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Interview With a Winner

Tupper Briggs

Tupper Briggs "Tupper's Team," RE/MAX Alliance, Evergreen, CO
2003 Sales Volume: $ 50 million in volume
2003 Sides: 142

2007 Update: Tupper has now been in the business for 35 years. His 2005 sales volume was just over $75 million (177 sides).

Sandy Dixon: How long have you been in the real estate business, and how long have you been with RE/MAX Alliance?

Tupper Briggs: I’ve been in the business for 32 years, since 1972. I’ve been with RE/MAX since 1988.

Sandy Dixon: What was your volume for 2003, and what do you anticipate for 2004?

Tupper Briggs: We did 50 million in volume (142 sides) in 2003. It’s my goal to do 200 transactions this year.

Sandy Dixon: What is it about real estate that intrigued you enough to get into the business and stick with it so long?

Tupper Briggs: I did it for the money. I was dating a girl who told me that if I wanted to be rich by the time I was 35, I should get into real estate. So I did. I found out “rich” is an elusive concept, but I’m happy. Honestly, I’m driven to succeed by a fear of failure.

Sandy: Who do you market to?

Tupper: A few years ago, we decided to market to our entire mountain community. Evergreen and Conifer are two little mountain towns southwest of the Denver metropolitan area, and we’ve added a couple sister communities to those. So our niche is about a 90 square mile geographic area in unincorporated Jefferson County, in the foothills southwest of Denver, with a population of about 35,000.

Sandy: What have you found to be the best way to stay in touch with your clients?

Tupper: We publish the only area newspaper devoted entirely to real estate, called “Mountain Homes.” It has 12 pages in the winter and 16 pages in the summer, and contains articles about real estate such as how to fix homes, how to fix things within homes, how to finance, get insurance, and anything that affects values or the economy. I’m an armchair economist and I often author articles about where the real estate market is going; I get plenty of comments from people who agree or disagree with my prognosis, so I know it’s getting read. It keeps a dialogue going with the community and it’s fun.

The newspaper came about as my career and “Tupper’s Team” evolved. I found that it is appropriate to have different marketing strategies at each stage of your career. In the beginning, we used to do “just listed” and “just sold” postcards and a one-page newsletter. While we still do the postcards, we decided it was time for us to step up and make a larger mark on the community. The nice thing about the newspaper is, if it’s done nicely enough (and therefore expensively enough), it scares other agents away from doing it. So far I’m the only Realtor in town who is publishing his own paper.

Sandy: I’ve seen your newspaper, and I can attest that not only does it add value, and have interesting articles, but it also differentiates you from the rest of the pack. What other marketing efforts have you made?

Tupper: Two things come to mind. The first is staying in touch with past clients. We send out home purchase anniversary cards and birthday cards to both the adults and the kids. The adults get Blockbuster movie coupons with their cards. The kids get jelly beans and coupons from different local merchants for ice cream and pizza.

Sandy: This must also generate good will from the retailers in the area as well?

Tupper: Yes, it certainly does. We also send out a monthly mailer, which we call “friends cards,” to our database. Once a month they get a feel-good story about somebody overcoming adversity. I find these stories all over, in magazines, newspapers and other newsletters. At the bottom of the card we remind them that referrals are our lifeblood, and thank them for mentioning us to their neighbors, friends and family.

The second thing that really brings us business is our website. We have a huge website, and we’re trying to develop features that will bring our own clients back to us. We have all the local homes on the market online through our multi list. We also have a software program that automatically emails clients about new listings that
meet their specifications.

We always try to ask ourselves what our clients want. Back in the old days, when we were running ads in the newspaper, we found that people wanted to know the prices and the addresses of the properties. When we provided that information, the quality of the calls we received went up because the people who called in response to the ads already knew the price and location of the home. We remember the lessons we learned from this and try to incorporate that attitude in our website—and everything else we do, for that matter.

Sandy: How do you maintain your database?

Tupper: We use Agent 2000, which is the ReMax version of Online Agent. It’s a database management program. Our other software includes a contract writing program (that allows us to put contracts together, email and fax them) and a multi list software program.

To save time and better serve our clients, we’ve put a projector, attached to a computer, in a conference room next to our office. When buyers come into town, the first thing we do is sit them down and go through the multi list. We can show them what is available in the market in a particular price range, style, school district and so on. It’s a real time saver. By the time they hit the seat of our cars, we feel that they are very well qualified and they have a good idea as to what we can offer.

Sandy: You have a team working for you. How long did it take you to create this team?

Tupper: It’s all a matter of evolution. Years ago, I found myself stapling handouts together at 3 o’clock in the morning when I should have been home in bed. I realized it wasn’t a good use of my time. So I hired my first assistant. After a while there were more things for her to do than she could handle, so I hired another assistant. Then one day I decided that I was receiving too many buyer calls to handle by myself. So I hired a buyer specialist.

