As our second installment of People in the Network Making a Difference, we interviewed Todd Fields of The Group, Inc. Real Estate. Congratulations to Todd for being the first agent nominated! As a member of The Group, Inc. who has been around since “before computers,” Todd has a lot of tips on working with customers who are not as tech savvy as you are. He talks about promoting his Individual Website, how Facebook has worked for him and how the mapping technology used has really benefited his customers. Read below for the full interview with Todd.

Name: Todd Fields
Title: Broker
Company: The Group, Inc. Real Estate
Personal Website: tfieldsweb.com

Q: How long have you been with the group?
A: 15 Years – before computers!

Q: You have long been a supporter of The Group Inc. website and Individual Agent Websites: What are your favorite features? What about them has worked for you?
A: I think we have one of the most comprehensive sites around. You can use my website or you can go to thegroupinc.com. I try to council people. I ask how did you find us? How are you looking at houses? And they usually tell me through our website. I do ask them to go and look at my personal site.

For relocation especially, we’ve got all your resources for any question you ever ask, including what is the population of every ethnicity you can name! We’ll have an answer for you somewhere on the website or a link that will take you to it. One of our best features that we have is that our listings are updated a lot quicker than everyone else on different real estate sites like realtor.com.

I also ask everyone, “Have you used our really cool “polygon tool?” And they’ll go “huh?” I ask them this because when I ask “what could we do better for you before you go onto the website?” they always tell me that they hate looking for properties and having to search through 40 of them to find two that they like! A lot of times they have a specific area in mind they want to look in and we have a solution for that. I walk people through it. I tell them to give it a try because it is based more about you the customer, not about us. And by then most people have tried it and said, hey this is pretty cool!

Q: Do you feel like generally people do well with the map search? Or do you think they are doing the normal search because they don’t know how to use the map search?
A: The map search sometimes just needs personal direction by an agent. I happen to really like it because if you like a specific school area, you know we can type that in for you. Or if you like a certain area of town, you take that grid and map it out. Some people get frustrated because they can’t drop the polygon tool in the right place but I ask people to take a deep breath and get your favorite glass of red wine or something like that in the evening and sit down and I’ll walk you through it because once you learn to use the polygon, you’ll find you get a real concise listing, the showings you want to see. It’ll show all the homes in there. All you have to do is click on there.

I’ll tell them, you told me churches were really important to you. I want you to type in churches and see what happens. And I will wait a minute, and hear them go. “Wow you’ve got to be kidding me” when all the churches pop up. Or where do you like to get your favorite coffee? It’s just that initial learning curve that takes some time to get over with some people but once I get people on it, they get the hang of it quickly and love it. So that’s what I do. I just try to educate them on it and they get it, but most agents just don’t want to take that kind of time.

Q: How long have you had your own Individual Website?
A: Since The Group first introduced them.

Q: How have you tried to promote your Individual Website?
A: It’s not that hard. I try to get them there from my bio basically because if I just met you over the phone, we’ve maybe talked for about 15 minutes now, I want to go into a relationship, a relationship of buying or selling a house. If we’re going to have a business relationship then why don’t you check me out at tfieldsweb.com? I’ll bring that up or say, “Shoot me an email and I will send you a link. I want you to take a look at us. Check out The Group, our history and my history, and make sure we can work together because I’ll bet you no matter how many times you’ve bought or sold a home you’ve never had an agent say check me out. Go on there take a look at the kids – it’s pretty cool.” I’m a soft sale. I’m not really directing people towards the blog or any kind of conversations because I’d much rather pick up the phone and talk to people.

Q: Do you follow the trends of social networking or is that something you stay away from?
A: I am a member of a few places but definitely Facebook. I’ve made money off of Facebook. In fact I should make a lot of money off of Facebook this year!

Q: So you have actually generated business off of Facebook?
A: My kids made me get on there and then for the heck of it, it was a Saturday night and my wife and I were just sitting around, and I said boy what happens if I click my reunion date? I said, “Look at these people I haven’t talked to in 30 years!” I got together with a few of them online, called them, did the texting thing and the blogging on there and you can get a good thread going with a few people and that’s cool. For instance one guys lives only about ten miles away from me up here in Fort Collins so we had a beer and we sat down and talked. I asked him what he’d been doing and he told me he sold some business…for $46 million dollars! So I of course asked where he was going to buy his 2nd and 3rd home and he said funny you should ask. So now I am getting together with him and another guy from my class who lives outside of Boulder to help them buy their next homes.

