Companies to Watch: Pacific Union

Why eye it: In September the company rolled out its mobile salesperson program, which enables salespeople who've invested in laptops and other mobile technology to work from wherever they are. The company's password-protected Intranet site is their entrée to everything they need to sell real estate, from public records to company policies, say Bill Jansen and Karl Sopke, Pacific Union's executive vice president and president, respectively. Jansen and Sopke hired an HTML programmer to put “everything in the company's drawers online.”

The result: In the first six months, a preliminary mobile program, involving upward of 30 of the company's 300 salespeople, “provided 33 percent of our revenue in San Francisco,” Jansen says. “We anticipate that the number will expand dramatically in the five counties we serve with the full Intranet program.”

But there's a less tangible result as well. Jansen says that one top salesperson in San Francisco told him she joined the mobile program because it allowed her to integrate her home life with her work life. “She can get some shopping done during the day and then meet clients,” he says. “It has made her more efficient as a salesperson.”

What’s next: As soon as he can get the job description created, Jansen plans to hire a manager to oversee the mobile salesperson program. “People who work at home tend to feel left out,” he notes, “and real estate salespeople are social people.”

Besides, there's a business reason for such oversight. We have a definite corporate culture,” Sopke says. “If people come to work for us and go straight into the mobile salesperson program, how do we ensure that they absorb the culture?”

Jansen and Sopke's advice for other practitioners: “It’s easy to say you have a mobile salesperson program. The challenge is creating a technology and human support system that makes it work.”