It’s evolved to the point where I now have five partners who all work with buyers and take listings. We also have a staff of four to back up my partners. So we now have a team of ten people that has evolved over the years as business has increased.

Sandy: How does your team communicate? Do you have meetings?

Tupper: I meet with the staff once a week. I meet with the partners (licensed agents) as a group once a week as well. Then I meet with each of them individually, every other week, to review their work. We each know exactly which listings they’ve had, which they are still working on, how they’re doing, how the buyers are doing.

Every day I thank my lucky stars for my team. We had one bad apple in our staff about two years ago and that person poisoned one of the other staff people. Then a third staff member left because she couldn’t stand the other two. I had to clean shop and lost nine months to a year of growth because I had to train my entire staff from scratch. It was a tough time, but we’ve now got a great staff and it’s paying dividends.

Sandy: What are your hopes for the future of the team?

Tupper: I’m 57, so putting the team together and having it run smoothly, is frankly my exit strategy. I’ll still have a responsibility to create leads, but I won’t have as much contact with our clients. These days I’m constantly coming up with new marketing ideas. Maybe we’ll do another newspaper, or farm out of state owners, or drum up business in other ways. I envision the team growing, with everyone very successful both individually and as part of the team.

Sandy: Looking back over the years, what do you think is the biggest thing agents have to overcome in today’s environment?

Tupper: If you’re not having fun with real estate, don’t stay in the business. I hope whoever reads this interview is doing so because they like real estate enough to want to be better at it. There is no magic bullet that will make you an instant success. Whatever you’re doing, study what is around you: the environment and market you’re in.

For example, if you surrounded by retirees, first time homebuyers or vacation home owners, then you have to figure out a way to attack your individual market. That’s the fun part of real estate. And there are so many ways to make money: fix and flips, buy land and build, regular brokerage, rental management, commercial properties, first time homebuyers, older folks… Decide what opportunities are there and which direction you’d like to go. Then do it and have fun with it.

Sandy: With the amount of business you have, are you able to take vacations? What about your team?

Tupper: That’s part of the duty of the team. There aren’t very many “musts” in my team, but one is that they are willing to work hard and our clients have to be first priority. The problem is, if you’re a hard worker and you’re committed to a high level of customer satisfaction, which translates to a high level of customer contact, it’s difficult to get away. For the first few years, when I was working by myself, I tried to make it seem like I worked 24 hours a day. Sometimes I’d make calls late at night, or early in the morning, on a Saturday or Sunday, and it would catch people off guard. I’d take the occasional day off, but I’d disguise it.

With the evolution of the team, that’s no longer necessary. We currently have two staffers and one partner on vacation, but the rest of the office is doing okay. Just recently I was able to take my first three week vacation in 30 years. I am now able to get away from the office and know that the money is still coming in. The “win-win” is that if we all work hard, we can all make lots of money, do lots of business, and get away and have a life every now and then.

Sandy: You’ve been in this business a long time, and you’ve seen agents come and go. What mistakes to you think they commonly make?

Tupper: If they are too focused on themselves and their pocket books, rather than the people they are trying to serve, they won’t be successful. If you concentrate on serving your clients, and serving them well, you’ll find that your level of satisfaction with what you’re doing is enhanced - and so is your pocket book. That gets back to asking yourself what your market wants. What they want is to be happy with whatever process you put them through.

Sandy: It seems that you have taken branding to the next level. You use your identity and your name in all your marketing. Has that worked well for you?

Tupper:“Tupper” is a family name and it’s unusual. In elementary school it wasn’t a good thing, but once you’re out in the business world, an unusual name can be good. So I decided to capitalize on it. I work very hard to maintain a good reputation and to make sure every client I’ve ever done business with was as happy as I could make them. So the name “Tupper” connotes friendly professionalism and is important in our branding.

Sandy: Has anything surprised you over these 30 some years?

Tupper: I started in real estate back when we had carbon paper, typewriters and telephones with dials rather than buttons. We didn’t have faxes, email, or even computers. I can remember when one of my associates brought in his first handheld calculator and it was about the size of a small phone book. It could add, subtract, divide and multiply, and we just thought it was amazing. I can remember when we’d do a market analysis back in the old days; we’d have to cut and paste the sold pages from the MLS catalogs and then sort them into subdivisions and make copies on the copier. It was incredibly time consuming. Now I can do a market analysis that is prettier and more accurate than I could ever do back then, and in about a twentieth of the time. So the amount of work that we can do, and the way that technology has impacted our business, is what I’ve found most amazing.

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