wow magazine august 2011

8
We’re One! SSRE Celebrates First Year WOW! What a month! I know this is the busy time of year for everyone, but I also know that many of you took time out of your busy schedules to volunteer, participate in parades and even do a little partying as we celebrated our 1st anniversary as Signature Service Real Estate! What a month! I loved seeing the photos I was sent after I put out a challenge for pictures of your community and I’m excited to announce that Cherry McLennan was the winner of my challenge. She will receive a Multipack of Greeting cards, customized post cards and Customized QR Code stickers – All told, a $50 value! Fantastic Pictures, Cherry! Find her winning photo in this issue! Enjoy this issue of WOW – We’ve got some great information and wonderful going-ons from around the SSRE family. There is also another contest this month that could earn you a free consultation from one of my favourite people… me! August 2011 Issue 4, Volume 1 Brian’s Corner Contents Page 2 Weyburn Medicine Hat Taber Page 3 Swift Current Lloydminster X 2 North Battleford Page 4 Moose Jaw Page 5 Farm Team Wainwright IQ Office Page 6 1st Anniversary Page 7 Parades Taber Coaldale Medicine Hat Page 8 Webinars Tech Corner Well, I have to say that through my interviews and meeting with people, everyone is very proud and passionate about being part of this awesome company. I have only been here since February of this year, but I felt it important to get some feedback from the team at large. I have to say that I doubt I could be any prouder to be part of the Signature Service Real Estate team and I can see and feel the passion and team work this company has as a whole. roughout Alberta and Saskatchewan there were celebrations going on over the week from July 11 – 15th. A lot of decorations, laughter and meeting of old and new. Let’s not forget the cakes…I’m sure some of us put on a few pounds! When I asked people their thoughts and feelings about how this last year had gone there was lots of information; I know I learnt a lot about who we are, why we are, and where we are going. e owners, Charles & Rob, are originally from Bow Island AB. ey are both very strong business men within their own rights, and they wanted to do something for the community they grew up in. It was realized the community needed a strong team of people with the right commitment and the right technology to support them in the selling and buying of their homes. e fact that both these gentlemen are easily accessed by everyone within the company had a very positive impact to those I spoke with. A big challenge for the company was finding out what would work for our agents & clients using high technology like virtual tours & iPhones. We wanted to offer something to our agents that no one else could. Some of these things were support, technology and training. For some, the change has been difficult, concerns over the name change, logo change, would the community recognize us? e answer is yes. Its not always about the name or the logo but about the people, which has been proven over and over again. Some of the words described what has happened in the last year are advancement, improvement and growth. Habits are hard to break and being stuck in the “this is how it’s always been done” mentality can hurt a growing company. But now we have a great support staff in all the offices, new advertising campaigns and a huge presence in the social media world.

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WOW Magazine for July 2011. Issue # 4

TRANSCRIPT

We’re One!SSRE Celebrates First Year

WOW! What a month! I know this is the busy time of year for everyone, but I also know that many of you took time out of your busy schedules to volunteer, participate in parades and even do a little partying as we celebrated our 1st anniversary as Signature Service Real Estate! What a month!

I loved seeing the photos I was sent after I put out a challenge for pictures of your community and I’m excited to announce that Cherry McLennan was the winner of my challenge. She will receive a Multipack of Greeting cards, customized post cards and Customized QR Code stickers – All told, a $50 value! Fantastic Pictures, Cherry! Find her winning photo in this issue!

Enjoy this issue of WOW – We’ve got some great information and wonderful going-ons from around the SSRE family. There is also another contest this month that could earn you a free consultation from one of my favourite people… me!

August 2011 Issue 4, Volume 1

Brian’s CornerContents

Page 2 Weyburn Medicine Hat TaberPage 3 Swift Current Lloydminster X 2 North BattlefordPage 4 Moose JawPage 5 Farm Team Wainwright IQOfficePage 6 1st AnniversaryPage 7 Parades Taber Coaldale Medicine HatPage 8 Webinars Tech Corner

Well, I have to say that through my interviews and meeting with people, everyone is very proud and passionate about being part of this awesome company. I have only been here since February of this year, but I felt it important to get some feedback from the team at large. I have to say that I doubt I could be any prouder to be part of the Signature Service Real Estate team and I can see and feel the passion and team work this company has as a whole. Throughout Alberta and Saskatchewan there were celebrations going on over the week from July 11 – 15th. A lot of decorations, laughter and meeting of old and new. Let’s not forget the cakes…I’m sure some of us put on a few pounds!

