Monday, April 6, 2009

Welcome to the neighborhood

I signed up with a real estate company today that I think is going to work out really well. I checked out a lot of different ones online, spoke with a few but only interviewed with two. The first one was a complete "no thanks". I did try to get an interview with another well known company. I tried calling several times but my contact person's voice mailbox was full both times. I had an "inside person" that gave this woman my name and number and she said she would contact me. Nothing. My inside person told me if I hadn't heard from the interviewer by last Wednesday, to contact her and she would see if she could help speed it along. Wednesday came and went with no contact so I emailed my gal. And never heard anything back. So now it's been over two and a half weeks since the initial contact and I have not received a single phone call or email of any sort. So yeah, if you can't contact me during the honeymoon phase, how supportive are you going to be when the newness fades? I decided I was better off elsewhere.

I first heard about the company I am joining last Tuesday at Master J's swim lesson. There has been a woman there, we'll call her Jenn, that I had sat with and chatted with for the previous week. Her husband, we'll call him Scott, showed up last Tuesday. I had finally remembered to bring my camera that day and was taking pictures of Master J. That's what started Scott and I talking. He asked about the camera, whether it was for family or business. I told him that it was currently for family, but that I had really gotten it to use in for business as I was a newly minted agent. We spoke for a few more minutes and then he told me he was an agent. We started talking about how it was at his company and he was really positive, without being scarily cheerleader-ish. He gave me his card and suggested I call his broker.

The next day, I called his broker at 9:45. When I told him who I was, he said he was waiting for my call. Scott had already called him and given him the heads up. I spoke to him for about 10 minutes and then he told me to call another gal to get the ball rolling. I called and spoke with a gal named Julie for about 15 minutes. It turned out that I needed to take care of one more thing before I could work for any broker so I told her I would take care of that Thursday. I did take care of it Thursday, but I had a bunch of other stuff to take care of as well so I didn't call her back that day. On Friday, I planned on calling her back at 9:00. I chose that time because it's the earliest I usually call anyone when I don't know what hours they are available. But at 8:59 the phone rang and it was Julie. I spoke to her for a while and then we set up to meet this morning. She was just as nice in person as on the phone. The office was busy, but peaceful and not as far away as I thought. Not that I'll be going in there that much, but it will be reasonable to drive when I do need to go in. She seemed surprised when I actually read the employment contract as well. Apparently very few people actually do. It's probably just my paranoia but I don't sign anything without reading it first.

So anyway, I'm active. I'll be getting together with Scott to figure out how I'm going to fit onto his team. Yeah, he and Jenn want me on their team. How cool is that? I'm a little nervous because I've never done anything like this before, but I think I'll be a good agent. I'll probably never have the highest sales numbers, but my clients will know that I'm going to do everything in my power to do the right thing and that's got to count for something. That and returning phone calls.

1 comments:

Burgh Baby said...

Congratulations, and good luck!