MINNESOTA 4-3-23

MINNESOTA EDITION

Embracing Smart Homes:

Does New Technology Really Increase Home Value?

HOW TO BUILD A TEAM

THAT WILL WIN BIG NO MATTER ITS SIZE

6 Ways to GET YOUR CLIENT TO TRUST YOU

MILLENNIAL BUYERS:

Where They Are & What to Know

FEATURED AGENT

RENAE BROWLEY COVER STORY

THE SECK GROUP CATHERINE & KERIC SECK

Laughs!

Graham Harrop Graham Harrop Cartoons Cartoons

Putting the power of humour to work for you!

Putting the power of humour to work for you! grahamharrop.com

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6 Ways to Get Your Client to Trust You The word “REALTOR®” can leave a sour taste in some people’s mouths. Many of today’s home buyers and sellers grew up during the 2009 recession. They are wary of anything 4

or anyone who comes off as too salesy, and they want to work with individuals who they can trust.

But how do you prove to someone you’ve likely never met that you can be trusted?

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Put Testimonials or Case Studies on Your Website

When something goes wrong, own up to your mistakes. Don’t hide bad news from your clients. Be upfront and responsive.

Testimonials and case studies are social proof that you have both the experience and the skills to do the job your clients are hiring you for. People often leave testimonials when they are either incredibly disappointed or extremely happy with the service they were provided, so they’re a good indication to prospective clients of the treatment they’ll receive.

Case studies, which you can post on your blog or website, have much of the same effect, but even more than testimonials, case studies demonstrate your real estate and finance expertise because they explain how you achieved a specific set of results.

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Be Responsive and Accessible

Can your clients reach you easily? That doesn’t mean you need to be available 24/7, but you should respond to your clients within a few hours of receiving their message. When agents don’t respond to their clients’ calls or emails for days on end or fail to provide them with a direct line of contact, their clients’ experience can quickly become frustrating.

Agents are busy but so are their clients. If you constantly show up late to or reschedule meetings, your clients won’t feel like their time is respected or their business is valued. Make sure you set a realistic schedule for yourself rather than spreading yourself too thin.

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Be Honest and Transparent

Sometimes you don’t have the answer to a client’s question. Be honest about your strengths, weaknesses, and the limits of your knowledge. A good response might be, “I don’t know, but I can find out.” Be transparent with your clients, and they’ll respect you for it.

You should always act in their best interest.

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Go the Extra Mile

If you do the bare minimum, that’s what your clients will remember. Their experience won’t be memorable, and they won’t gush about you in online testimonials or in real life to people they know who could use your services. It’s that simple.

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Put Yourself in Your Client’s Shoes

Clients understand that you need to earn money, but that doesn’t mean they want to feel like they’re just a dollar sign to you. Be empathetic to your client’s concerns, even if you’ve heard it all before. Your clients should know that you are there for them.

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Be Consistent

Being responsive, friendly, and knowledgeable shouldn’t be an act. If you “turn on” your personality for clients and then suddenly become a different person when they leave the room, it’s likely that the cracks in your mask will eventually become apparent.

But “faking it till you make it” is so common it’s become a cliché. When we are starting out, we don’t always have the systems or resources in place to create a smooth client journey, from onboarding to closing, so instead we constantly try to reinvent the wheel. Give yourself time to pause, slow down, and reevaluate your workflow. Creating systems creates

consistency, and those systems can and should be constantly updated.

Developing trust between you and your clients will take time, but doing these things can give you a running start.

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How to Build a Team That Will Win Big No Matter its Size In the real estate world building a team is a goal almost every agent strives towards achieving. Doing business with a team as opposed to solo has numerous advantages. With more agents handling clients as well as other employees specialized in areas such as marketing and administrative support there to assist you; you can greatly increase your business and sales.

