My 4 days in Phoenix, Arizona are now completed and I’m writing this blog post on my way back home to Gatlinburg. Our wonderful staff covered for me while I was away and we even sold a couple of Gatlinburg area real estate properties while I was gone. The purpose of my trip was to share the latest real estate marketing technology ideas with 140 of my smartest friends. The CyberStars is an invitation only group of realtors from around the country (and a couple of foreign countries) and our annual meeting is one conference I just won’t miss. I never fail to learn great ideas that we use to keep our number one selling position in our Gatlinburg area real estate market.
With my head filled with lots of projects we will be putting to use to improve our customer service, my staff is a little nervous. Every year when I come back from this conference they know that I will be asking them to do things a little different to better serve our buyers and sellers.
Our staff consists of three in-office professionals and my wife Karen Schoenfield who keeps all of our accounting in order. Kim Breeden, our very capable office manager and transaction manager works tirelessly to make sure that every transaction is completed as smoothly as possible while she also supervises our other staff members. Josie Lafollette, who has worked with us on and off for over 10 years, is our market technical analyst. Josie’s job is to provide the mountains of reports that our foreclosure sellers require. Amazingly, Josie manages to do this while she also attends college full time at Walter State Community College in Sevierville. The newest member of our staff is Giulia Luzzana who is responsible for managing our team’s listings and providing showing feedback to all of our sellers.
Outside of our office, our team benefits from 3 full time Buyer Specialists. Our senior Buyer Specialist is Suzy Compton-Hays who has been with us for over 10 years. Suzy is a hometown girl, born and raised in Gatlinburg and she does a wonderful job of identifying exactly what clients are looking for and locating it for them. Her husband Mark is our second buyer specialist and whether they are working together or separately, they are a team within our team. The third member of our team of Buyer Specialists is Cindy Hopson, who, in the interest of full disclosure, is also our daughter. While we have 3 other daughters (and one son too) Cindy is the oldest of the bunch and she provides excellent service to our buyers as well.
All of our team did a great job while I was learning and sharing the latest ideas in our real estate industry. Brace yourself team, new projects are headed your way!!