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Back in the Fall, we began to explore the idea of bringing on our own sales team. We were looking at the whole real estate sales system and realized that “commissioned agents” represented one of the most broken components. Its hard to trust that the person “selling” the home really has your interest in mind when they have a personal financial incentive to “close the deal.” Conversely, if we could operate outside a commission-based system, we could focus on a collaborative and educational approach with prospective buyers instead of “pitching” or “hyping” or “hard selling”. We could engage agents that would reflect the care for people and their experience that is so ingrained in LJUrban’s ethos. At a fundamental level, we realized that all our talk about building community and creating dialogue could quite easily break down within five minutes of the first point of person-to-person contact with a sales agent. And this realization quickly transformed into a resolve to figure out how we could do non-commissioned agents.

And now the talk is becoming a reality. Molly is working with us to create a “customer experience” division of LJUrban that we anticipate will be functioning in time for B Street West. She’s running with our revisionist mandate and has even suggested that we re-name the “sales office” as a “gallery”. Of course, that transforms “agents” into “docents.” And while some might qualify this as spin-doctoring, I think it reflects far more of our goals, aspirations and values than the traditional real-estate monikers. If we’re redefining real estate, why not change the language as well? Of course, the change has to be deeper than just a name otherwise it is just spin-doctoring. But, we’ve found that redefinition at the fundamental level of language actually forces us to really explore the depths of the changes in far greater magnitude.

So, I like the “gallery/docent” idea. Whether or not it sticks, I don’t know. If not, we’ll find something else to better describe what we’re trying to do and how its different. I just think it’s a great deal of fun to turn conventional practice around and upside down and look at it from other perspectives… and, in my book, anything that can help us see the sales process from the consumers’ perspective is worthwhile.

Jason