My e-mail is filled with spam from vendors trying to sell me products or services for my real estate business that will make me rich. They often include testimonials from agents who use the product or service and are now rich.

The real estate companies are almost as bad. The notes come through about the training classes, often on how to use a product or service that will make us rich yet I don’t see my peers taking the classes and becoming rich. The agents who were successful before they took the classes are still successful, and the agents who were not doing so well don’t suddenly become superstars.

When it comes to marketing and technology I am not seeing any new products or services that wow me, or that I even want to try. I keep seeing the same kind of get-rich-quick advertising. I might be missing some good products because I can’t get past the spam that contains a lot of red and yellow and looks like it was designed by Ronald McDonald, or the fact that salespeople find me on the Internet and "cold call" while I am in my car.

I get an invite from a vendor that tells me that I need its new Web site to grow my business. Someone is making money from the sites but it isn’t the agents who are providing all the free content or the listings. Do we need more Web sites that have some of the listings on them for the entire country? Where is my white paper? Is there a study I can read on how consumers feel about navigating a zillion Web sites to find a local listing or local Realtor?

Vendors sell their ideas to real estate companies that in turn recommend them to us. There is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. The top coaches in our industry are influenced by vendors, especially when it comes to technology, and they go out and teach agents how to use products that are cumbersome and expensive and that create more problems than they solve.

The agents who can’t sell real estate are told it is because they are not using "XYZ" product or they are not using it correctly. There is no evidence that several of the highly touted real estate technology products increase sales or actually help us sell homes. Yet we buy them.

But not while I am in my car.

Teresa Boardman is a broker in St. Paul, Minn., and founder of the St. Paul Real Estate blog. Boardman will speak at Real Estate Connect in San Francisco, July 23-25, 2008. Register today.

***

What’s your opinion? Leave your comments below or send a letter to the editor. To contact the writer, click the byline at the top of the story.

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