The most experienced family-owned real estate company in the nation, Baird & Warner Real Estate has been in business since 1855 and hasn't slowed down since.

Their journey started when Lyman Baird arrived in Chicago during an economic boom and saw an opportunity. He opened an office and began developing commercial real estate properties. In 1871, the office building was destroyed in the Great Fire. But rather than seeing this as a setback, he took the opportunity to rebuild not just the business, but the community of Chicago.

As the population of Chicago grew, the company led construction projects to provide affordable housing. They also made property owners' lives easier during the Great Depression by arranging compromises between owners and mortgage holders.

Starting solely as a commercial real estate company, Baird & Warner transitioned over time to residential real estate. While they still offer commercial real estate services, residential real estate is their primary service today. A full-service firm, Baird & Warner also owns a mortgage company, Key Mortgage, and a title company, Baird & Warner Title Services.

Still serving the city of Chicago and the surrounding areas, Baird & Warner now has 25 offices and about 2,200 agents. They also have a satellite office in Florida and are looking to expand in other states as opportunities arise. 

Lyman Baird's descendant, Steve Baird, is the current President and CEO of Baird & Warner. Leading alongside him are Dean Rouso, Laura Ellis, Marty Bozarth, Ralph Melbourne, Wendy Dahm, Frederico Masias, John Matthews, Peter Papakyriacou, and David Bailey.

A Culture of Putting People First

Baird & Warner has been named a Top Workplace in Chicago for 10 years. Much of what makes their company such a great place to work is having a strong set of core values that their agents and staff uphold.

The first of these core values is integrity. Dean Rouso, Baird & Warner's Vice President of Strategic Innovation, says, "We put the 20 members of our leadership staff in a room, and we said, 'Here are 20 words that would generally identify core values.' The one that the 20 leadership folks all really agreed upon is the word integrity. The second question was, what would be the one thing that, if you were an agent or an employee, you would leave if the company didn't have it? And they all said, 'Integrity.'"

Their next core value is collaboration. Rouso says, "Often our agents will tell us that the one thing that pulls them to our company, meaning the one thing that is a retention component, is not just integrity but collaboration, which all equals culture."

Next is professionalism, which exemplifies the career-focused nature of the agents and staff.

"Leadership at Baird & Warner is excited about the evolution that is taking place in our industry," mentions Rouso. "We believe strongly that the effect of this evolution will create an industry of career-minded professionals."

Last is innovation. Innovation is a core value at Baird & Warner because they believe you must leverage the most up-to-date strategies and technology to be competitive in today's industry.

"In today's rapidly changing real estate eco-space, as our clients demand more than ever, we must step up our focus on innovative strategies and cutting-edge technologies," explains Rouso. "It gives new meaning to the famous quote: 'Change is inevitable, but progress is optional.' Today, change is inevitable...survival is a choice."

While their consistent core values have helped build an excellent environment for agents and staff alike, Rouso feels this positive environment can also be attributed to the company's people-first approach.

"I think there are two kinds of real estate companies in general," he says. "One is a company that puts profits first. And I think that in Steve Baird's mind, what seems to go from the top to the admin level in the offices is 'people first.' We know that if we focus on our people in every way, shape, and form through encouragement and training, the profits will come. It's people first, but we know if we focus on our people, financially, we'll be in great shape."

Providing a Luxury Experience

Having taken part in shaping luxury communities for over 165 years, they have a prominent luxury real estate division at Baird & Warner. They are affiliated with Leading Real Estate Companies of the World® and Luxury Portfolio International®.

With offices in various neighborhoods, Baird & Warner Real Estate provides service to luxury buyers, whether they are looking for an urban, equestrian, lakefront, or suburban lifestyle. Designed to make the buying or selling process effortless, they offer concierge-level service not just for their luxury customers but all their customers. They accomplish this with hard work and the highest-end tools and technology.

Looking For a Partner, Not Just a Vendor

With how important innovation and luxury service are to the team at Baird & Warner, they are always searching for new technology that can benefit their business. Rouso took over the technology side of the residential real estate department at Baird & Warner about four or five years ago and began searching for technology that would improve their reputation and daily operations. To narrow down his options for tech providers, he explains that he split them into two categories: vendors and partners.

"I looked at who we were working with in terms of website providers, CRM providers, and all other technology tools," he says. "I decided to split everyone into two categories. One was vendors, and the other one was partners. I slowly weeded out all the vendors whose mindset was, 'This is our product; you'll need to change your business or the way your agents do their business to fit our products. This is what we provide.' Partners, on the other hand, say, 'How do you do business, and how do your agents do business, and what would be valuable to them?'"

A "Best-in-Class" Brokerage Site

Considering Rouso was taking a "best-in-class" approach with their technology at Baird & Warner Real Estate, although he found various tools through other vendors, he knew he wanted to build a website with Delta Media Group for several reasons.

The first was the level of customization Delta offered. Rather than using a template, Baird & Warner Real Estate was able to fully customize their website to look and function exactly the way they wanted. What they received was a beautiful, easy-to-navigate website with a luxury feel to it.

"The brokerage website was designed exactly how we wanted it to be," says Rouso. "There was no pushback from Delta about doing it in a very customized fashion for us. We've always been used to doing things that are not templated, but highly customized."

