As Tom Hopkins, top sales trainer would say, "Drill For Sales Skill."

Derek, if you asked me to continually run comps. on properties you're going to wholesale, that would imply there is no potential commission for me to earn.

But BP management seems to belittle the idea although they allow any trainer to advertise using banners.

The basic "guru" pitch is that by buying training or resources from the guru, an inexperienced, uneducated (in real estate), and unknowledgeable investor lacking sufficient capital can become very successful in a certain area of real estate investing/business.The problem with most of these programs center around the following(1) The program taught doesn't actually work(2) The program does not provide the person purchasing the program with the knowledge, experience or education neccessary to successfully implement the program(3) The program contains very basic information that can be obtained far less expensively by other means(4) The trainers and consultants provided are inexperienced and/or incompetent(5) The program accepts anyone who can pay although many accepted don't have the neccessary personal tools to be successful(6) The program makes false and/or misleading promises(7) The program understates the amount of capital neccessary for success(8) The program understates the amount of time and effort neccessary for success(9) The program overstates the size of the target market(10) the program assumes that because of success in one market it will be successful everywhere all the time.There are legitimate real estate consultants/trainers out there with a track record of success.

The appraisal adjustment is used by the appraisal district as implied, to adjust the value of a given property.

Too many of the large trainers are training for the large concencous not your individual need.

However, truthfully, it appears you’ve used your post as a guised platform to elevate your angst because you’ve implied by your own words that Scott Trench is in a position of “power” that you need to “speak truth to” as you wrote; “I wasn’t going to ignore gender-biased language from a leader in the BP community, even if it was inadvertent, and even though it’s hard to speak truth to power.”

I think a lot of gurus and trainers like to upsell people on using software, but in reality, software (in my opinion) is a way to make people feel like they are investing - but actually aren't.

Habitual modes of speaking, in my opinion, don’t imply a degree or less of character.

Thanks Josh, I tried giving you a vote but it didn't take, lol.You may have mentioned that before and it didn't sink in with me or others, so we are looking at this in the wrong light.Maybe you should simply call it something else other than "influence" since that implies a degree of influence gained by the information posted, it is a reasonable assumption based on comments in this thread.Maybe something like BP Score, Site Contributor Score....something that makes it a little clearer that it doesn't reflect the quality of advice by that member.Other suggestions????