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Just listed the house with an agent, and I’m pretty sure I’ve found the ideal job.

She was pretty open about what she does, and her fee for selling the joint is over half what we have been quoted by some of the bigger names. But I said to her that if she sells one house a week and makes 10 grand then she’s on a pretty good score. She smiled and knowing I was being pretty up front, but not nasty, about being stung for 10 g's she said it’s a great job, all she has to do is two home opens on the weekend for 40 mins each and the rest of the week she’s just driving around visiting people, doing a few appraisals maybe a bit of paperwork when she has to present an offer, but generally she feels like she isn’t even working. She keeps her fees low because she likes the job and it means it’s easy to get listing.

I want a job where you do 80 mins ‘work’ a week to get 10 grand.

Simon,

Oh that it would be that simple.

Sales seems like it's a cushy job, but like a duck swimming serenely on a pond, there's a hell of a lot going on under the surface that you don't see.

How are you with cold calling? The sales leads don't just pop up from nowhere, I'm afraid. You need to dig for those, and that can be quite disheartening.

What about the properties that you sell? You need to be able to understand those properties, and be able to suggest those little improvements and tweaks that will make a property more attractive in the eyes of a prospective purschaser.

But mostly, any sort of professional sales job is about people. You need to be able to understand people, what motivates them, be able to empathise with them, and importantly, be able to close them. That can be quite a daunting task set for many people.

Asking the closing questions can make people feel most uncomfortable.

While I've not done real estate sales, my background includes quite a bit of sales and sales management work, including too selling myself as a photographer, which is different again.

And if your property sells within a week, perhaps your asking price is a tad too low?

Getting back to your point: if you're very, very comfortable with the concept of cold calling, if you're very, very comfortable with your ability to ask the closers, and if you're very, very comfortable with having about 49 in 50 people you talk with saying "no" to you, and you'll not let that get you down, day after day, week after week, then by all means, look to a job as a professional salesperson.

We're just in the process of selling too, and I'm pretty happy with our agent so far. He's very courteous and professional and very busy too, but makes time for us. The housing market down here is very slow at the moment and our first two open houses had no visitors, but this weekend we had 2 on the friday and 6 on the saturday so hopefully something promising comes out of it. But back to the point, yes he's very busy with the amount of houses he has to know and sell, and at the same time as Gary mentioned fishing for new ones as well. Most agents do put in long hours, and give up a lot of their saturdays.

My parents are about to sell their house, it's going on the private market this week actually, and I will be doing the open homes for them, daunting? A little, exciting - yes!! My comission rate is nearly half that of the agents (joke).

I'm not too optimistic about it selling privately but it may, and if it does my parents save a LOT of $$.

A couple of points to note from someone who is effectively in sales on the other side of the financial services fence (the side that is regulated and has strict education and disclosure requirements), I doubt the agent actually gets all of the $10k - I am sure she only gets a percentage (however large) of the total commission, otherwise the agency would never get paid.

Gary has summed up the ease with which and I would go further in that a real estate agent, for example, can easily go through periods where the market is very flat or worse, and can't move a house and therefore get their commission.

When share markets 'corrected' 4-5 years ago, a lot of financial planners working on commission (or similar), which is most of them, saw their revenue fall by 10-20% as the value of their client's investments fell, and therefore their commission base fell.

So, sales type jobs can sound very easy and comfortable, but, in addition to what Gary said, the market can turn and be stagnant for a long time, making it harder to sell, and making your industry a lot more competitive.

Now, should I rant about the evils of commissions????????

P

Patrick,

Commissions ??

Evil ???

Surely not????

Surely a high rate of commission helps to attract a higher callbre, more professionally oriented sales person who will act without fear or favour in the best interests of their principal?

And surely no salesperson would be in any way tempted to tell the odd porky or ten in the interests of making a sale and receiving that high commission on the sale?



What? Me cynical? Perish the thought!

Sorry Gary, I stand corrected, and I, in no way, wanted to indicate or imply that I thought commissions created a conflict of interest which only served the best interests of agent and principal and not client.

Now, I just have some insurance policies to churn.....

P