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Seeds For Thought
Creating Your Winning Team
No matter how small your small business, you are going to need help. You are going to need to assemble a support team. David Ogilvy, the famous advertising guru, wrote "First, make yourself a reputation for being a creative genius. Second, surround yourself with partners who are better than you are. Third, leave them to get on with it."Every business will need an attorney, accountant and one or more mentors. Start thinking immediately about who would be appropriate to these roles. As you conduct your research, you will have the opportunity to ask those in the industry whom they use. When you start hearing the same names, you will have your leads. Lee Iacocca, former CEO of Chrysler, said "Start with good people, lay out the rules, communicate with your employees, motivate them and reward them. If you do all those things effectively, you can't miss." For your attorney and accountant, you will choose skilled professionals who will be able to do more than simply fill out forms. As both you and your business become more sophisticated, you will want to seek the legal and financial counsel of specialists who know the intricacies of your specific industry. From these specialists, you can expect both specific advice and specific networking opportunities. You want experienced professionals who have seen it all before. Why pay for people who are going to learn or have no interest in learning the intricacies of your business from you? You want to be able to ask a question and get an answer. You don't want to have to go into a half hour explanation of how your business works every time you make a call. This can get very tiresome and expensive. The right attorney and good accountant will prove to be valuable members of your entrepreneurial team. Each should be privy to and support your objectives and goals. You should not be shy in asking him or her both to critique ideas and offer suggestions. You may work alone but you should never feel alone. Even if you work without a staff, you should think of yourself as the decision-making leader of a larger team. Remember that with a team approach, the advice of your team of attorney, accountant, contractors, vendors, suppliers and mentors are as near as the buttons on your telephone. With call conferencing, you can even hold a meeting or a brainstorming session on the telephone. In most small businesses, you will not work alone but will require a staff of employees. There will be both state and federal equal opportunity guidelines to which you must adhere in your hiring. These guidelines will extend to how you can advertise and what questions you may ask prospective employees. Be sure that you do your hiring carefully because it is a lot easier to hire someone than to fire them. At best, you want to hire a staff that shares your business vision and your commitment to customer service. As you continue to evaluate other businesses, you will find companies that take the mission of hiring appropriate personnel seriously and those who must have taken the easier route and hired anything breathing that walked through the door. You want more than warm bodies working for your business. You want representatives. You want people who can answer questions patiently. If they are selling, you want people who aren't intimidated by asking for the business. This confidence will come to them through your example, your training and your product knowledge.
You want people who will take the initiative and say, "Sir" and "Ma'am" and "May I help you?" and "Thank you" and "Please come again." You want people with a genuine smile to whom work is more an opportunity than a tedious task to acquire money for the weekend. These days, politeness is becoming such a rare commodity that it can become your own quality control test. People will notice politeness and good manners to the extent that these characteristics exhibited by your staff will draw comment. If people stop commenting on the good nature and politeness of your staff, you'll know that you have a problem. This does not mean that some customers won't be rude and obnoxious. This does not mean that the customer "is always right." Sometimes, the customer is wrong. However, you and your staff must be guided by the Action Principles, which means to use common sense. You don't want to lose an established customer who may spend thousands of dollars over a hundred dollar disagreement. This said, there are customers who may abuse your generosity and are better sent to your competitors. This decision should only be made by senior managers. Where do you find good staff? Recommendations are your best bet. You should encourage solid employees to recommend other solid employees. You should seek names from high school/trade school guidance counselors and/or college placement officers. You should speak with members of the clergy. You should read the local newspapers for stories on outstanding young people and you should take the initiative in seeking them out. You should look for employees among your customers. As always, your eyes and ears should be open. If you see someone in another business or personal setting and the occasion is appropriate, you should mention that you are looking for his or her type of help for your own business. If you take these steps, in the long run you will have a much stronger staff than if you had taken the lazy man's approach of a "Help Wanted" sign in the window or a classified ad in the newspaper. Working as an entrepreneur, the chances are good that you will automatically be seen as head and shoulders above your contemporaries. The ego boost is nice but comes at a price. Every lay-about and zoned-out friend and relative will be comin' a knockin'. "Dear, you remember your cousin, Mortimer. He's Aunt Sarah's