Francis Lavoie
By Valérie Vézina
They are so successful they have not had time to complete their degrees. Young Realtors Francis Lavoie and Audrey Bien-Aimé of Re/Max Platine F.L. in Saint-Constant, Que. met while working for a telecommunications company. As colleagues, they realized they were hooked together at the atomic level and that they would complement each other well in business and as a couple.
“My strength is human relations (psychology) while Francis has very strong analytical skills,” says Bien-Aimé, 28, in a telephone interview.
While many brokers are content with five to seven transactions per year, she and her partner had 22 to 30 transactions per year in their early years at Re/Max. “The two of us together were still just making $155,000,” says Lavoie. Even though he was only 20-years-old, Lavoie was not satisfied with those numbers.
Inspired by the motivational speaker Anthony Robbins, he sought a model to imitate, a mentor. He found him in Ontario. His name: Craig Proctor.
“We have taken several courses with Craig to improve our business. Our growth has exploded. The principle: treat our work as a real business,” says Lavoie. But first they needed a marketing plan.
“Being the big fish in a small bowl” sums up the approach they adopted in 2007. They decided to invest all their advertising eggs in one basket by advertising their properties in regional weekly publications in order to better reach their key potential buyer group. “This is much cheaper than the mainstream media,” says Lavoie.
They concentrated all their efforts in an area of Montérégie extending from Brossard to Saint-Constant (on Montreal’s South shore).
Then Bien-Aimé and Lavoie chose to offer the promotion, “Your Property SOLD or we BUY it!”
“This has generated a ton of calls,” says Lavoie. How many properties have they had to buy? One. “We average around 70 days. We know our market well,” he says. The couple went from $116,000 in commissions in 2006 to $306,451 a year or two later.
“We were successful, but we had no life,” says Lavoie. Often they had to stay up until 3 am to save their MLS listings while their days were spent making visits. “We had to find ways to work more efficiently because we could not work harder,” he says.
So they decided to hire other brokers and provide them with clients. “This idea came from Craig Proctor,” says Lavoie, who grew up in suburban Montreal.
Team Francis Lavoie is now a sub-franchise of Re/Max Platine. It employs 14 people including seven brokers working on the road and one broker “on the phone full-time.” In 2011 the team was ranked in sixth place in Re/Max Quebec and in the top 50 in Canada. And in just four years, Team Lavoie has earned a place among the top 100 Re/Max teams in the world.
A brokerage owner once told Bien-Aimé that at 50-years-old, he would not trust a Realtor as young as she was. “I was not offended at the time. It gave me rather a swift kick (to continue to prove myself),” she says. Because “Bien-Aimé” sounds too much like the little witch of a cartoon popular in Quebec…and also because she received some indecent proposals…she prefers to be discreet in the team’s advertising.
Young buyers can identify with Lavoie, who welcomes them in person via a video clip on their website (www.equipefrancislavoie.com).
“The Internet has played a decisive role in (our success). This allows us to offer free information to customers,” he says. They can obtain a list of properties matching their tastes as well as (sold) comparisons if they have submitted an online form specifying what they are looking for.
The follow-up system and procedures that have been implemented to track each of these contacts contributes in part to their prosperity.
“The database has a very important role to play,” says Lavoie. He says that many young people today have the means to acquire a house or condo, which was not the case eight years ago.
This summer the lovebirds enjoyed the large yard at the back of their first home with Thomas, their newborn. And the degrees? They will never be finished. “We didn’t think the courses were going fast enough to develop entrepreneurship,” says Bien-Aimé while Thomas makes baby sounds on the phone line. “We like to have things move fast!”
