Smooth Operator: How to Ease the Way to Productivity

From the moment he became a RE/MAX Broker/Owner in 2011, Matt van Winkle has gone to great – and strategic – lengths to make his presence known in the Greater Seattle market and the industry as a whole. The 32-year-old’s far-reaching ambition recently led him to expand the footprint of his brokerage with the acquisition of another RE/MAX brokerage. This month, RE/MAX On the Lake becomes the largest RE/MAX brokerage in Washington State. And van Winkle’s latest tack means he’ll oversee some 250 agents in six locations and $1.3 billion in annual sales.

Supporting so many agents across several locations is no easy feat, which is why van Winkle continues to embrace digital innovations and tools. Rather than simply implement the latest and greatest in tech, however, van Winkle gauges the value of technologies by how effectively they help agents get more clients, provide great service and realize their personal goals.

The brokerage’s new website, www.joinotl.com, is a prime example of effectively using technology to drive efficiency in business. Just as often, however, it isn’t about implementing new technology at all, but rather helping agents more efficiently employ the tools that we all use every day.

“For a lot of agents it gets down to the simple things,” he says. And that includes something as basic as how and what to use for email. To be most productive, agents should limit their use of email to only four times a day, says van Winkle.

“Everything we do is driven by helping agents have more time,” he says. “If you have a good agent and you give them more time, they can do more deals or find more balance in their life. Technology is a great way to make this happen.”

Remove it or improve it

A former attorney, van Winkle earned his real estate license looking for something more. He wanted to build a business that would positively impact people’s lives.

He purchased his RE/MAX franchise in 2011, converting his solo shop, Van Winkle Realty, into RE/MAX On the Lake in Seattle’s Green Lake neighborhood. He joined RE/MAX for its strong brand recognition, which, he says, was underrepresented in this market. “I saw an opportunity to create a new identity, but backed by a brand everyone already knew.”

He and his 90 agents and 10 staff members, prior to the acquisition, have been on a tear ever since. The brokerage’s three offices in Seattle, Bellevue and Issaquah are on track to close a combined $400 million in sales volume in 2015. “On average, we outsell agents in our market by 44 percent,” van Winkle says.

“A lot of people look at the growth we’ve had and want to attribute it to some secret technology, but the technology we use isn’t about being fancy; it’s about being effective,” van Winkle says. “It’s about finding tools that are out there and adapting them to the real estate world. Additionally, through one-on-one coaching, we dig down to the smallest level of detail with our agents – even beyond technology to personal well-being, personal finance and other areas – to help identify ways in which they can run a more organized and efficient business. All this translates into a better client experience.”

Agent growth is van Winkle’s most important benchmark of success – and it drives every technological move the brokerage makes.

Enter Business Coach Katrina Hamilton. A coach and trainer, Hamilton helps agents effectively manage their day-to-day tasks through creating a paperless workflow with cloud-based services such as Dropbox, sorting email into “tasks” and “FYI” items, as well as using Inbox Pause, a program that lets agents stop all new email from coming in so they can focus on current work.

“The key is finding what’s holding agents back, and removing it or improving it,” Hamilton says. “That’s the goal with all the technology we use.”

Increase efficiency; increase your client base

The office, for example, has adapted Asana – a project and task management documentation system originally designed for software developers – for the real estate setting. The software helps agents and staff members to better organize aspects of their business, including marketing and transaction coordination.

“Using Asana, we’ve been able to increase our client capacity with the same number of staff,” van Winkle says. Real estate agent Beth Traverso, who joined RE/MAX on the Lake (Issaquah location) in 2013, says van Winkle’s focus on technology helped her triple her business last year. “If I didn’t have Asana it would be difficult and inefficient to track projects and tasks.”

Van Winkle’s emphasis on coaching has also played a big part in fine-tuning her strategy. “I think about every aspect of my business and evaluate what systems or processes could make it better.”

But if there’s a single piece of technology, a “killer app,” in RE/MAX On the Lake’s technological arsenal: It’s called Portals – an innovation spawned from necessity.

“We couldn’t find a good transaction-management platform out there anywhere, so we built one ourselves,” van Winkle says.

The proprietary platform pulls data from the Multiple Listing Service and informs an agent precisely what documents are required for the full transaction. “It’s a complete transaction-management platform that allows agents to run a completely paperless business, minimize administrative time and stay completely organized,” van Winkle says.

“I get real-time feedback on documents that need reviewing, and I can seamlessly handle multiple deals at a time,” says Sales Associate Oscar Overlund. “And Portals is constantly evolving based on our feedback.” Overlund, who works mainly out of the Green Lake office, says Portals lets him conduct transaction management directly with other agents without needing to print, fax or scan documents – the traditional, and more cumbersome, way of doing business.

These days, in classic van Winkle form, he’s pouring energy into a new company – an aim to leverage lessons gleaned to date. “With everything we learned with Portals, we created a start-up to build real estate technology that is both consumer- and agent-friendly,” van Winkle says. “We want technology that works for everyone.”

That can even include motion-picture technology. Last month, van Winkle hosted a Star Wars-themed client-appreciation night for agents and their clients at a newly remodeled IMAX theater, where everyone enjoyed a private screening of the new Star Wars film. “It was an exclusive opportunity to see the biggest movie of the year on the opening weekend. Clients felt very special getting to experience that.”

“You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to be a technology innovator,” van Winkle says. “Sometimes innovation means simply finding new ways to use the technology we already know.

“It just so happens, both avenues have really paid off for us.”

Traverso would tend to agree. “My decision to work with Matt has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made for my business.”