When taking this approach, it was also important that their website would integrate with their CRM and other products. Delta was flexible and willing to accommodate this.

"What was a consideration in working with Delta was a lot of flexibility in what parts of Delta we wanted to use," says Rouso. "What I've done is, I've looked at the strength of each of the partners to see how they can all fit together and provide their unique value proposition that would become, because of synergy, a best-of-class suite of products. And Delta had that kind of flexibility."

Functional, Customizable Agent Sites

Along with their main site, Baird & Warner Real Estate also received excellent customization capabilities with their agent subdomains. Multiple templates are available for agent use and customization, which wasn't something they could do with their previous provider.

"What's great about the website is we were able to create templates for the agents' websites as well, so they could choose from a suite," notes Rouso. "Before we went to Delta, they had one choice of a website."

Rouso believes it has been helpful to give the agents options; this way, they can choose the exact right template for them and their brand.

"We have websites that satisfy agents who want something simple, we have website templates for agents who specialize in luxury, and we have websites for agents who are selling out of our Florida office," he says.

Rouso has found that Delta-powered websites are simpler for agents to use and customize due to their functionality.

"Our previous vendor, we had a lot of issues with the functionality, and the simplicity, and the ability with Delta for the agents to change what they wanted to change, when they wanted to change it, enhance it, was amazing," he says. "We couldn't go very deep into it before, and we have some agents that want to go deep into their websites."

The Capacity to Generate Qualified Leads

With a high-quality consumer experience, Baird & Warner's websites have proven adept at generating leads.

"Agents can generate leads directly from their website, and we can generate leads from the enterprise website," says Rouso. "The consumer experience is an important piece of that."

According to Rouso, Delta's patent-pending SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services are another reason they are receiving leads regularly through their website. In less than a year, he has already seen the impact these services have had on their online presence and web traffic.

"Since we've made this change from our previous website vendor to Delta, we've seen a very large increase in traffic to our website," he mentions.

Delta is currently working with Baird & Warner Real Estate to improve their lead generation integration with their CRM.

"So there was a one-way lead integration with our CRM so what came into Delta in terms of a lead off the website would then populate into there," he explains. "Harley and Madelyn are now working on a two-way integration of sorts, in that when an agent has a database in the CRM, if there are contacts in the database that are from previous clients' sphere of influence, any other contacts pre-Delta, those contacts can be sent to Delta."

Rouso notes that this integration will be particularly beneficial for things like market reports and home value reports, which can be provided through their website, saying, "The tools like the neighborhood market report or the home value reports can then be done very simply because now the contact is also in Delta."

Website Training Never Stops

At Baird & Warner Real Estate, they have done extensive training for agents on how to set up their websites and use them most effectively for their businesses. They also have brief training videos they can show to their agents.

"We did, and still do, extensive training for our agents, for their websites, both in terms of setting it up for success, enhancing it, and using it as a lead generation tool," says Rouso. "We have one particular trainer who focuses on that, just on the website part and the CRM parts, and we have a whole library of videos that she's made that are two-or three-minute videos on how to use the tools to create leads or to provide value to the consumers."

Website training at Baird & Warner Real Estate never stops. They monitor the agents' engagement and do special training whenever they see a need.

"We regularly measure the number of agents engaged with the websites," mentions Rouso. "We will do training when we see that there's a reason to do a training, a special training, though training never stops."

A Partner That's Committed to Support

Rouso and the rest of the leadership team at Baird & Warner Real Estate have noticed since partnering with Delta Media Group how committed they are to supporting their partners. This means not only supporting them through the onboarding and design processes but continuing to be there even after the fact.

"Delta's pledge to make our website what they said they would at the beginning, and the way that they've stuck with that whole mission, even almost a year after we've started this whole process, is a testament to the fact that Delta just doesn't figure they're finished with any particular client," says Rouso. "We're continually tweaking and making changes, and they're not always small changes. Delta hasn't put us aside; they committed to it, and they've lived up to that commitment."

To further describe the level of support they have received from Delta, Rouso shares a memorable story.

"On a Saturday morning, I got a call personally from an agent, which doesn't typically happen, who was very upset about a glitch in the system on her personal agent website," he says. "I texted Madelyn and Jacob on a Saturday morning, and I would say, within 30 minutes, I had a response. They got a hold of Aaron, who was in charge of that particular service and was on PTO, and he got involved immediately as well. And within three hours, the problem was taken care of."

Choosing the Right Website Partner in Delta Media Group

As a large, full-service independent brokerage firm that has been bettering the Chicago community for more than 165 years, Baird & Warner Real Estate has a strong reputation to uphold. Therefore, they needed to build a website for their customers that was both aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly. To create an unmatched customer experience and generate new leads for their agents, they decided to partner with Delta Media Group to build a completely customized website that is highly functional and easy to use.

Since launching their new website in December 2023, Baird & Warner Real Estate has been delighted to see an increase in web traffic and received excellent feedback from their agents on the customization and simplicity of the technology. They have also been pleased to have both the leadership and tech support at Delta just a call away at all times and always willing to accommodate new changes and requests.

By partnering with Delta Media Group, Baird & Warner Real Estate was thrilled to create the custom website they always wanted that would integrate with their other tools. They can't wait to see what more results this brings for their business in the coming years.