By Bob Shallit
bshallit@sacbee.com Published: Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2009 | Page 1B

Tim Collom meets Mary Locke and her dog Libby in east Sacramento as he passes out fliers Monday on a new listing from Windermere Dunnigan. Collom uses such personal contact to help find clients

 Bob Shallit: Knock, knock! ... Who's there? ... A door-to-door realty salesman!

 

Sacramentan Tim Collom is 31, a young guy.

But when it comes to his job, the Windermere Dunnigan real estate agent is decidedly "old school."

A rarity among local real estate pros, Collom looks for business the old-fashioned way: walking neighborhoods five days a week, knocking on doors and introducing himself.

"I like to get face to face with people," says Collom, who has a boyish face and boundless energy. "It's still the best way to build relationships."

He hits about 100 houses each weekday morning, mostly in east Sacramento. When someone answers the door, he shares information about new home listings and recent sales in the neighborhood and offers his referrals for plumbers, painters and other home improvement contractors.

Collom's game plan: Offer a service - and gain a customer when that homeowner needs to buy or sell.

On a recent morning, he's knocking on a door on 57th Street. A woman answers, recognizes him, even remembers his name. They exchange pleasantries before he moves on to the next house.

Not everyone is so nice. He's had doors slammed in his face.

"I had one man tell me if I didn't leave, he'd turn a hose on me," Collom says, adding with a laugh: "I haven't gone back there."

Although rare, that kind of experience can make a guy nervous. Collom says he psyches himself up every morning before his hour of house calls.

It's like a workout, he says. Hard to go and do, but "it feels great when you're done."

And Collom says the system he's followed during an eight-year real estate career pays off.

Collom says he completed more than 20 sales in 2007 - most of them a direct result of his door-to-door work. His numbers were down a little in 2008 but still ahead of most agents in his American River Drive office, says the firm's owner-broker Geoff Zimmerman.

Even so, she's ambivalent about Collom's approach.

"It's not the way I teach (sales)," she says of door-to-door marketing. Zimmerman thinks other methods - weekend open houses and online marketing, for example - are a better use of an agent's time and don't risk offending people who dislike unexpected visitors on their doorstep.

But she concedes Collom gets results. "With his personality and his enthusiasm," she says, "it works."