Recently by Merv Forney

Mollie, Merv and Paula will attend the Inman News "Real Estate Connect" conference in San Francisco July 30th through August 3rd.

The Inman conferences are the premier networking, information, and technology conferences for the real estate industry.

Executive-level real estate professionals, opinion leaders, technology giants, industry experts, and press gather each year at Connect Conferences to discuss a broad cross-section of traditional and cutting-edge topics critical to the real estate industry, opening the door to a wealth of opportunities for business development, information and idea exchange, discussion and debate.

If the only thing we change about our business is implementing a different way to charge clients for real estate and real estate related services we have missed the point. You just become another real estate agent with a different business model. So, lets take a look at what "consulting" and "consultant" really means:

CONSULTING:
From Wikipedia: A consultant is a professional that provides expert advice in a particular domain or area of expertise such as accountancy, information technology, the law, human resources, marketing, medicine, finance or more esoteric areas of knowledge. Also, consultant, from the Latin consult, meaning "to discuss" from which we also derive words such as consul and counsel. (Merv says: insert real estate or any other field of expertise in this definition.)

From Webster: Employed or involved in giving professional advice to the public.

CONSULTANT
From Wikipedia: Often a consultant provides expertise to clients who require a particular type of knowledge or service for a specific period of time, thus providing an economy to the client.

From Webster: One who gives professional advice or services.

OK, enough of that. Here are the key words I like to focus on: professional, expert, knowledge, counsel and advice.

Note: Republished from the Northern Virginia Real Estate Guide

October 17, 2006

The traditional commission model has no relationship to effort and expense across a wide spectrum of property types, markets and price ranges. We (Pam and I) began using consumer Choice models when I established our relationship with RE/MAX on August 1, 2004. We have accumulated significant experience with different approaches and what works and what doesn't; the pitfalls, potholes, roadblocks and agent/broker scourge as well as documented successes. This stuff works! I believe it IS the future for the real professionals in this business.