middle son. Well, he's had such a rough go of it. But, now Aunt Sarah tells me that since the doctors have adjusted his medications, he's doing much much better. And Auntie is very proud that he isn't drinking half as much. Maybe you could use him for deliveries?" You will need all your time to watch over and baby your baby, your new business. You are not the family's or the neighborhood's or your old high school's social worker. Did you feel sorry for Mortimer and wish him well? Of course. Maybe you could give him a copy of the Action Principles and offer some words of encouragement. Don't give him a job! Word of mouth should rather quickly make your business a coveted place of employment. You will know what you want to accomplish and you will be specific in stating your high employee expectations. You will never ask anyone to do a job that you wouldn't do yourself. You will be fair and understanding and generous. Billionaire Richard Branson, Chairman Virgin Group, perspective is "What matters is working with a few close friends, people you respect, knowing that if times did turn bad these people would hold together." You will attract and keep the best help because you will be constantly striving to make yourself and your business the best that you and it can be. And most importantly, you will lead by example and many others will want to follow your example to their own successes. Probably the greatest opportunity that you can provide an employee is to become a mentor to him or her. As a mentor, you will have achieved success and respect. Andy, As BrokerHe learned that about 20% of the investors did seem to have a bond with a particular investment broker or a particular real estate agency. In reality, 80% of investors were really unaffiliated and open to solicitation. The client field seemed open to Andy. Don Nardo might have his thirty owners. Mr. Taylor had his eight trusted clients. And, Mark Cherry, another old hand in the investment field from Century 21, had 20 or so loyal clients. That was about it except for a few scattered brokers who might have a few investors each in their pockets. The rest, the overwhelming majority, could be considered amenable to Andy's overtures. The business was there for Andy to develop. Andy also considered an important point. He was young. He could rationalize that since he was less than half the age of Don, Mr. Taylor and Mark Cherry, that time was on his side. He had 80% of the investors to work with now and, given his youth, eventually he could expect to work with the other 20% or their successors. The world constantly evolved.
The newsletters were a nice aside but Andy wanted to be able to provide an even more substantial service in his quest to develop investor loyalty. An obvious answer was to solve the contractor problem. For Andy, it was to provide a service that solved the contractor problem that he had been thinking about. Andy wrestled with possible solutions. Suppose, rather than thinking about investors as individual property owners, the Newton investment property owners were considered as a block. Then, rather than one owner with one building and another owner with three buildings, there was one group of owners with a common interest and several hundred buildings. Working from this premise, there should be experienced, reliable, professional contractors in the community smart enough to realize that real estate investors, as a block, could be a plum for their businesses. Andy considered his "investor block" idea from a contractor's perspective. Here are hundreds of buildings, some new but mostly old, that require constant attention which means a constant stream of work. There would be many large jobs and small. The large jobs could be planned and scheduled in advance. The smaller jobs would be excellent fill-ins. The contracting business was prone to time wasting. The heating contractor wants to put in a boiler but the electrical contractor whose work must precede the installation of the boiler hasn't finished and won't finish for another three hours. Rather than having his crew sit on their hands and drink coffee for three hours, the heating contractor can send his people out on three hours worth of service calls. Efficiency. And, perhaps best of all, all of the work would be local. The Newton plumber doesn't have to drive 40 minutes to Dover to do a job and forty minutes back at the end of the job. The Newton plumber would be working in Newton. These were Andy's primary arguments and primary leverage points. If Mr. Contractor was willing to show loyalty and give priority to "Andy's" investors, the selected contractor would have plenty of work, plenty of local work. Andy started his new research project using the Internet and the Yellow Pages. He listed all of Newton's plumbers, electricians, carpenters, roofers, siding contractors, glass companies, landscapers, tile installers, exterminators, framers, excavators, kitchen and bath companies, masons, rug companies, ceiling specialists, fence companies, waterproofing specialists, painters, wallpaperers, hard wood floor sanders, insulation specialists and appliance repair companies. If he didn't have the bosses' names from each company, Andy called the company and asked for the owner's or manager's name. As a start, Andy wrote a general form letter to each contracting company outlining the potential for that particular company to provide service to Taylor Realty's investors. Using a simple, inexpensive mail merge program on his computer, Andy was easily able to personalize each letter. Andy asked each contractor or manager to call him to discuss this "exciting and profitable" prospect further. Andy wasn't ready to give away "his" investors' business. There was too much potential business to give away. Andy wanted commitment and concessions. He considered his options. He really had two. 