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So, when creating a team, logic would tell us that the bigger it is, the better, right? Wrong. When it comes to real estate teams, size doesn’t matter so much as the players you bring onto that team to work with you. A team doesn’t have to be big to win big, and here are the secrets to building a team that wins big no matter its size.

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Hire the Right Team Members

Put Your Team Members in the Right Positions to Win

You’ve probably heard the saying, “you’re only as strong as you’re weakest link.” That idea holds true for any kind of team, including those in real estate. If you have weak members on your team, then it’s not possible to have a strong team. Drawing strong team members to your business is essential.

Finding strong team members is just one part of the equation. As the leader of your team, you now have to assess each member’s strengths and weaknesses and position them appropriately. You want the best player for each role playing that part and catering to their strengths. Choose your team member’s roles wisely, and place each individual in the position where their strengths can shine and they can best contribute to a win for the entire team. Every role is important to the team working smoothly and winning as a whole, so it is important to place each team member in the role most suited to his or her skills.

To better understand what kind of person would make a strong addition to your team, you need to ask yourself what skills and characteristics you want your team members to possess. The strongest members are often ones that share their leader’s values. When you share values with your teammates, you are all running along the same course towards the same goal as one. Your definition of a victory in this case is also your teammates’ definition of it. This helps strengthen even the smallest of numbers because you are all working together toward a common goal.

Another characteristic too look out for in potential team members is a positive attitude. You can teach someone the skills needed in real estate, but you can’t teach someone how to have a positive attitude.

Positive members tend to achieve more due to their optimistic nature, but more importantly, they spread that positive attitude to the rest of the team, which improves every members’ performance.

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Communicating Your Vision to Your Team

Your team members are the key ingredients to ultimate victory, but what recipe do you follow now to lead them to victory? That is what communication is for a winning team; the recipe you will use to

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help best utilize each team member and instruct them on how they need to work together to fulfill the recipe that will lead them to be a winning team. Your team members need to know the plan and you must give them the tools to successfully execute it.

It is up to the leader of a team to help your players see your vision and help them understand what a victory looks like. The goal may seem simple and obvious to you, but you must communicate it over and over again to your team members, so they understand it as well as you do. With different personalities coming together to form a unit, you are going to be dealing with numerous challenges such as competing agendas. You will find this on any team. You must keep the goal and at the forefront of your player’s minds in order to encourage them to put aside their own personal desires in order to come together as one cohesive, single-minded unit and push towards the team’s goal.

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Give Your Team Members the Tools to Help Them Perform at Their Best The final thing all great leaders do is equip their team members with the proper tools and training needed for them to succeed. You have to show them how they can each come together with their different strengths to work as a team towards one unified goal. This involves more than simple skills training, but also endurance, so they can last as a team and win even those matches that seem unending and impossible.

Think of all the challenges that they could possibly face ahead, and clear their path to victory by giving them the necessary training and tools they will need to get past any obstacle. As the leader, you must be prepared to continually communicate the team’s goal and your vision. Use that vision to motivate your team members throughout the journey towards victory.

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THE SECK GROUP CATHERINE & KERIC SECK Top Agent Magazine

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Catherine started selling real estate in 2005, with her husband and business partner Keric Seck joining her a few years later. Together, as the Seck Group with Edina Realty, Catherine and Keric operate a family-oriented business that is all about maintaining quality relationships with their clients and colleagues.

From early on, Catherine Seck’s dad, Merrill Kirsch, instilled in her the virtues of humility, integrity, and hard work. Prior to entering the world of real estate, Catherine worked in sales for her family’s hugely successful music distribution business, Dart Distributing, where she managed a $30 million dollar account, Best Buy and over 300 10 Copyright Top Agent Magazine

independent merchandisers as Dart’s sales representative. “That’s where my business acumen and my dedication to customer service came from,” Catherine explains. “I learned to always make a win-win situation.” Catherine started selling real estate in 2005, with her husband and business partner Keric Seck joining her a few years later. Together, Top Agent Magazine

as the Seck Group with Edina Realty, Catherine and Keric operate a family-oriented business that is all about maintaining quality relationships with their clients and colleagues.