When I asked people their thoughts and feelings about how this last year had gone there was lots of information; I know I learnt a lot about who we are, why we are, and where we are going.

The owners, Charles & Rob, are originally from Bow Island AB. They are both very strong business men within their own rights, and they wanted to do something for the community they grew up in. It was realized the community needed a strong team of

people with the right commitment and the right technology to support them in the selling and buying of their homes. The fact that both these gentlemen are easily accessed by everyone within the company had a very positive impact to those I spoke with.

A big challenge for the company was finding out what would work for our agents & clients using high technology like virtual tours & iPhones. We wanted to offer something to our agents that no one else could. Some of these things were support, technology and training.

For some, the change has been difficult, concerns over the name change, logo change, would the community recognize us? The answer is yes. Its not always about the name or the logo but about the people, which has been proven over and over again. Some of the words described what has happened in the last year

are advancement, improvement and growth. Habits are hard to break and being stuck in the “this is how it’s always been done” mentality can hurt a growing company. But now we have a great support staff in all the offices, new advertising campaigns and a huge presence in the social media world.

The Grand Opening for Signature Service Real Estate Weyburn was held on July 11, 2011. So, afteracompleterenovationoftheofficebeforewe could even set-up “shop,” our new address of29–5thStreetNEinWeyburnisofficiallyopen. Excited to get down to business are Branch Manager Matt Dominguez, Realtor® Melanie Loreth, Realtor® Pamela Maas and OfficeAdministratorTammyCherlet.

As with any project, there were a few bumps along the way. But the kinks were worked out, and after much anticipation and preparation, the Grand Opening was a huge success. The day started with the arrival of Signature Service Real Estate Co-owner Charles Vanden Broek, Director of Operations Yvonne Thomas and CEO of Briergate Asset Management Patrick Little. After introductions and a few pictures, the crowd enjoyed a light lunch and refreshments. At noon, the Ribbon Cutting was done by Matt, Charles, Melanie and Pamela. Yvonne then cut the cake and shared it with everyone.

It was so nice to see everyone there . . . Weyburn business people, newspaper, radio, fellow agents from Weyburn and Moose Jaw, family and friends. The support from EVERYBODY has been wonderful. Realtors® Melanie and Pamela have been a united team since 2001 andtheywillofferexperiencedRealEstateservicesfromtheirnewofficewiththesamegreat team. Matt, Melanie, Pamela and Tammy want to thank everyone who came out to wish us well on this new venture in Weyburn.

EveryRealEstateofficeishometoadiversegroupofindividuals.InMedicineHatweareblessedtohaveadynamicgroupthatexemplifiesthe phrase “We Live Here”. Four of our associates humbly agreed (as is their nature) to discuss their contributions to the community.

Carrie Seavers is currently the chair of the Whispering Pines camp. This position comes after sitting on the board for the past 3 years and being a volunteer for 10 years. Whispering Pines is a year round non-profitcamplocatedintheCypressHillsofferingfacilitiestovariousgroups. Seniors, youths, scouts and various associations take advantage of this incredible setting. Carrie also sat on the Canada Day committee in Medicine Hat for 5 years.

Norbert Klaiber is a member of the board of the Champions Committee. Thisgroupadvocatesforandoffersa“legup”tomenwhohavefallenon rough times. Also a past chair of Whispering Pines, Norbert is well practiced in being a part of our community.

Roger Roy is a six year member of the Medicine Hat Rotary Club and is actively involved in the good works of that great organization. Roger currently is the Director of International Service, working on raising funds for the Rotary Senior Center in Tamil Nadu, India.

Richard Hammel has sat on the Phoenix Safe House Women’s Shelter boardforthepastfiveyears. Richard’s involvement inthismuchneeded and worthwhile organization is much appreciated.

