BROKER STRATEGIES every home that goes up for sale. Fortunately, we service areas where the median price point is still below the national average. It’s incredibly important to make sure you are fully pre-approved with a trusted lender before you begin your search. If you have a home to sell and can move into temporary housing, you’ll be able to write a stronger offer with fewer contingencies. We want to minimize the number of reasons why a seller wouldn’t pick our offer over another while protecting a client’s best interests. Where do you see your business in five years? There will continue to be disruption in the marketplace from outside forces that are out of our control. Internally, we strive to disrupt our own business model before someone else does it for us. With our ERA affiliation, I’m able to collaborate with brokers across the country to hear what they’re experiencing before it hits our market. That kind of intel helps me plan for what our company may look like as we expand into new markets. RE For more information, please visit www.era.com. -Jameson Doris
Helping Agents Build Business Christian Barnes
President and CEO Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Kansas City Homes Overland Parks, Kansas www.kansascityhomes.com Region served: Greater Kansas City Metro Years in real estate: 14 Number of offices: 8 Number of agents: 450 Best advice for new agents: Align yourself with a company that offers the support you need.
What made you choose to work with Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate (BHGRE) Kansas City Homes, and how did you get to where you are today? Culture and values are really important to me, and the alignment and synergy with those at BHGRE Kansas City Homes is a perfect match. I saw the potential of having an impact within the industry as a whole and with our agents to help them grow from a leadership capacity. As I started training, mentoring and coaching agents, I quickly realized that’s where my passion lies. I 84 July 2021 RISMedia’s REAL ESTATE
Barnes
love the company, I love the agents, I love what we have here—I can’t imagine being anywhere else. How have you helped your agents build business throughout the pandemic, and how are you incorporating these new strategies into your business moving forward? We provided an outlet, every day, offering a place for them to come to gather virtually and feel connected. Being able to offer a platform for them to connect across offices and throughout the entire city was a silver lining of the shift we made during the pandemic. You can’t replace the face-to-face communication, but being able to have that as a resource in our back pocket is something that will carry us into the future.
“I’m always looking to open agents’ eyes to other resources and tools that are out there that they’ve not yet seen.” -CHRISTIAN BARNES President and CEO, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Kansas City Homes
When it comes to training, specifically, how do you help your agents? Whether you are new to the business or have been in it for 10 years, we tend to get our blinders on and try to find the repeatable things in real estate. I’m always looking to open agents’ eyes to other resources and tools that are out there that they’ve not yet seen, or things they’ve heard about but haven’t taken the time to learn, and see how it can have a posi-