The Seck Group serves the Twin Cities and the surrounding area. An impressive

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99% of their business comes from referral clients, a testament to the strength of the relationships they build. “We are referral agents, and that makes us better and stronger agents,” Catherine says. “It comes down to trust, expertise, and knowledge in the industry.

The biggest compliment we get is our

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The Seck Group serves the Twin Cities and the surrounding area.

An impressive 99% of their business comes from referral clients, a testament to the strength of the relationships they build. referrals, and it tells you we’re doing something right.”

Clients appreciate the honesty and good advice they get from the Seck Group. “If I wouldn’t buy the house, I tell my clients the truth,” Catherine says. “All of our clients are like family, and coming Copyright Top Agent Magazine 12

from a family business, I enjoy the personalization of what we provide. People hire us because of who we are and what we do.”

Catherine and Keric are true full-service agents, providing staging for sellers and doing everything else necessary to Top Agent Magazine

market listings. They also rely on their extensive personal network of agents in the Twin Cities area to ensure optimum exposure for their listings. “We are constantly working with other agents on our pre-buyers and pre-sellers,” Catherine says. “We do a lot of phone calling and talking to great agents all over. We communicate with them to see what’s going on in the industry. We’re old-school that way.”

The team combines this old-school approach with extensive digital and social media marketing across all the major platforms.

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As for what the future holds, Catherine and Keric look forward to continuing to build and improve their business to better serve their clients. “We are super excited to be among the Twin Cities’ top producers, and we are always trying to do better,” Catherine says. “We can always improve, and we plan to ramp up our social media to go above and beyond in reaching out to people.

We want to keep doing what we do, but do it even better.”

Catherine and Keric’s favorite part of real estate is helping people. “We love

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making people’s dreams come true,” Catherine says. “Whether you’re buying or selling, this is an emotional business.

You’re actually working with a family and they’re putting their life and their trust into you to make this happen. We

get such great satisfaction from doing everything we say we’re going to do, and we always go above and beyond.

Seeing the end result and getting to see these families so happy is a great feeling.”

For more about The Seck Group, call 612-599-3028 (Catherine) and 612-709-9500 (Keric) or email CatherineandKericseck@edinarealty.com.

You can find them online at theseckgroup.com. www.

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Millennial Buyers: Where They Are & What to Know Homebuyers and sellers come from all walks of life. If you’ve been an agent for long, you’ve likely worked alongside a wide variety of folks—from first-timer homeowners and down-sizers, to second home searchers and those finally hunting for their dream home. While there is hardly a shortage of diversity in the housing market, there Top Agent Magazine

is one generation that is making big strides in homeownership these days: Millennials.

Millennials can be loosely defined as those between the ages of twenty-two to thirtyseven. As you can see, this constitutes a wide swathe of the population. If you’re an agent who stands to learn a bit more about

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a demographic whose influence and homeownership goals are rapidly evolving, tune in below for a few pointers that can help you expand a segment of your clientele in the process.

Where do Millennials prefer to buy?

Many Millennials came of age during or immediately following the Great Recession, and as such, many of them relocated or returned to mid-size cities and smaller communities where the cost of living was most affordable. Of course, there are countless Millennials that call the U.S.’s major cities home—especially those in the

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tech industry. The good news is that you can court Millennial clientele no matter where you service area is located. That said, community amenities are of great importance to this generation. They value public transportation, green space, and entertainment—from coffee shops and topnotch restaurants to farmer’s markets and boutiques. Emphasizing those attributes will be key in selling to Millennials and locating neighborhoods they’re most interested in.

What sort of communication do Millennials prefer?

