After more than two decades in real estate, agent Angela Haldeman’s business was exploding. As she focused on her niche of buying long-term rental properties for investment clients, she soon found herself handling 10 and then 15 and even more transactions per month. But, instead of basking in the growth of her business, she was fraying at the ends as she tried to handle every aspect of each transaction herself.
“I was struggling,” she recalls. “I was just hanging on for dear life, just trying to make sure I could get my business to continue to be OK until I had steered the ship in a direction toward somebody who could help.”
As Haldeman met with different brokerages to find support, she ultimately joined the Keller Williams Chesterfield Market Center. Through its white-glove offerings, the market center created a smooth transition for Haldeman along with a clear plan for supporting her growth moving forward. YTD, her business stands at 112 closed transactions, or more than $30M in volume.
“I made the transition, and it was seamless,” she says. “I ended up spending more time with my family the weekend of the transition than I have for probably close to a year. We still closed nine transactions without missing a beat that week, and 13 without missing a beat the following week.”
The Power of Leverage
Once she realized the need for support to keep up with her growing business, Haldeman met with several brokerages, including Keller Williams, which she had been with more than 10 years earlier. The response she received from KW Chesterfield Market Center Team Leader Bryan Leveritt wowed her and led her to return to KW.
“What really made the decision for me was that they never treated me like a statistic,” she says. “My business has now exploded, and I know that companies are interested in me because of that explosion, but the Chesterfield office never made me feel like that. They made me feel like they were interested in me as a person and as a potential – not just what I’m doing today but what I could continue to do for a period of decades down the road.”
During the transition, Leveritt jumped straight to what he and his team could do to offer Haldeman leverage support right off the bat.
“That was so impressive to me from a human aspect,” Haldeman says. “And, they have picked up that baton and run with it. All I have to do is check in.”
Through tools like Career Visioning, a big-picture statement on what you envision in your future career, and the KPA, a behavioral assessment that pinpoints the personality traits and strengths of talent, Leveritt was able to hone in on what would alleviate the growing pains Haldeman had been experiencing – and what would allow that growth to continue.
“When you build value into the system of how you bring an agent into our technology and our coaching approach, you can retain that agent for life, which is exactly why we’re going to do it,” he says.
Tools for a Seamless Transition
As Haldeman prepped for the transition, she also braced emotionally for the disruption that a major change could cause in her business. The reality turned out to be a pleasant surprise.
“I was prepared for several months of feeling like maybe I had made the wrong decision,” she says. “And what’s happened has been the complete opposite of that. Not only do they have the services there, but the services are so good and the people already know what they have to do.”
To help make her transition as smooth as possible, Haldeman was able to leverage in-house talent in the market center for help with contracts and to migrate her database into Command. Once her contacts were uploaded into Command, she was able to access SmartPlans to get marketing campaigns in motion that fit her business goals and brand.
Now, with the transition behind her, she is looking forward with her sights set on growth, including hiring the right people to bring her business to the next level.
“I’m really focused on the daily because we haven’t filled that gap yet,” she says. “Eventually we’re going to flip-flop that. We’ll get some team members and build to where I’m not carrying as many of the daily balls. Then, I get to take back that building feature of my own business and my own team.”
Gearing Up for Growth
Haldeman urges other agents to consider which aspects of their business they need support on or if fear is holding them back from making a major change.
“I think that it’s so easy for agents to get hyperfocused on transactions, on what we’re doing today, what we have to do tomorrow,” she says. “It’s really become very clear to me that I need to be thinking much further down the road than that. And so what I’m most excited about, for one, is just surrounding myself again with really great talent. I’m really excited about the synergy of working with some of the amazing agents that work in the office and, of course, the leadership of this office too. But the biggest thing for me is really turning my business from a transactional business into a sustainable business.”