Carter Clark
Broker/Owner/President
Weichert, Realtors® – The Griffin Company
Fayetteville, Arkansas
https://www.weichertgriffin.com
Regions served: Northwest Arkansas and Southwest Missouri
Years in real estate: 23
Number of offices: 4
Number of agents: 236
Favorite part of your job: Working with our agents to help them grow their business, learn how to prospect and be customer-centric.
Most important thing you’ve learned throughout your career: One thing I don’t think will ever change is the importance of relationships within the business—whether it’s with our agents, other agents, companies or clients. Jim Weichert says it all the time: “People do business with people before they buy a product or service.”
How are you utilizing technology to better serve your clients?
myWeichert, our CRM system, allows us to stay in contact with our clients on a regular basis. When I started in the business in ‘03, if you touched base with your sphere of influence eight times a year, you were their agent. Now it takes 40-plus touches. What used to work on a spreadsheet, you now need a CRM that works for you. With myWeichert, our agents have an IDX website in addition to their own database and lead generation system. It’s a fantastic tech tool that gives them a leg up on a lot of the competition.
What is your top strategy for staying in touch with your sphere while also reaching out to new clients and first-time buyers?
Open houses are huge for us as far as growing our sphere of influence and finding new prospects. In fact, we’re seeing 60% of our business today generate in some form or fashion within an open house, whether it’s listings or buyers. We also do a lot of community events. We’re involved with Northwest Arkansas Children’s Hospital Cancer Challenge, where we’ll donate up to $25 per closing—if the agent participates—in the customer’s honor. Over the years, we’ve donated nearly $350,000 in the name of our clients.
As you approach the finish line of a transaction, how do you ensure a successful closing?
In every real estate transaction, the goal is for one plus one to equal three. It has to be good for the buyer, and it has to be good for the seller—and if it’s a win-win situation—the transaction will be smoother while everybody wins. Sometimes you have people who feel like if they don’t get a pound of flesh, it’s not a good deal, and that’s not the case 90% of the time. My goal is for it to be a win-win situation for everyone involved, and that occurs when the transaction is smooth and there’s a fair price for both the buyer and the seller. That’s what we teach all of our agents.
Looking ahead, what trends do you see shaping the market for the remainder of the year, and how are you positioning your firm to capitalize on them?
Northwest Arkansas is unique as far as the businesses that are headquartered here—from Walmart to Tyson Foods—as well as the University of Arkansas. Branson, Missouri, has a huge draw from an entertainment aspect in addition to it being home to Table Rock Lake. There are also a lot of condos currently on the market in the area, and as interest rates continue to tick down, we’ll be able to absorb a lot of those and see continued success. Fort Smith, Arkansas, is our Steady Eddie, continuing to thrive and grow with different industries given its location in the center of the state.
For more information, please visit https://www.weichert.com.