Most Millennials are digital natives, or close to. That means they grew up learning

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how to navigate digital spaces, and prefer to communicate through mediums like email, text, and social media. This isn’t to say that Millennials aren’t good communicators, but they’re often on the go, and have learned to research and shop online. To accommodate this, it’s best to build a presence across the most popular listing portals and social media platforms. Although, it’s not enough to establish a site and wait for the calls to come in. Responsiveness is a key factor for Millennials, who expect speedy response times. Make sure you’re checking your inbox frequently, responding accordingly, and engaging with your audience online. This will let Millennials know

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that you’re savvy, available, and understand the value of their preferred method of communication.

Are Millennials ready to buy?

It’s a common misconception that Millennials are uninterested in the rite of passage of purchasing a home. While Millennials maybe waiting a bit longer than their parents did to buy a home, there are good reasons to explain this phenomenon. For starters, Millennials entered the job market during the downturn, which means they are more conservative when making big purchases, and have to play catch-up to reach a sound

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financial position. Likewise, student loan debt has proved a major financial inhabitation for Millennials. Instead of socking away a few hundred a month to save for a home, they’re forking over that cash to pay down their educational loans. How does a Realtor compete with this reality? For starters, a bit of understanding goes a long way. Work with your mortgage partners to find financing possibilities that cater to this younger demographic. Recognize that Millennials—like most buyers—have some trepidations when buying a home.

Also consider fielding Millennial clientele with the long view in mind. You might be 18

courting them for months or more until they’re ready to take the plunge, but they’re also famous for their reviews. When a job is done well, Millennials shout it from the rooftops—or at least share it a dozen time from their phone.

As time passes, Millennials will continue to dominate the marketplace when it comes to buying and selling homes. A little self-education on this powerful demographic can go a long way. If you know your clients and your audience, you’ll be in a far better position to serve their interests and make a customer for life.

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RENAE BROWLEY Growing up in central Minnesota, Renae Browley has always possessed an entrepreneurial spirit. Seeing both her parents operate as their own boss on the family farm, she knew that one day she too would run her own business! Always having her parents there growing up, she knew she wanted to be able to offer that same experience to her own children. She first took an interest in real estate as an investor, where she built the foundations needed to excel as an agent. It was her ticket to finding something she loved doing, that she could do at home as her and her husband began a family of their own. Inspired, she decided to launch her career as a REALTOR® in 2014, later earning her Broker’s license in 2017. In the years since, she has gone on to author an accomplished career as an agent, establishing a network of satisfied clients and colleagues that spans the region.

Today, Renae is an Associate Broker with eXp Realty, where she assists clients throughout the Seven-County Metropolitan Area. Combining her outgoing personality with her insight into the local market, she has fostered a distinct process to meet the needs of any buyer, seller, or investor. She is also launching a team this year called The Black Dove Group; where they will be able to expand their expertise and help even more people.

When working with her clients, Renae prefers a comprehensive approach. Drawing from her own experiences as an investor, she brings more than one perspective to uncover the right property for their best interests. She is also able to uncover more effective strategies for pricing any home to capture the optimal gains every homeowner is looking for. Transparency and communication is what helps Renae ensure a seamless transaction throughout.

Elsewhere, Renae keeps in touch long after the deals are done to cultivate an ongoing relationship and make sure her clients are thriving in their new homes. Over the

years, she has earned a fantastic reputation throughout the Twin Cities Metro area, with the near entirety of her volume coming from either repeat clients or referrals.

Having completed over $8 million in volume in 2022 alone, Renae remains committed to the lasting standards that set her apart.

“Throughout my life, I’ve always had a heart for helping people,” she says. “For me, it’s never about the dollar sign; it’s about seeing my buyers, sellers, and investors make the best move possible while taking care of them from beginning to end. Most importantly, I personalize my approach to their needs, treating each buyer or seller as if they are my only client.”

