Steve Wilke
Broker/Owner
WEICHERT, REALTORS® – Triumph Group
Powell, Ohio
WeichertTG.com
Region Served: Central Ohio
Years in Real Estate: 25+
Number of Offices: 1
Number of Agents: 60
What tools does Weichert provide that are working best for your team?
My current favorite is myWeichert, powered by the kvCORE platform. It provides our agents with individual websites they can brand and promote. It also has an incredible contact management component that helps them develop leads from listings they already have. Within hours of someone coming to an open house, the system is reaching out to visitors, asking if they have any further questions about the home or if there are any other homes we can help them find. It saves our people tons of time on the phone.
I understand you’ve experienced a lot of growth in a short amount of time. Can you talk about your decision to build a new space from the ground up?
We joined the Weichert® national franchise system a few years ago and went from 22 agents to 60, which caused us to outgrow our office space, so we found a location in Powell with high traffic and visibility, started the process and moved in two months ago [at press time]. Now we have a huge training room, plenty of meeting rooms with flat-screen monitors, individual workstations and offices, and 28 parking spaces for staff and clients, as well as room to grow. This was one of my best investments.
Now that you’re settling into the new office space, what’s your next major focus?
We’re concentrating on developing new relationships with service providers—title companies, mortgage brokers, even handymen—so we can direct our clients to them and be assured they are going to have an equally professional and responsive experience through the entire home-buying or -selling process.
How are you qualifying these new vendors and partners?
We decided to narrow things down, so instead of offering six or eight lenders, we’ll only have a couple of go-to lenders to assist our clients. We’ll do the same with title companies. We’re not settling for anything less than vendors who will go above and beyond the call for our clients. And because we can send them so much business, I have to say that they’re jumping through hoops to be one of those partners. Next, we’re going to be expanding to home insurance providers and maybe even a home warranty company.
Final Questions…
What’s your best tip for getting the right listing price?
View the house, take detailed notes, then analyze the numbers before going back to meet with the client to set the price.
What’s your No. 1 time management tip?
Use a daily planner and plan your day the night before. Then start the next day nice and early with your to-do list all plotted out.
For more information, please visit www.weichert.com.
John Voket is a contributing editor to RISMedia.
