reliability, responsiveness to clients' needs, and empathy with customers still remains the most important factors in measuring overall service quality (with empathy being the major factor leading to agent referrals). To focus on who will win is to miss the point about homebuyer and agent relationships: The new doesn’t replace the old; the new and the old combine. Traditional strategy is where the broker’s market advantage is defending against competitors. Focusing on scale, efficiency, and productivity means you are on the fast track to irrelevance in the eyes of the consumer. Service delivery that is consumer and lifestyle focused is what builds relational equity in today’s marketplace. To thrive in the Social Era, the customer should be viewed as your partner and considered a source for value creation and competitive advantage rather than just another end user of your service.

While real estate brokerages were trying to out-market each other, buyers and sellers were blogging about their experiences and communicating with one another in digital formats. What we did realize was that it wasn’t all about the technology. Real estate brokerage emerged as a full-time occupation in the late nineteenth century. By the early twentieth century, the professionalization of real estate brokerage aggressively spread across the country, setting in motion a new American middle class that was home ownership driven. Beginning in 1940 and through the 1960s, starting with the post-World War II building boom, the

Copyright 2013 Oscar Gonzales