TOP PERFORMER

Making the team
Sales teams are the latest trend in setting up a real estate business, and Lon Walters of Coldwell Banker First Affiliate in Sedona, Ariz., is a true believer.

Slightly more than a year ago, Walters, overwhelmed with the volume of business he was experiencing, created three new staff positions--service coordinator, buyer specialist, and concierge coordinator.

“I wanted to be free to focus on what I do best, which is selling and marketing,” he says.

In 1998, his last year of trying to do everything himself, his volume was $7.6 million. Last year it jumped to $10 million.

“It’s a wonderful way to do business,” he says. “We each have our own jobs, but we also cover for one another. If sellers call while I’m out, they know they can talk to whoever answers the phone and get answers to their questions. That’s been a godsend not only in terms of business but also in terms of giving me back a life.”

Walters’ hiring philosophy: “I hire for personality, not technical background. I want people with a sense of humor who’ll fit into the office. I can train them to do the other stuff.”

Real estate is Walters’ third career. The first was a 21-year stint as a naval aviator. The second was running a bakery for two years in San Diego. He joined Coldwell Banker in 1992 and moved to Sedona in 1994.

“We were--are--the new kids in town,” he says. “I had to do something to get an edge on the competition, and that something was marketing.”

Walters estimates that he spends about 15 percent of his annual budget on marketing. “We’re everywhere--from trolleybuses and movie theaters to newspapers and the Internet,” he says. “We’re hard to miss.”

The one thing he doesn’t do, he says, is cold calling, either in person or over the phone. “You just don’t do that here. This is a small town, and people don’t like it. We’ve built our reputation on being low-key.”

Sedona is located in red rock canyon country, an area of startling natural beauty. It’s also one of the capitals of what’s known as the New Age movement, a grab bag of various semimystical religious and philosophical groups. Walters approaches this subject rather gingerly. “If people come in and ask for a house that faces east or west or is near an energy vortex, we try to accommodate them,” he says. “But it’s a small percentage of the market.”

Walters’ highest sale last year was a $1 million Southwestern-style mansion, and the lowest was a $90,000 modular home. An average sale, he says, is about $260,000.

A peculiarity of the Sedona market, says Walters, is that the majority of houses are custom-built. “We don’t have huge subdivisions with identical houses. Just about every house is different, which means that each neighborhood has a unique character.”

The upside of this, he says, is that there are options. “You realize when you walk through these places that each one was built to be somebody’s dream house. The challenge is finding a buyer with the same dream.”

—Robert Sharoff


Lon Walters
Coldwell Banker First Affiliate
Sedona, Ariz.; 800/955-2231
E mail: lon@sedona.net
Web address: www.sedonahomes.net