Natalie Davis, CRS (center), details the importance of a value proposition
Natalie Davis’ journey through real estate began with a relocation of her own. Wanting to put roots down with her family and form a bond with their newfound Fort Collins, Colorado, community, Davis pursued a real estate license with the intention of becoming a real estate investor—not an agent.
“After getting licensed, I had the opportunity to experience the intimate level of engagement with clients when you’re helping them through a major life change, which is typically what generates a real estate need,” says Natalie Davis, CRS, team lead for The Evolution Group powered by Keller Williams Downtown LLC and 2022 Colorado Association of REALTORS® chair-elect. “That was the thing that hooked me—knowing that I had the ability to play such a tremendous role in being the trusted advisor for my clients.”
Over the past 11 years, Davis’ career grew to becoming broker-owner of a franchise with 15 agents and two staff. The brokerage has since sold. Today, Davis is still a licensed agent, but with an exciting new role: Coaching other agents and teams from all over the country.
Home sweet Denver
Having become deeply familiar with her community over the past decade-plus, the difficulties of the real estate market in her area are not lost on Davis. “Housing attainability has been a big concern, because of the home price appreciation that we’ve seen,” Davis says. “We’ve seen a lot of similarities with other markets, where buyers have to drive until they qualify, so they’re having to move further and further out or away from Denver proper.”
Davis notes that unlike in other markets, Denver hasn’t seen a decrease in home prices for the last 10 years. For the time she’s been active in real estate, “We’ve never had that dip that other markets have seen right where home prices depreciate,” she says. The demand for homes in the Denver metro area has been consistently high, which can be attributed, at least in part, to Denver’s quality of life. “Denver is such a desirable area to live in. And there are a ton of people who have Denver on their radar,” Davis says.
For homeowners—as well as corporate investors such as iBuyers—the Denver market is, without a doubt, an enormous opportunity to generate wealth. “If you’re able to get in on this market, it’s a great place to buy and invest in, and absolutely a great place to live,” Davis says.
An agent’s value proposition: how to sell yourself
Knowing and communicating one’s value proposition—being able to answer the question “Why me?” to clients—is a huge asset for real estate agents. Because of the frequency with which it came up with her coaching clients, Davis chose the topic for the RRC webinar she hosted in June.
“Because of the pace of the market over the last couple of years, a lot of agents have either lost perspective on what their value proposition is or have just completely stopped sharing it altogether with their clients,” Davis says.
A major shift that has taken place in the market in recent years is in the real estate clientele, which has rapidly become more buyer-heavy. Davis has noticed that many agents are able to articulate their value proposition successfully to sellers, such as their ability to handle negotiation and pricing strategy. However, they might have more difficulty articulating their value proposition to buyers, while they are increasingly working with this group.
With buyers, agents need to be able to sell themselves as trusted advisors to clients by identifying what they bring to the table. “Even the way that an agent communicates with their client is part of that value proposition,” Davis says. “If you consistently reach out to your clients on a weekly basis, or twice a week, that’s part of that value proposition. It’s the experience that you’re creating for your client.” As another example, when first sitting down with a client for a consultation, an agent should treat the meeting as a conversation to learn about the client’s wants and needs, placing the focus on what the client is looking for.
To refine one’s value proposition, an agent could look at NAR’s past year profile of homebuyers and sellers, which surveys national participants on questions such as, “What skill set are your looking for in a REALTOR®?” or “What are the qualities of a REALTOR® that you’re looking for?” Another source Davis recommends, especially to get more specific, is to look at client reviews and testimonials. “If your past clients are saying, ‘I really love the level of communication,’ or, ‘They had a process that was easy to follow,’ those are the key words that you’re looking for, because those were the things that’s the experience that you’re delivering to the client that you may or may not be showcasing,” Davis says.
Collaboration and growth with RRC
For continuous networking and education opportunities, Davis has found RRC to be invaluable, even in the short period of time she’s held the CRS Designation (since the end of 2021). At Sell-a-bration® this past year, the network of REALTORS® certainly made an impression on Davis. “It was very refreshing to see that everyone’s on the same page,” Davis says. “We’re coming together to collaborate. I want to learn from you. And I am happy to also share what I know and what’s working for me.”
Beyond sharing best practices with fellow professionals of the highest caliber, Davis also praises the education opportunities offered by RRC. “The level of education has been tremendous and eye-opening, and it really has made me like start to fine tune how I operate,” Davis says. “You’re able to go deeper, you’re able to pose those challenging questions like, ‘Do you have a business plan in place? What does it look like?’—a lot of the questions that non-CRS agents tiptoe around.”
Photo: Natalie Davis, CRS (center), poses with colleagues at an event for the Colorado Association of REALTORS®