Outside of real estate, Renae is dedicated to her community, having formerly served on her local Women’s Council of REALTORS® and participated in numerous Real Estate affiliations that include organizations like NAREB, SPAAR, and numerous investment clubs around the 7-county Metro area. She is also a Certified Mentor at eXp Realty helping brand new agents launch their own career. When she’s not with clients or giving back, she can be found spending quality time at home with her husband and their four children.

Having already exceeded $4 million in volume in 2023, Renae intends on building her team The Black Dove Group in the coming months and scaling her penchant for client service throughout the region. In the meantime, she looks forward to all the new opportunities that await. “As the world changes, I believe in leveraging our industry to create higher levels of customer service,” she says. “I always want to bring something special to the table, providing my clients with the transparency and care needed to make well-informed decisions. At the end of the day, there’s nothing more rewarding than connecting with them and truly exceeding their expectations over the course of their transaction. Relationships are so important and every day I’m looking to build and strengthen them.”

To learn more about Renae Browley email renae@theblackdovegroup.com, visit renaebrowley.com or call (612) 445-6069. www.

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Embracing Smart Homes:

Does New Technology Really Increase Home Value?

Technology and innovation move at a lightning-fast clip, so it can be hard to keep up with all the smart-home trends sweeping the market at a given time. From smart thermostats to security systems accessed through an app on your phone—there are endless options to customize and update your home for the modern era. But which, if any, of these smart home products add Top Agent Magazine

value to property in a significant, worthwhile capacity? Especially with new generations of the same products released in quick succession, it can be hard to determine whether it’s worth it to take the plunge. With that in mind, we’ve conducted a deep-dive into the smart home options out there that make the most sense for your bottom line and real estate investments.

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Smart home amenities range in price and return.

There are certain smart home products that won’t break the bank while still adding lovely touches and time-saving features to your space. For instance, a smart thermostat may not run more than a few hundred dollars, but it can take so much of the guesswork and analog nuisance out of programming your home’s internal environment. That said, buyers selling properties with mid-range amenities like this can’t expect a windfall in return. While smart home features can certainly lure buyers and give the sense that a home is attractively modern (and thus move-in ready), it doesn’t mean that you’ll be reaping a sizable monetary reward for your foresight. Conversely, this reality doesn’t mean those smart options

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are without value entirely; it just means that the value of smart home options may be apparent in a different capacity, like luring a particular buyer or creating a desirable, sleek image for a property headed to market.

On the other hand, larger scale smart home amenities that are being left behind for the buyer—like a smart refrigerator or wired sound throughout the property—may be able to lure particular buyers who value high-end details. While it can be difficult to state definitively the value of smart home options, the rule tends to be that the more you put in, the higher the likelihood you’ll reap the investment you sow. Focus your smart home options on home appliances first, then work your way toward security, thermostat, and entertainment options.

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Smart home amenities capture the attention of buyers

Agents must know how to pitch the value of smart home options

Even if you have mostly opted for small or mid-range smart home options, you can still benefit from their presence in a property—even if they don’t inflate your bottom line as a result. Smart home amenities have the power to focus the attention of buyers, sending a clear signal that the previous owners were tech-forward and made an effort to upgrade the property for the contemporary era. Millennial or Gen Z buyers especially value these up-to-date modifications, and the presence of these desirable gadgets can create added interest and drive up value naturally. Likewise, featuring these options in listing photography can also drive interest from younger or high-end buyers looking for move-in ready spaces.

Remember that smart home features are relatively fresh to the market. While some new construction properties are equipped with these smart amenities, just as many homes on the market don’t offer these upgrades and modern flairs. This means that many buyers, of all ages even, aren’t familiar with the benefits and perks of these options, let alone how they’re operated. Before you can derive value from a smart home or smart home features, you’ll need to understand a product’s proper usage, cost, and benefits. Do your homework regarding what smart home features can offer in terms time or cost savings, and be able to show prospective buyers how easy these objects are to use, as well. Do both, and you’ll be in proper command of what smart home features can offer buyers and pitch them accordingly.

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