Or, Andy could give his loyalty to his investors. He could say to All County Siding, "Listen, I represent many of the real estate investors in Newton. We have the potential to give a siding company a great deal of business. I can't guarantee you that you'd be hired for any specific job but I can guarantee you that we will give you the opportunity to bid on many Newton jobs. In exchange for our showing All County Siding consideration, we'd expect special consideration from you, let's say a 15% discount. We'd call you directly and you'd have the option of writing the job yourself and saving the sales commission or giving the sale to a salesperson of your choice." Andy weighed the choices. He could go for the front money and be immediately paid by the contractors or provide the service on a "goodwill" basis to investors. In theory, the goodwill approach should help stimulate investor loyalty and future for sale and rental listings and future investor purchases. If just these issues were tied to the choices, Andy would have had a difficult decision. However, there was one overriding factor favoring one of the two options. Being a goodwill ombudsman (middleman) between investors and contractors might become a lot of work without immediate financial return to Andy. However, over the long run, the goodwill approach would definitely bring more buy/sell/lease/rent investment business to Taylor Realty. It would position Andy to be aware of and participate as an agent/broker in more deals. The bottom line was that the more deals in which Andy was involved, the greater the likelihood that he could start to find ways to participate in deals as both an agent/broker and investor. Andy reasoned that the real money was in being an owner, an investor himself. Andy felt that whatever avenue would best lead to this objective was the way to go. As Andy was working the contractor side of his investor service program, he was also sending feelers out to a few owners with whom he felt a strong rapport, giving each investor an overview of the service he intended to provide. The response, to say the least, was very favorable. However, when he tested the idea as a profit making venture by mentioning that he, Andy, might be receiving referral fees and/or commissions from the contractors, the responses immediately turned from favorable to neutral to negative. Andy felt that the consensus of investor opinion to his receiving fees was that he, Andy, would not be giving a service but selling a service. More than one investor talked about "kickbacks." A kickback was money paid by a company to a middleman without the knowledge of the buyer. The talk of "kickbacks" was enough. Andy would run the service as a free service. Eventually the service was to take hold so well that the two full time rental agents hired by Taylor Realty were paid, in addition to their rental commissions, a $150 per week in salary to run what was to be called the Investor Service Program (ISP). Andy supervised the Investor Service Program. Firms willing to participate were interviewed and asked to sign a letter of understanding that business referred by Taylor would receive a certain discount. Over the years of the program, firms were added and deleted. And firms moved up and down the pecking order on the Taylor Realty call list depending upon the quality and dependability of their work and their price. At first, Andy had to deal with some firms who, for instance, offered a 20% discount and then jacked their prices up 20%. Also factored into the equation were, for example, a firm who might charge $25 an hour for work and offer a 20% discount against a firm offering the same work at $18 an hour with a 10% discount. The better deal was obvious. To participate in the ISP program, investors were asked to register with Taylor Realty. The registration required an investor to meet with Andy on a quarterly basis for a no-obligation Portfolio Review. The Portfolio Review, held at the office over coffee for some investors, or as a breakfast or lunch meeting with select investors, gave Andy an opportunity to discuss personally with each owner his or her investment progress over the previous three months. Was he or she interested in buying or selling, etc.? Had their rents changed? Did they have any current or pending vacancies that Taylor Realty could help with? Etc., etc. From the Portfolio Review, which in and of itself was a valuable service to investors, owners could participate in the Investor Service Program. When they had a problem, from a leaky roof to a leaky faucet, they