Chris Venden joined our team 10 years ago - due to chance and circumstance - and she's been quietly setting the standard for the rest of us ever since. For the last ten years Chris has been modeling what it means to be a professional and a team player. She's a huge reason why we've been able to attract so many great people to our team, and one of the reasons why we're blessed to work with such wonderful clients. 

If I were to choose three traits that best describe Chris, these are the first three that come to mind: 

Chris is generous.

For those of you who have had the opportunity to work with Chris, you know her to be a generous person. She's generous with her time, her personal attention, her appreciation for your concerns, and generous with her

Looking back on 2018, we're grateful for another year of growth at Mad City Dream Homes. Thank you to all of you who have referred us to your friends and family in the last year. Our families thank you! We genuinely appreciate the trust you place in us, and we promise we'll keep working to earn your trust in the years ahead.

Looking ahead to 2019, we're excited to share our team is growing in a number of positive ways. Here are a few of the exciting changes we're working on right now at Mad City Dream Homes. 

Positive changes at Mad City Dream Homes

1) We're growing with great people

We're very fortunate to have Maureen Moran, and Tracy Kapela join our team in 2018. Both, in their own way, are making us a better and more complete team.

If your goal is to become a productive real estate agent, there's no doubt you need to grow and nurture your database. Just as important, you need a solid business plan. What is a real estate business plan? Within our team, it's each agent's individual approach for growing their pipeline of future clients. In this real estate careers post, we share our suggestions for creating a good business plan, using one agent's real life plan as an example. 

An example of a good real estate business plan

These last few months we've been chatting with an experienced agent from another market. She'll be relocating to Madison soon, where she'll be resuming her career in real estate. Starting over in a brand new market would be a mountain-sized challenge for

In a previous real estate careers post, we covered why our team prefers to "attract" new clients versus trying to "buy" or "hunt" for leads online. For our team, attraction marketing is about building trust and having a contribution mindset. It's a very rewarding way to approach our daily work, and it's the main reason our business keeps growing.  

At Mad City Dream Homes, we attract new clients in two main ways;

1. By growing and nurturing our database of friends, family members, business associates, and former clients. This is our tried and true way of creating repeat and referral business. 
2. By publishing helpful content for the general public, which is an excellent source of new  business . 

Regardless of the source, when a potential

In this real estate careers post we cover closing gifts. For many people, the process of buying or selling a home can be an emotional experience. Closing day, in particular, can be a day when emotions run very high. After all this is the day that represents the closing of one chapter in life and the beginning of another. 

When we choose a closing gift, our goal is to give something that taps into our client's emotions. We try to select a gift that's meaningful to that person or symbolic of this important life event. Presenting a thoughtful gift is one of the most gratifying things we do in real estate. It can literally bring some clients to tears and cement relationships for life.

Here are a few of our favorite gift ideas for clients. 

In this real estate careers topic we cover why we're heavily invested in content marketing. What is content marketing? It's our commitment to continuously share useful real estate information with clients and the general public. 

What types of content do we share? 

We share a lot, including:

• Community, neighborhood, and condo community profiles. 
• Things to do in Madison. 
• Buying and selling tips. 
• Home and condo market reports. 

How does content marketing benefit our business?

Content marketing benefits our business in 5 main ways:

#1: It helps us attract new clients. We've learned real estate consumers appreciate this approach. It's different from what most other agents offer, and it builds trust and credibility with

In this real estate careers topic we cover 2 basic ways real estate teams go about their online marketing.

The first strategy is called forced interaction marketing. With this approach, a website user is asked to give up their contact information in order to view online content. On a lot of real estate websites this means users are asked to register in order to view a property listing. This practice is commonly referred to as forced registration.  

Our team's strategy is attraction marketing. With attraction marketing, we create a lot of great online content and give all of it away with no strings attached. As a result, the people who contact us online do so through voluntary registration. 

How teams convert forced leads

Some real estate

We recently added a section to our blog focused on real estate careers. In this article, we cover 8 ways our team is growing for the long term. We feel very fortunate to know our business is growing at a healthy pace, even though inventory is low and sales in the larger market are decreasing. 

This says a lot about our agents - Chris, Shelley, and Tammy - who are all receiving awesome client feedback. Their consistent focus on customer service has attracted a lot of loyal fans who are happily referring their friends and family to our team. 

Our growing client base has created an opportunity for a new agent to join us in 2017. The next agent to join us will have the same client focus as Chris, Shelley and Tammy. Our next agent will also embrace our

The most rewarding part of real estate is knowing you helped someone reach an important goal and that they genuinely appreciate you for your efforts. That, and knowing in the process you've gained a new friend. More than anything else this is what we work for on our team.

Chris Venden, Shelley Lazzareschi, and Tammy Steiner are all receiving some very rewarding feedback, which is a direct reflection of their commitment to their clients. Here are a few recent examples that have been posted by their clients online. 

Chris Venden

"Chris was amazing! Buying our condo with her was a walk in the park. She went above and beyond the call of duty in every regard and made the whole process smooth and efficient. Every time we had a question or needed help,

Here's the vision we have for our real estate agents as our team continues to grow:

We're known as being among the best real estate agents in Madison and South Central Wisconsin. Our clients trust us because they know we're competent, they know we care, and they know we devote extra time and attention to their goals.

The best part of our real estate team is the people. 

We're learning each new person who joins us is raising the bar for the team and influencing all of us to become better agents. We all have different personality types and different strengths, but we're all very similar in a few key ways, too. Here are 7 traits shared by the members of our team. 

Seven Characteristics Shared by our Real Estate Agents

1. We have positive