Isom Coleman
CEO/Broker
HomeSmart ICARE Realty
Sacramento, California
homesmart.com/real-estate-agent/california/sacramento/23498-isom-coleman/Welcome
Region served: The Greater Sacramento area
Years in real estate: 15
Number of offices: 4
Number of agents: 356
Favorite relationship-building strategy: Servant leadership
What is the most important thing you learned this past year?
Isom Coleman: How resilient our HomeSmart agents are. Throughout the past year, our agents have dealt with not only the pandemic, but also extremely low inventory. Despite these challenges, they have increased their overall transaction volume by being agile in the way they conduct business, finding ways to use technology to show homes, and quickly embracing and implementing heightened safety protocols.
You served in the U.S. Air Force prior to becoming a real estate professional. In what ways did your military experience prepare you for real estate?
IS: One of the most important lessons I learned was to be a disciplined and strategic thinker. You don’t have to win every battle to win the war. The many talented and caring agents in our brokerage have done a stellar job of incorporating this philosophy into their everyday interactions with their clients and other agents. The goal of each transaction is a successful outcome for the clients, not winning at all costs every step of the way.
Sometimes you have to take risks and be able to learn from failure to get to a point where you will succeed. We’ve been willing to take risks on new technologies, ideas and approaches if they hold the potential to help grow business for our agents. Luckily, many of the things we’ve tried over the years have been solid successes.
What do you find most valuable about being affiliated with HomeSmart?
IS: The support we get from the corporate office and other franchise owners is invaluable. While everyone is willing to share information about what’s working in each of the HomeSmart franchises located throughout the U.S., the corporate office has done an excellent job of creating a culture that makes franchisees feel welcome.
Their business model incorporates regularly devoting an enormous amount of resources to upgrading and improving the technology and systems they have in place. As franchisees, our feedback is regularly requested, and enhancements are made to the systems we use, as well as to the training and tools we offer our agents. Because they are constantly striving to improve, our agents are able to provide their clients with service that is polished, professional and at the forefront of the industry.
How has your affiliation with HomeSmart helped you and your agents cope with the challenges associated with the pandemic?
IS: Our affiliation with HomeSmart helped agents cope with the pandemic in three ways—first with the amazing daily and weekly training on how to market and conduct business virtually. Secondly, the amazing technology HomeSmart offers allows our agents to work from anywhere.
We have an app that allows them to upload their transaction documents directly from their phone, as well as communicate with our brokers and receive feedback remotely. With these systems in place, our agents are free to work wherever they have WiFi.
And thirdly, with the fee structure we offer, our agents bring home significantly more money on each closed deal than they are typically able to keep with the traditional commission split brokerages. During the pandemic, knowing that they would be bringing home the higher dollar amounts offered with a 100%-commission structure provided peace of mind.
What is one of the biggest challenges your market faces, and what are you doing to overcome it?
IS: The biggest challenge has got to be low inventory, which has made it harder to get offers accepted. Peer-to-peer collaboration during our bi-weekly broker Q&As has been an invaluable tool for our agents to be able to share the techniques they’ve had success with.
For more information, please visit www.homesmart.com.
