If you want to start a debate among baseball purists, bring up the designated hitter.

If you want to start a debate among Realtors, bring up professionalism.

Frankly, I’m sick to death of both discussions.

I really think that, as an industry, we need to move past the whole “we need a higher degree of professionalism in real estate.” It’s a pointless argument that will never be resolved. The only thing that it does is allow us to pat ourselves on the collective back. The discussion certainly doesn’t do anything to improve professionalism. The reality is that the ones even participating in the discussion don’t need to improve their professionalism, anyway.

Don’t even get me started on “increasing the barrier to entry.” That’s another pointless argument. Basically, it is elitism. It screams of– “I didn’t have a high barrier to entry, but I feel really cheated by all the educational/professional training I did undergo that I feel is being wasted in real estate, so we should really make people go through a bunch of training so that I can feel better about myself.”

I know what I’m talking about, because this is exactly how I used to feel.

Then I got over myself and moved on to more important things.

Professionalism doesn’t matter nearly as much as you think

Clients don’t care about your professionalism. Well at least, not in the way that you think they do. Sure, they want you to be honest, truthful, respectful, dependable, etc. They want you to be all of those things. They also assume that you are going to be all of those things. They are going to assume, and then demand, a certain level of competence. Your responsibility is simply to meet and (hopefully) exceed their expectations.

The professionalism of your colleagues has very little bearing on whether or not you are professional and meeting your clients’ expectations. Sure, you might have clients that were burned by a bad apple or two, but hey, welcome to the real world.

I’ve got news for you, not everyone takes their profession as seriously as you do. So what? Screw ‘em. You worrying and complaining about them isn’t suddenly going to transform them into conscientious professionals.

You can talk about increasing the perceived level of professionalism all you want, you can raise the barriers to entry as high as you want, but there is always going to be someone at the bottom of the ladder. If you’re not careful, you might find out that it’s you someday.

We don’t need increased professionalism among Realtors. There are tons of extremely competent, extremely professional, Realtors out there who treat their profession as a career, not just a job. They hold their clients interests above everything else, every time. I know this. I meet them all the time.

Let’s concentrate on things that really matter

Stop worrying about professionalism. It’s a distraction from what really matters.

If you really want to increase professionalism in the industry, it starts with you.

If you do what you do to the best of your abilities, and do it better than your competition, all the “unprofessional” Realtors out there won’t be able to compete with you, and natural selection will take care of the rest.

The few unprofessional Realtors out there really don’t matter to you. Unless they somehow become a majority of the profession, which I don’t see happening, they are simply irrelevant. They obviously don’t care, which means you have no obligation to care about them.

I can’t speak for you, but I’d much rather spend my time talking with and about the vast majority– the really awesome Realtors that I meet all the time who totally rock the real estate industry. It’s time to start talking about them.

We don’t need more professionalism among Realtors. What we need to do is spend more time with the real professionals.

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