Staying Ahead of the Game

Robert Rinke
Broker/Owner
Levin Rinke Realty, a member of Leading Real Estate Companies of the World®
Pensacola, Florida
www.levinrinkerealty.com

Region served: Northwest Florida
Years in real estate: 30
Number of offices: 6
Number of agents: 190

Talk about being part of Leading Real Estate Companies of the World® (LeadingRE). 
I had an established independent brokerage, but I needed to grow. Just as I was looking at different brands, we got the call from LeadingRE, and it has been an excellent choice for us. While being able to keep our name was a huge benefit, more importantly, we value training, and the training provided by LeadingRE is great. It comes in bite-sized pieces, which allows our agents to sit back and view excellent training material each day for 15 minutes. This training has been invaluable, as it has put our agents ahead of the game.

You spend a high amount of your annual budget on marketing. Can you talk about the reasoning behind this? 
We spend a great deal of money on marketing and training. In fact, we’ve hired trained videographers to make videos of our agents, the marketplace and the gorgeous lifestyle we lead in the eco paradise where we live. We also have drone operators who shoot incredible videos, and we dominate social media. In essence, we are a full-service marketing company built within a real estate company, and that marketing exposure has put us way out front in the market.

What is your best advice for hiring and retaining agents? 
Brokerages do not make much money anymore. We work for the agents, which is a mentality I think we all need to have. You have to train and market, and then you attract all the great agents. It’s really as simple as that. Any money we earn from Levin Rinke Realty is poured back into the agents and the community. Margins are very lean, but we keep the best and the brightest by investing in them.

How are you helping agents who are feeling unsettled due to the pandemic? 
Many of our agents have had a difficult time this past year. There’s not the same camaraderie that comes with being together and meeting in person, and while Zoom has been an effective alternative, it’s not the same. This last year has been scary for everyone, but it’s also been a record year financially for our agents, so we try to concentrate on that.

What is your best piece of advice for finding success in real estate? 
To succeed in real estate, you need two things: integrity and discipline. Because the barrier to entry is so low, many agents do not take the business seriously, but in order to make it, you have to be serious. And you have to be driven. It takes tremendous drive/discipline to build up and maintain a great real estate business.

For more information, please visit www.leadingre.com.

Lesley Grand is a contributing editor to RISMedia.