At this year’s Future of Real Estate Summit (FORES22), keynote speaker George Foreman delivered a powerful message on reinventing your personal brand throughout your career. This sentiment was echoed in many sessions during FORES22, especially in one session featuring Web Raulston, CEO of Team Realty Solutions, and Qualia’s Enterprise Account Director, Heather Siegel.
Since starting out in Tennessee, Team Realty Solutions has grown and scaled into 17 different brands across the country. Raulston shared how he leveraged Qualia Connect to combine business strategy with technology to grow into new markets and provide excellent customer service.
Building a service-oriented brand requires local knowledge
Over the past 2 years, market conditions resulted in many title companies needing to focus on managing high volume instead of improving processes and client experience. Now, as the market slows down with rising costs, inflation, and a tight labor market, businesses must set themselves apart from the competition by establishing their unique brand. Raulston shared that his business responds to changing and competitive market conditions by constantly evolving and offering exceptional customer service.
One of the ways that Team Realty Solutions accomplishes this is by demonstrating local expertise to a wide range of audiences. This process often involves learning some tough lessons and pivoting based on client expectations—which are often highly localized. For example, Raulston shared a story of how his business experienced some initial bumps when starting in Colorado.
Raulston and his team learned that a termite inspection letter, which his team used in almost every closing for their Tennessee transactions, is almost unheard of in Colorado. When his Colorado clients received the termite inspection letter from his team, they immediately assumed that Team Realty Solutions had no experience in Colorado. Raulston and his team quickly updated their closing procedures to match Colorado norms and gain the trust of local clients. Raulston shared that this experience taught him and his team the importance of deeply understanding local markets.
Find the right balance between automated and personalized communication
Raulston’s Colorado lesson and other interactions with clients taught him the value of customized communication based on client needs and regional requirements. With advanced features in Team Realty Solutions’ software (Qualia Core and Connect), the team can customize communication based on a client’s location and other factors. For example, Raulston’s team utilizes customization features in Connect to deliver contextually relevant welcome letters to buyers, sellers, agents, and lenders in different regions. These welcome letters are triggered to send when certain criteria are met within an order and are customized based on the client type or region. This level of automation enables Raulston’s team to efficiently deliver personalized communications that meet client expectations.
Raulston also recommended creating a few different processes to accommodate various communication preferences. For example, while some clients may value digital, real-time updates, other clients may appreciate more traditional forms of communication, like phone calls and in-person meetings. In this case, title companies can leverage automation in Qualia Connect for day-to-day alerts like status updates and reminders so that staff can have more time for personalized communication with clients that desire more face-to-face communication.
Finding the right communication style is often a learning process full of trial and error. Raulston explained that Team Realty Solutions automates the client feedback intake process to learn more about how they can improve communication and other processes during closings. Through Connect, the team automatically sends out surveys to clients after the closing is complete to gain timely feedback. His team follows up on both good and bad feedback to understand the “why” behind all client reviews. This feedback enables Raulston’s business to continually reinvent itself and be successful when client expectations change. Raulston encouraged businesses to find opportunities to adapt and not be afraid of making mistakes as they grow.
To learn more about operationalizing your unique brand and client experience with Qualia Connect, get in touch with one of our product specialists by scheduling a time below.
