Marshall Saunders
Dec 7, 2021 #givethanks100
Today I’m giving thanks for Marshall Saunders. Marshall became our biggest brokerage client when he spearheaded the adoption of our solution at RE/MAX Results in late 2011.
I first met Marshall at the Minneapolis RE Barcamp in April 2010. It was the first ever event we sponsored with actual potential customers. Marshall didn’t know it at the time, but I was on a mission to meet him and was glad I did. He had an iPad in his hand– which had been on the market for all of three days so far, so I had to check it out. About 18 months later, he signed on as a customer.
Though Marshall received instant respect for his business acumen and being our largest brokerage customer at the time, the thing is … he quickly turned into a mentor and then a friend. He drove up to northern Minnesota for a retreat we had in our early days to give a talk to our employees. We’ve since met frequently over the years for coffee or lunch and I’ve always been fortunate to learn a lot from those conversations.
One of the hardest things I had to do in those early days was to have a conversation with Marshall to let him know we were about to sign a larger brokerage in the Twin Cities. We didn’t have anything contractual that said I wouldn’t, but we had a verbal agreement that said he would get a right of first refusal (to match what they were paying) if such a thing happened. I knew how much follow on business would come by signing that bigger client and the additional doors it would open and knew it was important to our business and that financially it wouldn’t make sense for Marshall to match all of that. But I still felt bad about it. To Marshall’s credit, he verbalized that this could really put our business on the map. I won’t say he was thrilled about it– but to my surprise, he was congratulatory to me personally. I’ll never forget that day and his gracious response.
Marshall- thank you for your support and for exemplifying someone who can be successful at business while being a solid human being as well.
Originally posted on LinkedIn – head over to give it a like or a share.
I’m giving thanks for 100+ days to individuals that positively impacted me or HomeSpotter’s trajectory.