I was working with a doctor up here and his wife, at the closing table, mentioned something about her college daughter and Facebook. I said do you have an account? And her eyes lit up. You wouldn’t believe how much advertising I got off her account. She loved the marketing we did on their house because I do aerial videos. I like to get the toy helicopters that take the pictures, you know, the aerials, and I put them together. She said they put the pictured up on Facebook and her friends loved it! I said can I make you a friend? She said absolutely so now I’ve changed things. Instead of being the blogger saying I’m now getting up to go to the bathroom, and now I’m going to go get a water, I now say looking forward to yoga, sales meeting and writing a contract. And I get responses. People are calling back. So I am using Facebook more for business that way.

Q: You seem to have several success stories like that?
A: Yeah and I’ve got more. I graduated from Boulder High School back in the old days, and thirty years ago our team won state basketball championship. So on Facebook I heard from one of my friends that lives in Merin County (San Francisco). So I’m talking with Annie and she mentions one of her brothers is going to go to this thing at CU because the athletics director, an old buddy of mine at CU, is throwing a party for the team. So I went down there and I was talking to my buddies and it was good to see them. Facebook came up and a couple of the business guys asked how I am doing with it. I said go find me on it and one day, I got a call back from several of them looking to do business.

Still, I think if you’re going to train people on Facebook though, you have to tell people that the first two weeks is social and nothing but gossip. Watch yourself because it can become very addicting!  

Q: You mentioned you do all your own videos. Do you use a vendor that The Group, Inc. has arranged or your own vendor?
A: I hire out. Right now I use Defiant Productions. It’s a couple college kids that were written about in the paper so I thought I would give them a call and get them started. The video I did, the very latest one, we actually did a lot of the filming and most of the voice-over was done in studio.

I’ve got a personal vendetta against agents who don’t treat their listings like businesses, who put up three pictures that are blurry because they took them with their camera phone. I’ve got a real problem with some of these guys who say hey I do video and then they throw it on YouTube and get this little blurry picture. Am I going to look at a blurry picture and consider spending $500,000 on something? You can go to Vimeo and Vimeo is high class, definite quality. These guys have the nice camera, they have the microphone system set up so that your voice is clear. I’m getting good responses. I like the way we showcase the houses. Technically I think the last one was a little too long but for a beautiful house, the guys put together a pretty cool deal.

CLICK HERE TO SEE ONE OF TODD’S VIDEOS.

Q: You seem pretty tech savvy. What is your favorite feature that The Group, Inc. website has?
A: Our website is tremendous. I think it’s a great resource. We drive people to it and they call us. I love getting a call and they say can you show me a home? I pull up the home and it’s a RE/MAX listing. So I have to ask, “How’d you find us?” And it’s always because they were on our website. That’s great how did you find our site? They were just ‘Googling’ the area and ours looked pretty cool. Here I am showing RE/MAX homes and Coldwell Banker homes that they found on our site! These are people that obviously are just out there trying to get the best deal but I like that. I love our website for that.

Q: Is there anything you’ve come across or seen that you’re interested in right now?
A: I think the concept of live video is interesting. I know live chat is a big thin that people try to incorporate but live video would be really cool. I’m doing a lot of business from people International and out of state so I’ve gone to Skype for that. The bandwidths are getting good enough the computers are getting good enough now for most people to where video is becoming a must. A live video feed. Talk to somebody, not a realtor, because nobody wants to talk to a realtor but talk to a customer service/realtor rep – something like that would be really cool to play with. If you have someone who presents themselves well they could have the camera on them and respond anytime someone pops up wanting to talk over live video!
 
Q: What is your favorite thing about working at The Group, Inc.? What has kept you there for 15 years?
A: The people. We don’t sell, we council. And we’re all family here. You put all of this stuff together and you get a pretty good relationship here.

About People in the Network Making A Difference: We like to highlight staff and or agents around the Enterprise Network that are making a difference in their organization and the Network itself. We asked each of our Members to nominate people they think deserve recognition as things happen in their organization. We talk to these nominees and find out how and why they are making an impact and try to uncover some of the things they are doing that others in the Network could learn from. If you know of someone who should be nominated leave us a message.