(Above) White Door Group
For agents in the “choice” era—when homebuyers and homeowners have a multitude of options, and can afford to be highly selective—there’s gold in positive ratings and reviews.
For Chloe White and her real estate team, endorsements have been an essential fixture in the group’s online presence, everywhere from Facebook to Yelp to Zillow.
“A lot of people find us online,” explains White, leader of White Door Group, based in Farmington, Conn., with Keller Williams Realty. “Our goal is to be the most reviewed team in Connecticut.”
To get to five-star status, White Door Group has consistently exceeded expectations, working with clients in the Farmington Valley, Bristol, Plainville, Southington, West Hartford and on the Shoreline.
Here, White discusses her team, and how they’ve built a business on delivering first-rate service.
Suzanne De Vita: Last year, you rebranded your team. Why was that change important to make?
Chloe White: We were Chloe Real Estate, but I wanted to make the focus more about the team and not just me personally. We worked with Wildmint, a branding and marketing company in Hartford, Conn., to rebrand to White Door Group. We wanted a clean logo and something fresh, and with the thought of future expansion, we wanted there to be more of a team feel.
SD: You’ve based your business on referrals and repeats. Can you tell us about that?
CW: We’re around 75 percent repeat and referral business; the rest are either sign calls from listings, online leads—which we get from a number of sources—and even open houses. One thing that I’m involved in, and which I’m a big advocate for, is Business Network International (BNI). I’ve been involved for the last 10 years, and I’m part of the core group that started the Farmington group, Building Alliances. We get together every week with the goal of growing each other’s business by referrals.
SD: How are you nurturing your referral relationships?
CW: We did our first client party last summer. We had a party for 125 of our clients. We had raffles and it was a really fun evening. People got to connect with each other, and it was a way to give back and say thank you for everyone’s business.
SD: One of your focuses is ratings and testimonials. How do you approach that with clients?
CW: We have modern marketing, but we also back it up with really good customer service and getting people results. We bring it up in the initial consultation by saying, “Our goal is to create a raving fan and for you to be excited to refer us to friends and family. At the end of your experience, we’re going to ask you for an online review.” On Zillow, we have over 100 reviews. We want to get reviews from at least 90 percent of our past clients, and we achieve this by following a system.
SD: How are you leveraging social media for your team?
CW: We have marketing meetings on Fridays where we plan content for the week. We do at least one post per day. It’s a mix of real estate-related, lifestyle, fun and community events. We post to Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter, and we’ve just started using Pinterest. Everyone on our team has access to our Instagram page, and our goal is to do one story a day where we tag our location. You can see what we are up to by following us @therealtorwagon on Instagram. In addition, we are doing a couple of Google paid ads.
SD: Lastly, Chloe, how do you keep your team on track?
CW: We focus on the number of people we talk to per day. On Fridays, we’ll print out our contact sheets for the next week, which have 20 blank spots for each day. The goal is for everyone to talk to 20 people about real estate every single day.
Suzanne De Vita is RISMedia’s online news editor. Email her your real estate news ideas at sdevita@rismedia.com.
