Is a Listing Agent a glorified task rabbit? (not trolling)

[Aaron Caddel]

I was just reading through the recent post asking for the TOP quality they look for in a real estate agent. The comments that followed were extremely depressing. They looked more like a list of soft skills most would consider basal expectations for a virtual admin: "Responsive" "Hard Working" "Communicative" "Reliable" etc. Remember that for most people, this is the LARGEST TRANSACTION of their lifetime.

After soft skills, the second trend is throwing out the all-mighty word, "Experience." It's a fun, hard to define (and unfalsifiable) word that is hard to challenge when the card is pulled. Often, this merely points to another shallow value proposition. I know plenty of contractors who have tons of experience but I wouldn't let bid a job regardless of the price. Contrarily, I've known agents, contractors etc who became juggernauts in their market within a year or two by being smarter and harder working than everyone else around them.  Experience alone isn't a value proposition that draws a necessary correlation to results.

So... what is it then? For a listing agent, I believe the greatest goal here is NOT just convenience, legal knowledge, etc. It's about maximizing home value, so how should you choose a real estate agent to achieve that goal? 

(before you respond, please make sure your response describes the agent, not the brokerage: eg. marketing reach of keller williams still doesn't mean a agent is good at their job)