Edmonton Real Estate Brokerage Recognized With Inman Innovator Nomination for "Anti-Sales" Approach

EDMONTON, AB--(Marketwired - June 27, 2016) - While many people see the real estate business as a highly competitive industry driven by sales reports and commission cheques, a small Edmonton brokerage has made it their mission to change the way people buy homes. Now they're being recognized in a big way thanks to a recent nomination for the Inman Innovator Awards. The brokerage, operated by husband and wife team Sheldon Johnston and Sara MacLennan, takes a fresh approach to selling real estate.

"We do one big thing differently from every other brokerage we know and that is we don't have sales awards," says MacLennan, a REALTOR® who also acts as the company's marketing director. "We only recognize our agents with awards for customer service excellence, leadership and teamwork."

The company has been nominated in the category of Most Innovative Brokerage, and is the only Canadian company to be nominated in their category. The Inman Innovator Awards recognize people and organizations that "try new things, adopt new technology or create a new culture or approach to real estate." Creating a new culture is exactly what Johnston and MacLennan have been doing for the last ten years, and that focus on transformation is what has earned them the nomination for this year's awards, which are presented by Inman.com, the industry's leading source of real estate information.

This is Liv Real Estate's first nomination for an Inman Innovator Award, the irony of which is not lost on Broker/Owner Sheldon Johnston: "Is not doing something an innovation? We think it is," he says. "There's a famous Peter Drucker quote that basically says: 'You are what you measure.' And we're very committed to providing excellent customer service, so that's what we measure."

Liv stopped handing out sales awards to their agents back in 2012, when they re-branded the 40 year old company as part of an effort to reshape their brokerage towards a more consumer-friendly business model. At the same time, they also began posting third-party verified customer satisfaction ratings on their company website at livrealestate.ca, as well as their listing search website, edmontonrealestate.pro, making them the first Edmonton real estate company to do so.

Now, when customers view an agent's online profile, they see a rating that's based on true customer satisfaction rather than sales numbers. This has led to an increase in consumer inquiries, which in turn, has helped with Liv's service-oriented approach. "Our websites get a lot of traffic and generate a lot of leads (last month we got 350,000 user sessions and 4.7 million page views)," MacLennan says. "That allows our agents to focus on creating relationships with clients instead of trying to find leads."

About Liv Real Estate
Liv Real Estate is an Edmonton, Alberta based real estate brokerage that looks to the future when it comes to helping people buy and sell homes. Currently owned and operated by Sheldon Johnston and Sara MacLennan, the company was founded by Ken Johnston, Sheldon's father, in 1975. After joining an international franchise in 1993, the company became independent once more in 2012, and went through a rebranding process where they came up with their current, fresh approach to real estate