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| CLIENTOR® named "Company To Watch" by REALTOR® Magazine |
This article was published on: 11/01/2007
FOR BROKERS: Companies To Watch
Beyond Brokerage
From day one, all services all the time.
BY ROBERT FREEDMAN
Henry Pham is attempting to tackle a long-standing challenge in the residential real estate industry: keeping associates and their clients together for life.
It’s a tall order for someone who’s never even been a sales associate, but his success since launching his company suggests an outsider can sometimes bring clarity to issues that bedevil insiders.
Pham, CEO of The Clientor Group in San Jose, Calif., is an engineer who started at IBM and later launched his own company providing technology to help companies grow. Six years ago — with no real estate experience other than buying and selling homes for his family — he launched Clientor.
“Every time I bought or sold my home, I did business with a different associate,” explains Pham. “I don’t even remember who I did business with because their brand didn’t mean anything to me.”
Pham’s response to the lack of loyalty in real estate is Clientor, which from day one positioned itself not as a brokerage with other services but as a real estate services company that put brokerage, mortgage, and insurance services on equal footing.
“We focus on the whole life cycle of the real estate relationship,” says Pham, meaning the buying and selling, the mortgage, and the insurance processes.
Clientor offers those services but not title insurance, as many mega-brokers do. “I don’t think title insurance is a continuing need consumers have after their purchase,” says Pham.
On the brokerage side, Clientor focuses on providing associates with technology to differentiate themselves from competitors.
For example, it uses a speech software platform to translate written listing information into speech so that prospects receive a telephone call every time a new listing comes on the market.
Another tech solution is the equity viewer. Home owners can log onto the company Web site to learn the current value of their home. Clientor doesn’t charge consumers for the service, nor does it charge associates for its high-tech tools.
For its mortgage business, Clientor relies largely on its associates not just to recommend clients but to double as loan originators as well. The practice is more common in California than elsewhere because mortgage brokers and real estate associates share the same license there.
To stay in touch with consumers, associates provide mortgage tune-ups, checking in to determine if a financial shift — such as the loss of a job or an increase in income — means that a different type of mortgage better suits clients’ changed circumstances.
Consumers also can purchase homeowners, auto, health, life, and business insurance, which are written by employees licensed to quote and service insurance policies.
The result of Pham’s efforts has been growth from a staff of two in 2001 to more than 500 associates and staff and 1,000 loan officers in 12 offices.
In 2006, about 6 percent of Clientor’s revenue came from insurance services, while real estate and mortgage services each provided about 47 percent.
“Unless associates get the help of a company with resources, services, and a new vision to help them create new services for clients,” says Pham, “they’re not going to be able to differentiate themselves.”
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