“We Live Here” isn’t just a catch phrase at SSRE Medicine Hat.

Well another year has gone by!

On July 8th we celebrated Heleen’s birthday here at the Coaldaleoffice.Wedecoratedthe boardroom with streamers, balloons and cake!

Of course Heleen tried to hide her birthday from us but she failed to realize she has 2 very smartofficeadministrators!!

Thanks to everyone who came to enjoy her day as well as help out with the decorating for Stettler days here in Coaldale that same weekend, it was a great day, fun had by all who were here!

WeyburnGrand Opening of Newest Branch

Medicine HatWe Take the Service Part Seriously

August 2011 Issue 4, Volume 1Page 2

TaberSSRE wasn’t the only one to have a Birthday

My name is Wendy Unrau. I live in Kitscoty, Alberta , 15 minutes west of Lloydminster. I have lived there for over 15 years with my two sons, Spencer and Chandler.

For the 7 years prior to my new career in Real Estate, I worked as an educational assistant. As much as I loved working with special needs children, I really wanted to work in Real Estate.

Spencer and Chandler are now teenagers and it’s time for Mom to realize her dream of becoming a REALTOR®.

I am so very happy and proud to be part of the Signature Service Real Estate team! What an amazing group of people. The support and encouragement I have already received is overwhelming.

I have my Saskatchewan real estate license and am excited that I will have my Alberta license in about 3 weeks. I look forward to growing with Signature Service Real Estate.

Hi, my name is Duane Bouck and I grew up on the farm located between Kitscoty and Paradise Valley in the Province of Alberta. In 1989 I relocated to Red Deer, Alberta with my wife and Family where for the past 12 years I sold Real Estate

for Coldwell Banker. I specialized in Residential Real Estate but had the opportunity to sell many acreages and development land in and around the city of Red Deer. The summer of 2011 presented an opportunity for a move back to the area I grew up in and the opportunity to be closer to the remainder of my family. I was employed with Signature Service Real Estate in July 2011 and look forward to receiving my Saskatchewan Real Estate license and starting what I know will be a very successful Real Estate career in and around the Lloydminster area.

August 2011 Issue 4, Volume 1Page 3

North Battleford40 Years in Real Estate

LloydminsterWelcome Wendy

LloydminsterWelcome Duane

Swift CurrentWelcome Alice

My family and I have lived in Swift Current since 1974, except for about 5 years when I lived in Yukon and Northern BC(1992-1997).

I have background in education and secretarial/bookkeeping but also have approximately nine years of experience in Real Estate in the Swift Current area

including about 5 yrs (2001-2006) with Century 21 and have received awards for sales from C21.

Twice I’ve tried to retire, but I keep coming backtowork;IfindRealEstateveryinterestingand challenging. I now live in Kyle, so will be primarily concentrating on the area from Saskatchewan Landing to Beechy/Elrose/Eston,incl. residential, farmland and commercial.

I look forward to serving past clients in Swift Current area as well as many new ones in this area for several years to come. Neil Lampitt entered the Real Estate

industry in 1972 with Mattila, Coates, Potratz Agencies. In 1976, Neil was one of the founding partners of Westland Agencies. He was the broker of Westland Agencies for over 30 years until they joined the SSRE family.

Neil’s association with the residents and business owners of the Battlefords have provided him with a successful and rewarding career in the Real Estate industry.

It’s Like Money in the Bank!Social Media Works! If you aren’t leveraging social media for your business, then you aren’t

doing everything possible to succeed.

If you ARE using Social Media, then tell your fellow agents about its benefits.

And also tell me!

Whoever tells me the best use of Social Media or the best reason why social media should be a part of your business plan.

The best answer will get a 2 hour consultation session with me where we can discuss social media or design new advertising for your business – A $100 value!

Email [email protected] – Deadline is August 31st!

