REAL Trends’ The Thousand
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any of this year’s top sales associates were already profiled by LORE magazine. Here’s an update on where they are today:
No. 1 Individual Salesperson in Both Transaction Sides and Volume Ben Caballero: Specialization Is Key
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buyers, and they do recognize the value of having their home information in the MLS. I reduce their inventory marketing time by managing their MLS listings with a high degree of accuracy and timeliness.” In an effort to better service clients, Caballero has launched several new products that streamline a variety of marketing processes for them. One recent addition is a suite of marketing tools. “I have all my clients’ home information, photos and sales counselor information populated into our databases, so in terms of process, it’s now a simple matter for our clients’ sales counselors to create collateral materials without having to pull information from several sources or do it manually,” he says. “In addition, I can now take a builder’s data feed directly from the back office system and create MLS listings.”
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As a multiyear The Thousand No. 1, Ben Caballero, MIRM, broker/CEO of HomesUSA.com Inc. in Dallas, is often asked how he achieves such a high sales volume “My answer is specialization. Real estate has many areas in which agents can specialize. I choose to be a corporate specialist. Corporate specialists serve informed corporate clients, whose needs are vastly different from those of retail home buyers and sellers. They provide a specialized set of services and often handle a high volume of properties,” says Caballero. An agent who specializes in real estate owned (REO) properties is one example of a corporate specialist. “My specialty clients are volume homebuilders. My clients’ marketing departments, sales departments and product knowledge exceed those of any agent and most real estate firms. To attract homebuilders as clients, I had to determine what I could do more effectively than they could. I had to go beyond providing traditional agent services,” he says. “I realized that as skilled as home-building companies are, their core competency is building homes. They are not skilled in the nuances of the MLS or the details of how agents work, but they do want agents to bring them
“My aha moment was when our clients started telling us that they loved what we do for them. I’ve owned and operated businesses in this industry since I was 21, and during that time, I’ve always been on the receiving end of a certain degree of complaining from clients. I can sense my clients’ enthusiasm for us, and the results we achieve for them as their partner is extraordinary, as one can see in our sales volume.” — Ben Caballero, HomesUSA.com Inc., Dallas
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Lives of Real Estate