Trendsetters

  • Robert Watson
    CRB, ePro Manager, First Team® Real Estate

Originally hired as a consultant to create and deliver the New Agent Sales Productivity Training Program for First Team in fall 2004, Watson officially joined First Team as Sales Manager of the San Clemente office in January 2005.The office is the top-selling office in San Clemente and continues to grow with productive agents under his leadership.

Watson has 23 years’ experience in the real estate industry; in sales, ownership and more recently serving as Prudential Real Estate Affiliates, Inc. National Director for Sales and Service Support and then later as Director of Product Development and Education.

Email Robert


Tell me a little about the San Clemente office.

It’s a typical brick-and-mortar office with 52 agents, but I work on filling space “outside the office” with what I call “e-agents.” I’m always recruiting people I feel will make the effort to be successful, identifying the two aspects of that:

1) can create a persona online
2) have the ability to handle the technological aspect of being an agent today

What I mean by that is if you’re in real estate now, you need to have an iPhone or Droid and be able to respond to e-mail within 5-to-10 minutes. And what I’m talking about in creating a persona online: I recently got a call from someone I’d worked with five years ago. In conversation, he said he’d seen me active on social media, and had even seen me post pictures of spaghetti dinners. The connotation of that was, why bother? But what people who get to know me on social media tell me, “what you see is what you get.” What I am online is what I am in person.

As I tell people, when you’re looking at the endgame of social media, don’t ask what my ROI is, three months out. If I’m mailing postcards or knocking on doors, you don’t ask that – social media is just “farming” in a different way. But there’s a person I met through my social media MasterMind group, a new agent in our office closed a $1,090,000 transaction. That’s a $32,000 commission where a portion of that income was earned by our office – that’s ROI.


According to the RIS Media Power Broker Survey, First Team® Real Estate is the #1 independent real estate company in Southern California and has sold more homes in Orange County than any other brokerage in the last 10 years.

Yes, it’s owned by Cameron Merage, who is always looking to be at the cutting edge in our business. If I was selling real estate today, we (First Team) are the only option, with more tools for agents than anyone else.


Consumers are demanding more of their real estate professionals. First Team has implemented a consumer-brand promise and service standard, “The NEW Rules of Real Estate®,” with 10 practical, real-world solutions for buyers and sellers. How have consumers responded to that guide?

Basically, the Rules mirror what the NAR (National Association of REALTORS®) Home Buyer/Home Seller Guide learned about what consumers want. First Team just decided to own the concept of where this business is going. The key is that the company has to share that concept with its managers, who translate it to agents, who communicate it to the public. (The Rules) have definitely done a lot to get the First Team name out to the public.

The First Team Website definitely has a lot of information, and the company has a blog as well.

It’s been updated and has some great stuff. It’s better than most real estate brokerage Websites I’ve seen, but it’s not as simple and clear as (third-party)sites such as Redfin. I’m looking forward to its being optimized for mobile as well.