It was a sunny Saturday afternoon when Signature Service Real Estate took over the City of Moose Jaw and held 11 Open Houses in all areas of the city! Each agent organized an open house from 2-4 in the afternoon, and it was set up as a mini tour. There was an ad in the paper highlighting each house to our potential clients. Every home on the “tour” had packages including a map of the locations, an SSRE Map of the city and general information on every home. Clients were excited to be able to see several houses, on their own time. Many of our current clients were out

to see the homes, as well as several potential leads. Here is what our REALTORS had to say about the event:

“...working together our team organized an event that was fun and informative, by providing potential buyers with current interest rates and monthly mortgage payments on each listing, as well as mapped out routes to view the other homes taking part in the great event. Go Signature Service!” - Racquelle L’Heureux

“...It was all very good for us as a company to showcase how we market the properties we list and all that we do for our clients. It was a great turn out and our clients were happy with the new and innovative ideas we have.” - Jennifer Patterson

“I had a great response at my open house. I had seven couples view the property, this might not have been the property for them, but I did get leads for future clients” - Elmer Klassen

“...It was cool to hear people say they were at one house then which house they were going to next. Nice group effort!!!” - Sharon Wilson

Overall the event was such a great success the next one is planned for August 13th. SSRE signs and balloons will blanket the city once again as we make this a regular

event!

Moose JawCompany Wide Open House a Wide Open Success!

Ken McDowell

Racquelle LHeureux

Jera Mohninger

Jennifer Patterson

Theresita Calinawan and Carmen Looyenga

August 2011 Issue 4, Volume 1Page 4

First go to your webmail by either selecting it from your ‘Quick Links’ menu in the upper right hand corner of the IQ office page (1 & 2) or by typing it into your web browser. (3)

Log in: [email protected] and password: passw0rd.(4) If you haven’t changed your password, now is a great time to do that as well.Hit Login. (5)

Select ‘Options’ from the menu at the top of the page. (6)

Find and click ‘Auto Response’ at the bottom left hand side of the Options. (7)

Fill in the Subject and Body of your message. (8) Ensure that you’ve listed a return date and, if you have one, and emergency contact person.

Finish by clicking ‘Going Away.’ (9)

Don’t forget to follow the same steps when you get back to turn the Auto-Responder off!

On August 8th 2011 there will be another mandatory meeting of the farm & ranch team in Taber. Besides the Monday weekly meetings that happen in our Coaldale office, this one will be more in-depth about what is happening with this part of our team, the up and coming changes and where we are going.

There have been many things happening here with our farm & ranch team, lots of phone calls being made, lots of meetings with potential clients and some multimillion dollar deals in the works! I have learnt a lot from all of them being new in the real estate business…I thought selling homes could be complicated, nothing compares the heart and passion of farm land!

With summer being in full swing we have had many great events take place over the last few weeks. On June 21st we had the Grand Opening for our office. What a great turnout! (Check out the pictures on our facebook page and a “thank you” to Yvonne for taking them!)

The last weekend in June saw the Wainwright Stampede take over the town with some great Rodeo action, Stampede Downtown festivities including a chili cook off competition, pie-in-your-face auction and a parade.

July saw many charity Golf tournaments take place with great success in raising funds for many great causes.

On July 14th Wainwright featured its 3rd annual “Taste of Wainwright”, an event where part of 2nd Avenue is closed to traffic and different local Restaurants and Groups offer fare from various Countries around the Globe in a street-fest kind of atmosphere. This year we were spoiled with specialties from South Africa, the Philippines, Germany, England, Switzerland and local delights. YUMMY!

IQ OfficeVacation? Set an ‘Out Of Office’ Auto-responder on your ssre email

Farm TeamFull Team Meeting Coming Up!

WainwrightA lot going on!

August 2011 Issue 4, Volume 1Page 5

August 2011 Issue 4, Volume 1Page 6

I had trouble picking just one of Cherry’s pictures, so I thought I would share a couple of them.Have you entered this months contest?

First Anniversary Celebration!

On July 9th Coaldale had their Stettler Days Parade. This parade is held every year here in Coaldale and lots of fun is had by all; Especially the kids, considering we are giving away 2000lbs of candy…yes you heard right…2000 lbs of candy!!! The team here in Coaldale had lots of fun decorating and washing everything down the day before, planning for an awesome parade! There were lots of people in attendance up and down Main Street and along the parade route through town. There was big line up for KidsFest at the convention centre where we had our trusty popcorn machine going handing out popcorn to all the kids, which was a big success! The day was full of events for everyone to enjoy. It was an awesome day and hope to see more familiar and new faces next year!!

