When Mary & I began to work as a team, we had both been in the business for several years. Mary had been working as a residential agent and I had a commercial brokerage, before the headhunters tempted me back into my pre-real estate field of economic development and a move out of state.
Taking that job wasn't the best decision I ever made, and after 3 years of frustration, we decided to move back to Colorado and team up selling homes. That was the best career decision I ever made. And I'm going to count that as my first real year in real estate for the purpose of Anna's contest this month, because very little of what I was doing in commercial real estate was relevant to selling homes, or at east selling homes the way Mary does it.
Starting a business from the ground up had us trying a bit of everything - and back in those days, a lot of the old stuff like taking lots of floor duty and holding open houses actually worked well. Our brokerage published a monthly listing magazine that people actually called on, we had walk-ins, open house traffic was good, and we started farming a couple of neighborhoods. It helped enormously that the market was hot, so everything we tried generated decent results.
During that first year, when we were learning our market, as well as how to work effectively with each other, Mary was very much my mentor, as she still is today. What she taught me during that first year - and the reason we're still here today - is to provide excellent client service and hang on tight to every client so they'll be around in the long run. Above & beyond became our standard practice, and when the deal was done, we didn't fade into the woodwork. Our client contact strategy has always been to be present as the source of real estate information and advice without being intrusive. As a result, we have a client list that continues to generate a steady stream of business in good and bad markets.
The techniques and tools have changed radically over the years, and along with some of the more mundane efforts that still work, we're fully invested now in on-line marketing through blogging to support an IDX search site. We're currently working on improvements to that strategy. When we started it 6 years ago, we had a much different dynamic working in the market, and some of our choices for focus - market segments and neighborhoods - have become less productive. So we have been identifying changes to more promising targets, and figuring out how best to implement them. We hope to have everything put together by spring of 2018.
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