Sharing what you know with your team can help everyone grow. In the following interview, Patti Siebold, the owner of Keller Williams Realty Premier Partners in Vancouver, Wash. talks about customer loyalty, training, education and more.
Patti Siebold
Owner
Keller Williams Realty Premier Partners
Vancouver, Wash.
Region served: Southwest Washington, including Clark, Cowlitz and Skamania counties
Years in real estate: 26
Number of offices: 2
Number of agents: 208
Best tip for getting the right listing price: Become the expert and then educate your sellers using facts and data to support your price.
Best time management tip: Instead of using a digital/electronic calendar, which can lose track of time and responsibilities, use a hard copy, color-coded calendar to keep you on task.
Most effective way to motivate agents: You can always teach and train, but motivation comes from within, so show agents what to do—and how to do it.
Can’t live without tech tool: The state-of-the-art technology offered through Keller Williams, specifically eEdge, a lead and database management, paperless transaction, marketing and website system.
The past decade has been kind of a roller coaster in the real estate world. What’s one of the proudest achievements you can look back on as the company celebrates its 10th anniversary?
The relationships we have fostered and the vast number of consumers we’ve been able to assist because of these relationships. Regardless of what the market is doing, we provide a nurturing environment for agents to thrive, in addition to training to help them grow their business. In 10 years, we have consistently maintained top marketshare based on agent count and closed volume. Not only have we made it through tough times, we’ve thrived and grown while other offices were closing, consolidating or being bought out by conglomerates.
What are two fundamentals that you feel are essential to your company’s continued success?
One thing that has attributed to our success over the past 10 years is our mission to always do the right thing. By adhering to this principle, and placing our principles before our profit, we’ve been able to grow and experience incredible success. The second thing that will help us achieve success moving forward is our fundamental belief that we will achieve massive success through the growth and development of others by providing training and education that allows agents to be successful.
Tell me about the relationship between the position in your markets and the ongoing success of your recruiting efforts.
Because we have consistently held the top marketshare in our area, we find it an exciting and beneficial story to share with recruits. Whether it’s an agent who is new to the business, or a current agent who is looking to build their business, both groups find our local success appealing. Our culture is comprised of a sharing mentality. All of our agents share and learn from each other. We have aligned with and developed top talent because we generally find that top talent likes to be around like-minded people.
What strategies do your agents utilize to stand out to clients and achieve customer loyalty?
We believe agents should receive their own leads on their own business, so all marketing is specific to each agent. Each agent is allowed to market and brand themselves individually, therefore, we don’t have a generic office phone number or contact info on our marketing pieces. In branding themselves individually, customer loyalty is connected directly to the agent, not the company. As Gary Keller, co-founder of Keller Williams says, “We stand behind our agents, not in front of them.”
For more information, visit http://www.kw.com/kw/.
