In the following interview, DJ DellaSala, who, along with Lindsey Skye DellaSala, leads The DJ & Lindsey Team, Ancient City Real Estate, in St. Augustine, Fla., discusses their fast-growing operation.
Region Served: Northeast Florida, including Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Palm Coast
Years in Real Estate: Lindsey: 10; DJ: 13
Number of Team Members: 32
Had a Team Since: 2015
What influenced your decision to form a team?
When Lindsey and I founded the brokerage in 2013, we wanted to be different. Not only did we want to have some really amazing marketing, but we also wanted to give out leads. We quickly found out that it was hard to hold regular brokerage agents accountable, so we decided that the team structure would give us the ability to provide a lead platform to those agents that wanted to work full-time.
Word on the street is that your "boutique" brokerage is a powerhouse. With 32 team members, you manage to transact more than a closing a day seven days a week. Where is your business coming from to feed the team?
All of our business comes from online. While we utilize all of the major portals that focus on online lead generation, realtor.com® is one of the main platforms we use. We've been working with realtor.com since 2012 because that's where the consumer is going. In addition, we have more than 10,000 followers on our Facebook page, so that's also proven to be a good source as far as branding and keeping us in front of our sphere of both past and new clients.
So you've been successful with online on the "buy" side, but can you talk a little bit about what you're doing with the listing side?
We started using realtor.com Local ExpertSM, which allows us to position our listings out front to provide our sellers a unique selling proposition. Not only can we show them that we're putting them directly in front of traffic, but also, we're highlighting them at the top. We've experienced a great conversion rate since adding Local Expert to the mix. It helps us stand out because it's something that no one else in our local marketplace has. It's definitely a powerful tool.
What about building your brand with the shoppers you meet there?
With our new branding position, online shoppers are introduced to the brand as soon as they begin to browse on the internet, so when we call to follow up with leads, they're already familiar with us. This makes it easy for them to put two and two together once we're on the phone with them and tell them who we are. Building the brand is all about continuing to stay in front of them in order to foster the relationship.
How do you keep the team this sharp and productive?
We're raising the bar every single day as we continue to bring people on and add to the team. Since we have such a large team, there's no grounds for complacency. Because there are a lot of talented individuals on our team, anyone that joins the team is coming in and trying to raise the bar by focusing on being the best at converting online leads.
For more information, please visit realtor.com/sales.
