Thoughts on RPR and What it Means...

(Below are thoughts that I issued into a comment after watching the RPR demo video here http://blog.narrpr.com/product/rpr-demo-ms/comment-page-1#comment-111  - where the system itself truly blows me away with features and what's available to the agent, it does bring up a couple of questions)

1. This is amazing. The aggregation of data that is going on here is awesome.

2. I hate to be the skeptic here, but does anyone else cringe at this? I work with about 800 agents and some are great, some are good, some way below par. Taking this into consideration, doesn’t this actually level the playing field between good agents and bad?

Think about it – this system actually provides crappy agents with the ability to “front” as knowledgeable agents in a particular area. Much like my dislike of agents using 1) paid blog services on topics they don’t know anything about to 2) being able to throw an Altos widget on their page and “brand” themselves as a market expert – this tool is going to allow sub-par and part-time agents to “appear” to the consumer as if they really know what the hell they’re talking about!

Don’t get me wrong – I think that this is going to be amazing for the good/great agents that take their jobs seriously and really know their stuff – but no one is really talking about this flip side.

What this is going to force agents to do is truly work on the “delivery” or explaining the data. Your job as an agents is going to be to take this “data” and reissue it as “information” to your clients and local area. With the release of RPR those that have used “data and stats” as their killer app are going to be a dime a dozen as this levels the playing field, and I think that’s scary.

So if i had any advice to give agents out there “as a coach” I would suggest you spend the next 6 months of roll out really 1) learning what these numbers mean 2) learning how to use this system to the 9’s and 3) learning how to articulate it to your clients.