Episode 308 – Eleni Sommerschield, COO – Wise Agent

  Customer relationship management is very important in real estate. Organizing your database and customers can be very tiring, which is why CRM tools are a must! And Wise Agent is a CRM tool for all realtors out there. Join Bill Risser as he talks to its COO, Eleni Sommerschield. She gives agents the information they need to build and scale their businesses. Listen to this episode to understand how to properly create relationships. Remember, you don't have to overwhelm yourself when it comes to CRM. Discover the power of Wise Agent in today's episode! --- Eleni Sommerschield, COO - Wise Agent I go back to my old stomping grounds in Phoenix, Arizona, the East Valley. We're going to be talking to Eleni Sommerschield. She is the COO of Wise Agent. It is a CRM that I've been familiar with since 2006 or 2007. I've known about them for a long time. It's a wonderful tool. We've interviewed Brandon, the CEO, quite a while ago. I needed to get Eleni on the show. Let's get this thing started. --- Eleni, welcome to the show. Bill, thanks for having me. I should've had you on here a long time ago. We had Brandon Wise on here a few years ago. He is CEO and Cofounder and you're the Chief Operating Officer of Wise Agent. I'm a big fan of Wise Agent, especially the value you get. When I lived in Phoenix, I could say we were neighbors because we were both in the East Valley. I was down at the valley floor in Gilbert and you're up in this super cool sometimes crazy place called Fountain Hills. It's a cute little town. You can't find it unless you run into it on accident. It's not on the way to anywhere other than a casino maybe or a golf course if you're coming from Scottsdale. [bctt tweet="There are a lot of women in real estate. But the higher you get in the industry, the less there is a women's presence." username="billrisser"] If you're an avid golfer then you do know Fountain Hills because we do have some good golf courses here. To give the readers a little taste of Fountain Hills, talk about some of the cool things there. It's got one famous thing. If you're looking at a map of where Scottsdale is and Scottsdale's this long skinny city, towards the top of it and if you go East in 12, 15 miles, you're going to run right into Fountain Hills. We're in the Northeast Valley and it's about 1 hour from Payson, which is where you would find snow and 1.5 hours from Flagstaff where NAU is. We could be in the snow if we feel like it but I'm coming from Chicago. I don't feel like ever being in the snow. We live here in Fountain Hills. It's a little bit higher in elevation so you can get a little bit cooler temperatures in the winter and the summer. Unfortunately, in the summer, only 1 degree cooler. Everywhere else is 112 and here it's maybe 111. You've got this famous fountain up there. I don't know if it's the world's largest. It is used to be but then it's maybe third. I haven't looked that up in a few years but when it was built in the '70s, it was the largest fountain. It was engineered by a group out of Germany who came here and built it. The cool thing about the fountain is that it goes off every top of the hour for fifteen minutes. In 2021, they added lights to it. It is always lit but there are different color lights. A couple of times a year, they changed the color of the fountain. On St. Patrick's Day, they change it to green. Veteran's Day, they changed it to red. At Christmas time, it's red and green. It's pretty cool. I've seen it flying into Phoenix. If you time it right coming in from the North, you can see that fountain from the plane. It's very cool. If you ever do truck over to the Phoenix area, it's worth a trip to go to Fountain Hills. There are little shops and one difficult golf course. You grew up in Chicago. [caption id="attachment_4138" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Wise Agent: When looking for CRM tools, always look at what the support and training look like because that will tell you a lot about the company.[/caption]   I grew up right outside of the city in a small little suburb, smaller than Fountain Hills called Lincolnwood, which is a stone's throw from the city. Chicago's a great city. It has a high population of Greeks there. My parents chose that city for its Greekness if you will. Talk about having a real urban area or city, as you got older taking the L or the train in there to hang out in the city. It had to be a lot of fun. It was great. Chicago has changed over the years. When I was growing up there, it was completely different than what it is but it's still a great city with great restaurants. There are a ton of things to do. Times are different too, though. It was still a busy city but not as busy as it is. When I was growing up, you'd cross the street and there are 15, 20 people and years ago, you were crossing the street with 150 people almost like Manhattan, New York. Getting there is an interesting story too. We've chatted about this and it's a great story. Let's share with the readers that how your parents met is cool and how they ended up in Chicago. That'd be great. I grew up in a very strict Greek household. Think of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. That was my life. My parents met through my mom's sister and her husband who knew my dad. They were living in Chicago, all three of them. My mom lived in this tiny remote village in Greece. My dad said to my uncle, his future brother-in-law, "I'd like to find a woman like your wife. Does she have a sister?" He said, "Yes. She has a sister. She doesn't have anyone here. It'd be great for her to have her sister here. You would be perfect together." They called my mom and my grandfather and said, "We have a husband for you. Come here." My mom came to Chicago on April 30th, 1974. She met my dad and a week later, they were engaged. A month later, they got married legally because my mom had a green card and my dad didn't. They got married legally in the courthouse two years before I was born, which was crazy. I didn't find that out until I was eighteen that they had to get married legally. They never celebrated that anniversary. They ended up getting married in July 1974. [bctt tweet="The 'R' in CRM is the most important part of customer relations: relationships." username="billrisser"] Did your dad originally route through Canada? He went from Greece to Canada. He was in Quebec in that area. He and one of his buddies that he'd known pretty much his whole life got on a bus to come to Chicago to see their friends. They came with the clothes on their back and nothing else. They didn't get checked at the border. They came in illegally, by accident on the border patrol side. They were like, "We're not going back because we don't know if we could ever come back to Chicago and life is good here." They had a lot of friends in Chicago so they ended up staying. If you ever sit down with Eleni, start asking her about her family, it's a lot of fun. I like to ask this question a lot. You're fifteen years old and in high school. What do you think you're going to be doing? I'm sure it's quite different. I grew up in a strict Greek household. I have an older brother and a younger sister. I'm the middle child. My responsibilities were the older one of the three of us because I had to make sure that if my mom needed help, I needed to be there to cook, clean and iron. I was groomed to be the good Greek girl and good Greek wife. I did a lot of that stuff. I still like doing a lot of that stuff. I still cook and entertain a lot. My dad owned a business, a liquor store on the Southside of Chicago in Bridgeport. He opened that store when I was four years old in 1980. [caption id="attachment_4139" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Wise Agent: Real estate is a really big industry. There are a lot of subsets of groups that know each other really well from across the country.[/caption]   It was a family business. He needed help and he would call on my mom to come to help him, my brother and myself. He would keep my brother at the store until 11:00 PM. My brother was five years old and he had to run the beer from the cooler and help my dad stock things. He was the original staff boy. I grew up and learned to work there. My dad passed away a few years ago. My siblings know this so it's okay. I was my dad's favorite. I was daddy's girl. At fifteen, he was grooming me to take over the family business. I love the liquor store, learning from my dad and watching him negotiate the orders. It was on the Southside of Chicago and it was a liquor store so we did pretty good. I learned how to negotiate with him. He did not take anyone's crap or BS. I have a...