I notice that real estate agents feature portraits of themselves on everything – business cards, “for sale” signs, listings, any promotional material. I can’t think of another profession that does this. What is the reason for the emphasis on photographs of an agent?
As a guess, I’d have to say its because Real Estate agents get more money on what they sell (commision?) so they advertise themselves and play down teh business (i.e. its more important THEY get clients, not just any random realtor in the business). Compare this to other professions where they’re not featured as prominantly, where oftentimes they’re not rewarded for how many people they serve so having more clients specifically to them is just more paperwork (unless of course they’re shooting for a promotion or “spotlight” in teh news or something).
Ego, because I’ve seen some ugly ones and it isn’t sex appeal.
It’s because (they believe) they do better when they have a personal connection with their clients, and a good way to get that connection started is for you to know what they look like - why, he’s just a regular guy, he won’t cheat me!
I have also seen a similar trend in other commision based businesses. The motorcycle shops around here all feature a portrait of their sales guy in addition to the product. A couple of the car dealerships do as well, and many other places at least list the sales people’s names.
They ARE their product. Without any additional information, there is no reason for anyone to pick one over the other. They work within the same system with very similar contracts. A person buying a house may work with several of them and it isn’t easy to remember who they all are just based on names with everything else going on. “Oh, that is Bob. What an asshole. We aren’t talking to him again.” “Mary listened to exactly what we wanted plus she bought us lunch.” A picture shouldn’t hurt and it could easily put a face with a name given all the commotion home buyers usually have to go through.
So that they can pick up a newspaper at any time and remember what they looked like 10 years ago …at the Glamour Shots session…
I once asked a realtor this very question. It seemed to me, I joked, that in order to become a realtor, all you needed was a face. He said that the reason that every realtor put their picture on their business card was because it made it harder to throw away.
Personally, I don’t know if that’s true (I did throw away the card when I got home), but I think that jives with what Shagnasty said about their desire to cultivate a personal relationship with the customer.