Remax Real Estate Concepts October 12th breakfast a big success, with cake!

On the second Tuesday of every month our brokerage puts on a breakfast at the Hilton Garden Inn on 86th St in Johnston. The event is unique in that agents from all brokerages are encouraged to come and are welcomed at the venue. This week, in addition to Real Estate Concepts agents from Des Moines, West Des Moines, Altoona, Grimes and Newton we were honored to have guests from both Coldwell Banker and Iowa Realty among us.

In case you've missed by other blogs on this topic, the food alone is worth the investment of your time, usually about an hour and a half. Served up hot are pancakes, eggs, sausage links and bacon, and hashed browned potatoes. There's also an obligatory courser of sweet rolls and such and an overflowing plate of fresh fruit. I often find myself wanting to get two plates, even though it's just breakfast.

This week's featured speaker was Jonnie Wright President and CEO of the Buyosphere, an organization devoted to helping companies provide stellar customer service. Jonnie is also an accomplished blogger and radio personality. His blog can be read at : http://theunsecretshopper.com/and he can be heard on the radio on Saturday mornings from 8-9am on 1350AM KRNT. Recently Jonnie secret shopped some agents doing Sunday opens, the results were rather shocking to say the least. In a time when agents should be treating prospects like royalty, many of those shopped flubbed even the basics of greeting, rapport and follow up. Equally unnerving were the answers some agents provided when asked about the ethnic makeup of the neighborhoods. You can read for yourself on his blog.

Mostly though Jonnie talked about creating a welcoming environment at an open, smile, shake hands, offer chocolate, have some music playing quietly, build rapport, show the home, use the prospects name, thank and follow up were themes he hyped. The analogy Jonnie gave was that customers, like all of us, want to be coddled much like we were as tiny babies, and postulated that all our lives were spent in a vain attempt to recreate the pampering and indulgence we enjoyed as children. Maybe so, maybe not, but suffice it to a smile, handshake, proper greeting and use of a person's name are all good advice. I think in general Jonnie made us all feel great and that we could accomplish great things and change peoples life just by making an effort to be interested in them and show them that somebody cares. Good stuff. Thanks Jonnie.

Next up was the cake! Naomi Babel, broker of the Real Estate Concepts West Des Moines baked and decorated a huge cake celebrating our broker, Robb Spearman's 10 year anniversary of the foundning of his real estate business. Bless her heart! Everyone broke out in cheers when it was unvieled. Between the great food, Jonnie with his feel good message, Naomi with her sweets and our broker Robb telling us he loved us all, we were all "feelin alright, uh huh." as the old Joe Cocker song goes.

If you missed this last breakfast you missed a good one to be sure. But we will have another on November 9th. If you'd like to attend just give us a call, ya'll.