At Keller Williams Eden Realty in George, Garden Route you will have complete freedom to run your property business the way you see fit. It is your business after all.

In this blog post you will discover why this is one of the best things about Keller Williams in a sea of great things.

Your listings are yours

The status quo

Quick question. Who owns your property listings? Is it you, the estate agent who worked hard for it, or does your agency claim those listings as the agency’s property? This is an important question because you need to own your listings to truly build a real estate business worth having.

Estate agencies often distinguish between open mandate listings and properties listed under sole mandate. Should you ever decide to leave the estate agency, the service agreement will probably prohibit you from taking either the open or sole mandate listings with you. In an attempt to prevent you from listing the open mandates again under a different brand, their service agreements or policies might contain a clause that states that all listings belong to them. Obviously, when it comes to sole mandates, most agencies take an even harder line. This clearly makes it harder for some estate agents to leave their agencies, even for a legitimate reason.

Your listings at Keller Williams

At Keller Williams we believe that your listings are your listings. After all, you worked hard for them. If you should leave Keller Williams, heaven knows why, your listings and mandates automatically get deactivated on the system. To be clear, another agent would be able to relist any property but it would have to be a completely new listing with a new mandate, photos and information.

Property enquiries (leads) are yours too

The status quo

Unfortunately, to this day, many estate agents still have stories to tell of principals who route all phone-in and online buyer enquiries to themselves. These kind of principals compete with their agents by cherry-picking the best customers for themselves while their agents have to live off the scraps. These companies reduce their agents to mere lead receivers by not teaching them to generate their own leads. In many instances they charge their agents for the leads generated by the company.

In our view, this creates an unhealthy situation where those companies effectively compete with their agents. Ask yourself, if somebody else generates the leads required to sustain your business, who is in control of your business?

Your leads at Keller Williams

Keller Williams associates run their own real estate businesses, which means that our associates are not lead receivers. As a Keller Williams associate you will be enabled to take control of your business by generating your own leads. In fact, systematized lead generation is a core concept foundational to the success of all the top estate agents in the world, and we literally wrote the book on it.

In the video below, Gary Keller and Jay Papasan discuss certain elements of the lead generation model of the Millionaire Real Estate Agent book they co-authored.

As a Keller Williams associate, you will be in control of your own leads, enquiries and client interaction. Whether you are a brand new agent or an experienced campaigner, through extensive training, consulting and coaching, Keller Williams will partner with you to build a business worth owning. You will have access to leading technologies, systems and tools that will support and elevate your lead generation activities.

Farming areas

The status quo

At many companies, estate agents get specific areas to work in, often called farming areas. The idea is that the agent will become a specialist and hopefully dominate her farming area over time. The particular area agent is the only agent of the office who is allowed to generate leads, do show houses, drop flyers and more to “farm” that area. If you get a buyer or seller referral in an area that belongs to another agent, you will be most likely be forced to refer that business to the particular area agent (hopefully for a referral fee, although this is not always the case either).

Although the idea of an agent becoming a specialist is certainly commendable, the “farming area” model has a number of inherent challenges. We will highlight three challenges.

Not all estate agents share a similar work ethic, for example. It is clearly not in the interest of the estate agency nor its agents to “protect” the farming area of a lower or non-producing agent from a productive agent who could also work in that area. A non-producing agent could prevent a better agent from achieving a higher gross commission income by “squatting” on an area. Not only is this starving the higher producer and the company of revenue, it is also bad for the morale of the office.

Another challenge brought to the fore by exclusive farming areas is the level of cooperation between agents in the same office. In an ideal, supportive team environment colleagues will be quick to refer buyers or sellers to each other in their respective farming areas. However, in practice agents in these companies often hold on to buyers or sellers too long before referring them to their colleagues. This is because they only receive commission if they handle the transaction themselves, or because the low internal referral fee does not provide enough incentive to work together.

A third major challenge of the exclusive farming area model is the internal conflict it generates. People are people. As you can imagine, some people do not play by the rules, some do not know the rules well enough while others do nothing but quote the rules. For example, when an agent services a buyer or seller in an area that is not hers, the area agent might insist on getting his share although he played no part in the transaction. Principals of these companies usually spend an inordinate amount of time adjudicating disputes between agents. Importantly, whereas these agents could have been building their businesses, they are embroiled in unproductive confrontations.

Over the years, most agencies that enforce the exclusive farming area model have developed ways to deal with the challenges of farming areas. For example, agent teams of two or more may be assigned to larger areas. This encourages cooperation and higher production. Experienced principals will not allow non-producing agents to “squat” on areas if there are better agents waiting in the wings. Unnecessary friction can also be prevented with clear policy guidelines, training and attractive internal referral rates.

In which areas can you work at Keller Williams?

We believe that our associates must be free to make their own decisions. Our associates are running their own businesses, after all. That is why a Keller Williams Eden associate is completely free to list anywhere they want to in our Market Centre area. And the Keller Williams Eden Realty Market Centre covers quite a large area.

The Market Centre is based in George but our coverage area includes the whole Garden Route and areas of the Klein Karoo (Little Karoo). It includes towns like George, Mossel Bay, Sedgefield, Knysna, Plettenberg Bay, Still Bay, Gourits, Albertinia, Riversdale, Heidelberg, Oudtshoorn, De Rust and Willowmore. It also includes all the well-known and lesser known areas in between such as Wilderness, Herold’s Bay, Hartenbos, Great Brak River, Victoria Bay, Bonnievale and many others.

To be clear, we are not recommending that you list and sell all over a huge area like the Garden Route and Klein Karoo. In fact, quite the opposite is true. We believe that real estate is a local business driven by individual estate agents and their presence within their local communities. The training you will receive at Keller Williams will enable you to specialise in and dominate your local area. Once you dominate that area, you may then decide to expand your reach and results with your own real estate team. We will be there with you with training, technology and consulting every step of the way in your quest for world domination.

What we are saying is that the choice is yours. Like it should be.

Do you want to have this freedom to run your business?

Do you want to discover how you can control your own leads, listings and farming area? Are you looking for models and systems to build a business worth owning?

Arrange a confidential business consultation with a member of our leadership team by simply entering your contact details here.