We live in times where the truth is a hard thing to find. Journalists present opinion as fact, making it difficult to distinguish between the front page and the editorial page. A journalists’ list-serv was exposed recently for sharing tips on how to present stories to influence a particular outcome. Whatever your politics are, this should be disturbing because we rely on the media for facts we don’t have time to research ourselves.

The same disconnect occurs in the real estate business. Our industry’s own “news arbiters” face the same challenge, I suppose, of generating revenue, so they respond by being provocative and positioning themselves as the hotbeds of innovation and bad boys of real estate.

They make judgments about which companies are the most innovative in real estate, based either on “pay to play” sponsorship dollars, or whoever touts the cool new business model. What they often fail to consider, however, is who is actually doing the business.

Creative marketing is one thing, but too often, reality is something else entirely. Actual results are what truly matter. We should be searching behind the Wizard of Oz curtain to ask, “Where’s the beef?”

When one highly-touted “model of the future” company claims to have 24 average transaction sides per agent – a goal anyone would want to emulate – and in fact did 32 sides in total in the first half of 2010 and is ranked about 75th in the market per the MLS, what’s with that? Certain companies are highlighted in every real estate media outlet, yet no one seems to ask how much business they are actually doing relative to their competitors.

Yes, we should respect new ideas and new forms of competition, but we also must balance hype with results. Accurate statistics paint a true picture of who is doing what relative to whom, how they are improving or declining compared to the market, and the kinds of customers they are serving. That is why – in this age of transparency – numbers reported to real estate news sources must be submitted correctly and validated appropriately so that we can identify the emperors with no clothes.

At LeadingRE, we talk a lot about numbers and performance because they matter. We put a high value on innovation, with our own “Most Innovative Brokerage” award, but to even qualify, the company has to be a market leader within its footprint, regardless of size.

Ideas without execution and marketing without monetization are meaningless.

So let’s pay attention to what’s behind the curtain to see whether ideas are producing results. Talk is cheap. Results require hard work, tenacity and staying power. Regardless of size or business model, the true verdict must rely on how well high standards of performance are generating growth, profitability and market leadership.

Posted By: Pam O’Connor