The letters C-R-S might appear after your name, but do clients understand what they mean?
By Regina Ludes
When Darlene Sheets earned her CRS Designation in 2009, she put “CRS” in small letters on all her marketing materials, believing that was sufficient to promote her advanced training in real estate. But a past client, who heads up a marketing firm, repeatedly tells Sheets she needs to emphasize her CRS education even more.
“The client told me, ‘You are one of the top agents in the country. It’s OK for you to tell other people about this designation,'” Sheets recalls.
Over 30,000 REALTORS® have earned the CRS Designation. While the designation is recognized as one of the toughest to achieve in the industry, the meaning is often lost on most consumers, unless CRS agents take the time to explain it to them. CRS agents have taken different approaches to promoting the designation, including flyers, email messages and Facebook posts. But to help consumers understand the CRS Designation, CRS agents say it’s more important to emphasize the advanced training, acquired skills and documented production that the designation requires and which can benefit their clients for many years to come.
The Competitive Advantage
Armed with feedback from her marketing-exec client, Sheets, with Future Home Realty in Seminole, Florida, is making a more conscious effort to educate consumers about the designation. Video testimonials from past clients tout her expertise on her website, WestFlaHomes.com, and a recently designed postcard prominently displays the CRS logo next to her photo. In monthly email messages to her contacts, she regularly discusses the advantages of working with a CRS and touts the extensive CRS network for referrals.
“I don’t think it occurs to consumers to ask for a referral,” she says. “I tell people, ‘If you don’t love where you live, call me. I can interview other CRS agents on your behalf.’ I want to educate people that I can still help them by finding another CRS agent in any part of the country.”
Sheets says the training and resources she received with the CRS Designation has allowed her to compete as an independent agent against franchise agents in her local market. “I’m still at the top of my game, and that’s because of the CRS Designation,” Sheets says.
Matt Yeager, CRS, had been working in real estate for 24 years, but after moving to his current market in Columbus, Ohio, two years ago, he realized he needed something to help people choose him over other agents in the area. The Key Realty agent has created a REALTOR® IQ flyer to show his qualifications compared to other area REALTORS®. The flyer, which he sends out by email or delivers at client meetings, emphasizes his CRS education and his role as the 2016 Ohio CRS State Chair. Yeager has adapted the flyer for his presentations to buyers and sellers, and a local mortgage professional company distributes it in its package of mortgage information for its clients.
“Most consumers overlook designations like CRS because agents don’t mention them in their conversations with clients,” Yeager says. By distributing his flyer to new clients, Yeager hopes to get the conversation started about the CRS brand.
Documented Experience
While many brokers may have earned multiple designations, those acronyms don’t indicate how much experience they have, and most clients don’t understand what those acronyms mean unless you explain it to them, says Andrea Lard, CRS, with Portico Property Consultants in Broomfield, Colorado, outside Denver. “Agents today can earn a certificate sitting in front of a computer for a few hours, but with the CRS Designation, agents need to document that they have completed a minimum number of transactions. It is one of the few real estate designations that require agents to prove their experience in the field,” Lard says. She believes CRSs need to emphasize this aspect of the designation with their clients.
To promote the designation, Lard includes data in her listing presentations from the CRS website comparing the production of a CRS with that of the average REALTOR®. She also shares CRS flyers on her Facebook page and displays the CRS logo on her About Me page on her website.
But in Lard’s view, it isn’t the designation logo or letters that matter to clients, it is the expertise and experience CRS agents bring to the table. In a testimonial on her website, a client said he hired Lard because she approached the transaction differently than non-CRS agents he had interviewed. “While other agents told him they would post his listing on different real estate websites and promote it using social media, I focused on my 20 years of experience, negotiation skills and expertise in pricing the property to help him sell his home,” Lard explains.
When CRS agents take the time to demonstrate their advanced knowledge of real estate, their experience in the business and the extensive referral network, clients will recognize that CRS means more than three letters after their name.
If you know someone who would benefit from joining CRS, refer them to CRS.com/join for more information.
