The team poses for their Mad Men inspired photo. Back row, from left: Jeff Anderson, Ally Shafer, Michael Plowman, Luke Menkes, Evan Goode. Front row: Nick Hazzi, AJ Hazzi, Gayle Helbig
By Connie Adair
On June 1, the sales reps at Vantage West Realty in Kelowna turned off their computers and smartphones. They stayed dark for the entire month. It wasn’t due to a power outage, a fire or a flood. The brokerage’s 10 agents gave up technology to raise money for charity.
For 30 days there was no texting, no Facebooking, no Tweeting, no technology. If it didn’t exist in the 1960s, the technology was off limits for the agents, for personal and business use. It wasn’t an easy task for an office whose agents are young (median age is 29) and connected in terms of technology, says 31-year-old managing broker/owner A.J. Hazzi.
“We decided to pay homage to the Mad Men era (by) hand delivering all documents, presenting offers in person and (providing) good old face-to-face service, getting back to simpler times when service counted for something.”
Hazzi says he came up with the idea after being in the middle of a transaction between a boomer buyer and a Realtor who was about 70-years-old. “The pace slowed down…we drove offers back and forth. I found it annoying.”
However, his client did not, telling Hazzi that he appreciated the agent’s extra effort. “He liked the personalized aspect,” Hazzi says.
Later, riding up a ski lift, Hazzi realized it was the human element that was missing. “Service was not (completely) lost but we got so connected we became disconnected.”
He came up with the idea to go dark. At a Monday morning meeting he unveiled his plan. He says the agents thought it was cool.
The goal: to raise money for the Kelowna Gospel Mission so a roof could be put on a women’s shelter. For each deal made during the month, $300 would be donated to the cause. The penalty for using technology was $300 a pop.
A Mad Men photo shoot was set up at a 1950s bungalow that had shag carpet and velour walls. The house was decorated with vintage furniture and props, and agents donned vintage clothing. The photographs were put on to postcards and sent to clients by snail mail.
At first the agents were enthusiastic but there was “groaning and griping for sure,” Hazzi says. “If it wasn’t for a charity, we would have given up.”
A few customers and agents were annoyed when Vantage West agents had to respond to their messages by phone, but 99 per cent were accepting, he says.
A few deals may have also been lost during their technology-free time – “30 per cent of our deals come from our website,” he says.
Nick Hazzi and A.J. Hazzi
Conservatively, deals without the use of technology took two or three hours longer, Hazzi says. But when all is said and done, the agents raised $5,100 for Kelowna Gospel Mission, which does a lot of work with transitional housing. Not all of the money came from deals completed sans technology. A few fines were levied for those who used technology when they weren’t supposed to.
“I donated $600 after being caught texting my sweetheart. I got busted at the gas pumps by a Re/Max agent,” Hazzi says. He was fined once for receiving a text and once for sending a reply.
The office helped the Kelowna Gospel Mission before by serving 250 meals one evening. “We plan to do it again,” says Hazzi, who opened the boutique brokerage in April 2008 after working with two major brands, Royal LePage and Re/Max.
The office focuses on a team concept, with each agent specializing in a different area from client care to marketing, and each leveraging the skills of other team members, he says.
Prior to going dark, the company produced a video, which can be seen at www.vimeo.com/67232841.
To make a donation to the Kelowna Gospel Mission visit https://kelownagospelmission.ca/donate.
Lessons learned
A.J. Hazzi, managing broker/owner of Vantage West Realty in Kelowna, B.C. says good lessons were learned from knowing how things were done when service counted. “Generation Y will text to see a house, text the offer, text to see if you got it and text to get it back. Where’s the human contact?” he asks.
New rules are in place at the office. Offers and negotiations are now done in person. Texts are limited, with voice-to-voice or face-to-face service preferred. Instead of a two- to three-hour message thread, agents can pick up the phone and deal with a situation in a couple of minutes.