On July 16th, it was Taber’s turn to have some fun with the Outdoor Pro Rodeo Parade. This time the team in Taber had a blast putting the final decorations together. Our little house looked awesome- decorated along with the trailer. Something that took me by surprise is we have a very talented person who works in the Taber office…His name is Mr. Wayne Jensen and who knew he could ride a unicycle!?! Let alone with someone on his shoulders!?! This day had so much going on there is no way boredom would find you. Between bull riding events, bareback, and saddlebronc events, even lawn mower races…(oh my!) so much going on it was hard to make sure you saw all the events. They even had muttin bustin for 6yr olds and under..now that is cute to watch, if not a little painful for the parents!

I’ve just discovered that Parades are a lot of fun. Never having partaken in decorating before, it was a great learning experience and even more fun to get involved with the other great folks from Signature Service Medicine Hat to plan, decorate and parade our “float” in this year’s Medicine Hat Stampede Parade.

Many thanks to all the agents and their families who helped decorate the float - We couldn’t have done it without you! And Thanks to the Taber crew for allowing us to borrow the trailer.

Not sure if we could get more focused advertising using conventional media at ten times the cost. Had a lot of people talking about the 4 large QR codes we had displayed and even some trying to scan them. Based on the comments we heard, and there were a lot of them, people know what QR codes are. It was also great to hear cheers for our company and agents. See you next year!

Parades!Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it. ~ John Naisbitt

August 2011 Issue 4, Volume 1Page 7

With smart phone and tablet usage growing so quickly, mobile browsing is on the rise and isn’t likely to stop any time soon, which is why it’s more important than ever to make sure that your website is mobile friendly.

When it comes to the SSRE webpage, we want to make sure that people havetheabilitytosearchlistingsandfindthepropertiestheyarelooking for, but at the same time we want to ensure that your pages give the information you want to have. In order to facilitate this, we have set your webpages to go directly to your ‘about me’ page on your SSRE webpage. This gives any viewer instant access to your contact information, including your photo, cell number and contact form. Viewers are also only a single click away from your listings and the normal property search functions.

This functionality creates a virtual business card for your business. If you use your SSRE web address as a QR code, viewers will go straight to your information and will even be able to click a link that auto-dials their phone or allows them to text you instantly.

You can use this virtual business card URL on the back of your business card,onflyersandpostcardsoranyothermedia.Imagineyourbusbench with a QR code that take an interested party directly to your contact information!

To view what your personal webpage, or any other page, looks like on a mobile browser go to http://www.mobilephoneemulator.com/ This webpage can show you the functionality of any mobile page on a variety of phone styles including iPhone, Blackberry or HTC phones.

WebinarTraining Schedule

July 2011 Issue 3, Volume 1Page 8

Aug 4 2:30pmQR Codes

Aug 17 1:30pmSSRE Website Intro Part 1

Aug 18 2:30pmPhotos for Print and Web

Aug 24 1:30pmSSRE Website Intro Part 2

Aug 31 1:30pmSSRE Website Intro Part 3

Sept 1 2:30pmDigital Photo Editing 101

Sept 2 1:30pmWYSIWYG - Wysi-what!?!

Sept 8 2:30pmListing Presentations that work

Sept 14 1:30pmSSRE Website Intro Part 1

Sept 15 2:30pmBeginning Blogging

Sept 21 1:30pmSSRE Website Intro Part 2

Sept22 2:30pmBuyer Presentations that work

To sign up for a webinar:LogintoIQOfficeandlookattheCalendaronthe right side column.

An announcement will be made via IQ message each week with upcoming classes.

We must have 10 registrants for each class. Even ifyouplanonattendingasoneoffice,pleasesignup seperately as this will allow you to receive any class info or workbooks prior to the class.

Mobile WebsitesWhat’s that funny looking

picture on our advertising??