didn't have to call ten contractors. Instead, they could call Taylor Realty and Taylor Realty would not only find them a contractor but have the work done at a discount. When they had a remodeling project to be done, they could call Taylor Realty who would call all the necessary contractors to have all the work done promptly and at a discount. Or, they could call a contractor directly from the contractor referral sheet provided by Taylor and mention that they were investors registered with Taylor and also receive the discount. From the newsletters and the investor service, came several spin-offs. There were some investors who wanted full time property management services. They didn't want Taylor Realty just to make calls on their behalf. They wanted Taylor Realty to collect rents, hold keys, and to supervise both maintenance requests and property improvements. They wanted their tenants to be able to call Taylor Realty directly with problems since, under the more limited investor service program, only owners and not tenants were allowed to request services. For property management services, Taylor Realty received a standard 6% to 10% of gross rents. As with the rental split, 40% went to the company, 40% to the property manager assigned and 20% to the property management lister, in most cases, Andy. The day- to-day property management for the 40% split went to the rental agents who now assumed the added role of property managers. In the real estate business where weekly paychecks are rare, the rental agent jobs at Taylor Realty were to become coveted assignments. The rental agents received 40% of the rental fees, 40% of the management fees and the $150 a week for the Investor Service Program (ISP) work. After the second year in operation, both of Taylor Realty's rental agent/property managers earned over $30,000. During the first year of ironing out problems and improving the ISP system, Andy was spending a good portion of his day on the telephone. Rather than writing to all investors via the newsletter insert or talking with individual investors on the telephone, why not get everybody together to talk? Why not have a monthly meeting of Newton investors? For the first few months, the meetings were held in the Taylor Realty conference office with attendance numbering in the teens. And, most of the discussion revolved around the ISP system which everyone liked and everyone had an idea on how to improve. However, as word spread investor to investor and from Andy's newsletter and Andy's monthly calls, attendance grew to average 40 to 50 investors per month. The meeting place had to be switched to a local hotel function room with complimentary coffee and a cash bar. For each monthly "Taylor Realty Investors' Roundtable Meeting," hosted by Mr. Taylor, who loved the idea, and chaired by Andy, there was a guest speaker. Over the months, municipal officials spoke. The building inspector talked about the building codes pertaining to multiple dwelling and commercial property. The planning board chairman sketched Newton's future direction. The health inspector clarified health and safety issues. The assessor predicted tax rates. The calendar was easily filled by lawyers talking about legal issues pertinent to real estate investing. Accountants could be called upon to illustrate the tax advantages and consequences of acquisition, operation and disposition of real estate. There were bankers to speak about financing and architects about building and remodeling. Four times a year Andy was able to hold a new investors' clinic at the hotel. The clinics were to explain the many benefits of real estate investing to homeowners who might be considering making a second real estate investment. Andy also started a website "an electronic newsletter" to present listings, provide statistics, offer advice and answer questions. In general, the established investors were interested in acquiring larger properties of four units and up, storeblocks, office buildings and warehouses. Most of these purchases were beyond the budgets and expertise of homeowning investors. For the homeowner new to the purchase of income producing properties, opportunities were presented to purchase a two- or three-family house, or a condo or a second single family house. Andy always had a pitch ready for either group. As a further inducement to attend the clinic, the potential investors were given a "free" one-year's subscription to the company's investors' newsletter. Lesson 23 ResourcesGo to Lesson Twenty Four
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