As the field marketing director for Northern California, Hawaii and Utah, Camy Walton’s role “changes day to day and moment to moment,” from managing a crisis to overseeing and supporting a 28-member team of field marketing managers and marketing specialists.
After COVID-19 hit last spring, Camy quickly evolved and revamped her plans to ensure her team was meeting the ever-changing needs of agents. Along the way, she discovered some unexpected and positive benefits to agents having more downtime. Learn more about how Camy and her team always go the extra mile to provide agents everything they need to succeed.
Tell me about your role as field marketing director for three distinct regions. What are some of your key responsibilities?
I’m the intermediary between what our national team is pumping out in terms of products and services, implementing them in the field and making sure feedback is collected and things are working well. If it’s not going well, I find out what the issue is and figure how to solve it to make it work for each region. Each market is a bit unique, so I have to adjust a lot of strategies based on the needs of those particular markets. I also run a huge team, so I’m making sure they’re doing what they need to do, are up to speed on everything and have the support they need. They’re my eyes and ears in the field.
How did you and your team evolve during the pandemic to meet agents’ needs and help them grow their business?
One of our strengths is our ability to be agile in the classes we’re teaching. When we went into the pandemic, my team quickly adjusted their course content and made all of the classes in our SalesPro calendar available to every agent in Utah, Northern California and Hawaii. Our specialists trained themselves to speak very broadly to each market, and every week, I sent out a training calendar so agents could see in advance what classes they wanted to take. What I think is cool is how the specialists took it upon themselves to delve into topics that were not necessarily about tools but more applicable to things like “How do I host a virtual open house?” or “How do I do a virtual walk-through?” So, based on whatever they heard were problem areas for agents, they created courses on the fly to address those things, which was very timely for agents’ business.
After the pandemic hit, were there any silver linings?
Right before COVID, we started pitching Design Concierge to agents in the Society of Excellence, which is our top award level, and I got a few agents signed up right away, but some said they didn’t have time to talk to me. Then, about a month into the pandemic, they all wanted to talk to me. It was the perfect time to capture attention. Agents had a moment to breathe and focus on what they could do to impact their business, and there was a huge uptick in getting those agents signed up and then using them to propel the program forward and say, “I got this awesome service!”
I think agents have taken to heart technology and design, and I don’t think that mindset will shift back any time soon. We have agents who are now experts on things they told me they could never do because they didn’t have time to learn them. Now they’re conducting video calls, sharing their screens and doing all these things. They’ve really learned how to use technology to streamline their business.
What products do you think have made the biggest impact on your agents’ business?
Definitely Listing Concierge and Clients for Life. They are the ones generating more business for our agents. With Clients for Life, agents who send out the monthly Clients for Life eblast are getting responses from people they haven’t talked to in years who respond, saying, “You sold me a house 20 years ago and I’m ready to sell now, but I couldn’t find your phone number, so I’m so glad you emailed me because I need you to list my home.” We’re getting multimillion-dollar deals out of this, which is awesome.
How do you strategically support the growth of your local operating companies to ensure their brokerages become more productive and profitable?
We are really pushing the adoption of programs that help agents’ business, because if an agent is making money, we’re ultimately making money. So, with Listing Concierge, even though my team had already met our goals in terms of adoption rates with agents, we functioned as if we hadn’t met those goals and continued to drive adoption. We pushed the benefits of why agents would want to use Listing Concierge by finding ways to actually demonstrate that to them. For instance, reminding them that “Just Sold” postcards are part of their package, so they should order them to promote themselves. We’re giving them more of the why and the how instead of just here’s what it is. I think that’s been very helpful in supporting that piece of the goal.
Another thing we’re focused on is the recruiting aspect and supporting our RVPs and managers. The specialist team is very instrumental in that. The managers who are really killing it on the recruiting side are leveraging our specialists in their recruiting appointments because they are the brand ambassadors essentially, and they know all of the things we offer, and that’s a huge recruiting tool for managers to use.
How do the services provided by The Studio help give agents the competitive edge they need to succeed?
The best thing that’s come out of The Studio so far is Design Concierge. That’s a huge win for agents! When I’ve gone into recruiting appointments, many agents have this perception that Coldwell Banker doesn’t allow for co-branding. We tell them our leadership understands the need for co-branding, and that to be competitive in the market, you’ve got to stand out. We explain how we can help them be much stronger and build on their reputation by providing additional materials that are pretty and will help them stand out and be really professional. They’re like, “Oh, I don’t have to do it. You can help me with this.” They love that!
Another great thing for agents is they can use their Design Concierge materials in other product offerings as well. For example, Design Concierge can create custom Listing Concierge printed pieces that agents can use when they purchase a Listing Concierge package to market their listing, a custom listing presentation that can be uploaded into Moxi Present or a custom personal logo that can be integrated into every agent tool we provide to agents.
