Working the wireless way

By Dick Hughes  

MAY 25, 2010 8:00 a.m. (0)

Coldwell Banker Caine Real Estate’s gallery in downtown Greenville is the prototype of what the company envisions as a new generation of space bringing sales agents, customers and the public together in accessible settings.

Brad Halter, company president, said the galleries blend an open public environment with working space for agents throughout the company’s Upstate sales force.

“We’re trying to break down all the borders, the barriers, the county lines,” he said.  “Let everybody work wherever is convenient for them, as well as for their clients.”

The Greenville Real Estate Gallery on South Main is in a high pedestrian section of restored historic 18^th and 19^th century industrial buildings that include the Wyche Pavilion at the Reedy River.  It opens June 7.

The walls display the work of local artists and historical photos.  There are rooms for meetings between agents and clients, as well as for community groups; computer stations loaded with tools for researching residential and commercial property and, for a real sense of place, a back deck overlooking the Reedy.

“Our Real Estate Galleries, which will be conveniently situated across the Upstate, will provide all-access hubs where an associate can meet clients to show them a virtual property tour, return phone calls and host meetings,” Halter said.

Coldwell Banker’s corporate president and chief financial officer, Jim Gillespie, and its chief marketing officer, Mike Fisher, were on hand last week for a grand opening for agents and staff at the Caine annual meeting.

“It’s the wave of the future definitely,” Gillespie said of the gallery concept, which he said also is in place in Huntington, Calif., and Lexington, Ky.

“Fifteen-20 years ago, real estate companies thought they had to have offices all over the place, but we are in the technological age and there is no need to have that,” he said.

Halter said the company is “looking over all the major arteries and communities” to locate galleries Upstate from the Georgia to North Carolina.

“One day, I’d Iike to have no offices,” said Halter. “We really want to get our people mobile. My job is to work us out of all these large office buildings and be more engaged in the communities and be more convenient for everybody.”

“We have the technology here where they can do more business than they ever could do in their own offices,” he said.

The instant, deep and broad information available on the Internet has changed the way people shop and sell property, and Realtors must get ahead of the trend, he said.

“With my Blackberry in my pocket, I can do more things.  We are certainly not allowing, if we can help it, anyone to buy a desktop again.  The population is mobile. We need to be mobile with them.”

During a drop-in opening a weekend ago, Halter said, visitors younger than 35 didn’t “understand why we did it any other way.”

Another goal, he said, is to dismantle the silo mentality that pits sales associates from different offices against one another.

“What we want to foster is the mindset that they work for Coldwell Banker Caine in Upstate South Carolina.  A lot of people try to motivate their associates in their offices by playing one against the other.  I want to see one company Upstate.  To that end, we already in Greenville County are there. If you want to come here or go to Williams Street (office) just come in on the same key card.”

Halter said the gallery concept with its impetus on mobile and unified sales agents has been planned for three years “looking forward to 2011” when real estate picks up with a stronger economy.

“We’re really happy to have captured this space for the moment relative to any of our competitors in the Upstate,” he said. “We’re moving full ahead.”

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