A true success story! The force that drives me in this Real Estate business goes back to my last year in college. I was sitting in a Tom Hopkins seminar, in Northern New Jersey, it was snowing heavily and I was not going to graduate for another three months. After sitting through the first day of the seminar, I was pumped, really excited, chills up and down my spine. At the end of the 1st night, I called my father and told him I was going to be his top agent in my 1st year, plus in the geographic area of our business. He laughed and joked, but I was serious. I knew I wanted to be the BEST!

Well, I graduated in December 1988, started selling Real Estate January 5th, 1989. I was given a desk, a phone and was told to go to it. Now remember, I had no money, no expertise, no knowledge, just a lot of excitement. I sold a house my first day. It was easy. I made an appoinment, showed the house, then asked the question, "Do you want to buy it?" They said, "yes!" Now I was really excited, because I was on my way to reaching my dream.

As my business started to grow, I knew Real Estate was based on referrals. So, I started to think of how to make people remember me, to have them be my bird-dogs or ambassador of good will. After thinking about it, I thought of what the industry lacked; professionalism, knowledge, communication skills, loyalty, amazing customer service! So, I decided to start using the same techniques as other customer service oriented companies; 5 Star Hotels, the Ritz Carlton, Four Seasons. Most Real Estate companies are like a Holiday Inn, everyone can be one. I wanted to be a 5 Star Hotel. The staff at these hotels don't just point or tell you where to go, they take you there, it is always their "pleasure" to help you.

When I expand on some of my ideas, they have usually been tested somewhere around the country by other top agents. These top agents are a sphere of professionals that are my friends. They did combined sales of 13,000 homes in 2001 or over 1.6 billion in sales volume between 130 of them. That is energy!

To show how our knowledge, energy, empathy and professionalism works, Mr. & Mrs. Finklestein had their house on the market for a year with another agent. They were very frustrated and upset with the whole Real Estate Industry. I met with them, secured their listing and proceeded to sell the house in 48 hours. They were losing money to the tone of $7,000.00, but they were still happy with us, because we did what we said we would do. Sell the house fast, get it to settlement, then help them move to their new house with the least amount of stress. Even though they lost money, they were happy! This is important to me, because they will become ambassadors of good-will for us!

By having hundreds of ambassadors of good-will we will reach our goals. Right after I started in the Real Esate business my mother was diagnosed with cancer. They gave her 6 months to live, she died 4 months later. My parents were divorced for 2 years before she died. In those 4 months she drilled me not to run my business the way most Real Estate Companies were run. She was there through all the ups and downs of in her mind a rotten business and she did not want my future family to have to go through that experience. She wanted me to get a different job. I told her I did not want to do anything else and that I would succeed. She did not like, it but wished me well. Life on earth here is for a short time. We have to do what we can while we are here. I must be my best, which makes my team have to be their BEST, so my mom will be proud of me. I believe the things we achieve here, will stay with us for eternity.

I share this story of my mom and my past because I do not want my business to be on a roller-coaster; up and down, nor do I want my staff to have to live that way. This business is fun, it is helping people reach their goals, that then helps us reach ours.

Thank you for reading our company story. Please check out our web-site and let us know if there is anything we can do to assist in "Making Your Real Estate Experience Enjoyable!"

Craig Lerch Jr. has been in the top one-half of 1 percent of all real estate agents in America for real estate sales since 1996.

While at Coldwell Banker in the late 1990s, he was recognized internationally as one of the company's Top 20 agents out of more than 75,000 agents.

Now that Craig is co-owner with his brother Christopher of Lerch & Associates, a boutique Northeast Philadelphia agency that serves Bucks, Montgomery and Philadelphia Counties, Craig consistently has been ranked among the Top 300 real estate salespeople in America since 2001.