Assess the Risk of Inaction

How big must a problem be to merit our time? Our days are filled with decisions and challenges. How we react to them determines how effective we are as leaders.

Think bigger, then even bigger.

When I managed several business lines and a large relocation department at a big brokerage serving the Southwest region, most of the staff who worked for me were given decision-making control and were great at it. I was fortunate. I didn’t get bogged down in minutia unless I chose to. I could defer it to others, or it never reached me.

I know I was in a unique position that many people in our industry do not enjoy. But I learned early on in my career not to sweat the small stuff. I saved my energy for the things that mattered, which is how I maximized my productivity. By delegating or making certain things a low priority, I could focus on business growth and retention. And that was really the key component of my job—helping us grow.

So when the market tanked, we did REOs, did local business development, and created affinity programs and fee-based rental and tour assistance. We looked beyond what was easy and what was already before us. Our department never reflected market volatility.

Concentrating time and effort on the opportunities that don’t seem obvious ensures our progress forward. Wasting time on anything less can be a drag on our critical decision-making. And that is what companies and departments need to succeed, someone always thinking forward, not down in the weeds micro-managing the everyday stuff.

Assess the risk.

So, how do you know what to get involved with and what to leave to others or leave alone altogether? It all comes down to risk. What is the risk if you don’t regularly focus on business development because you are busy messing with low-level activities? I would say it is high. If you are busy updating referrals, while important, it could likely be automated or left to lower-level employees.

We become reactionary because it is easy. When all we have to do is robotically react to the things that pile in on us, it makes us feel productive—and maybe we are. Someone has to ensure that the business is flowing. We will get our paycheck whether we get creative or not…for the moment. I see Relocation Directors phoning it in because they can.

Left unattended, bigger challenges can have a broad impact on multiple shareholders. If your business continues to drop, your broker will eventually act. Evaluate the risk of inaction.

When I was a Director, I knew I had to focus on our outgoing referral goals. I love outgoing referrals because they generate passive income for agents, build relationships with other brokers and really help clients who need the referrals to a solid broker. But it didn’t make any money for my department, and our network always gave us unrealistic and unattainable goals. But that is how it was, and I expended a huge amount of energy on that so we could remain in good standing in our network and retain the incoming business. The residual implications were much more significant than just sending outbound referrals. It was an unwieldy problem with potentially huge financial implications.

Our changing landscape.

What happens when certain business lines start drying up, as they have over the last four years? The only brokerages I have spoken with whose corporate relocation and referrals are up are those who made a conscious effort to create new business lines to generate new sources of revenue. If you are waiting for the business to return to pre-2020 numbers, I think you will be waiting a long time.

Broker-owners are going to need to start making decisions. If they pay attention to the numbers and still employ the same amount of staff, they will question why. As mergers and acquisitions emerge, that could also jeopardize the Relocation Director’s role. But what is short-sighted is that instead of repurposing the staff with people who know how to focus on the growth side of things, brokers just lay people off, which only serves to cut expenses and not generate more revenue and transactions.

Act big, and they will believe it.

The biggest challenge for smaller brokerages is competing head-to-head in the same markets with larger brokers with more resources. When I first moved to a business development role in Southern California, I competed head-to-head with a very small broker, Winkelmann Realty. I worked for a huge brokerage, but Gloria Winkelmann was a formidable competitor. She knew how to use her resources, connections, and market knowledge to make her company seem large. People worked with her company because they loved her, and she was very involved in the industry. She focused a large amount of resources on making relocation the star of her company. You don’t have to be big to be successful.

I don’t care how small a brokerage is, if they decide to do relocation, affinity, online leads, and referrals, they need a department leader and a coordinator. I am over this ‘one-person shop’ business. Maybe the coordinator is part-time or a shared employee. But there must be someone whose principal role is to work the room. They have to be out there building relationships and creating programs and services. Gone are the days of sitting back and just letting the business pile in.

Just do it.

Take the time to lay out a strategic plan to explain to your broker-owner how to pay for a coordinator. By having the time to generate more business, show them how you can increase revenue and the number of transactions. That not only helps with the bottom line but helps with agent retention.

We must maximize our productivity. Problems before us often seem urgent, but there is little reward. We need to just handle or delegate them and move on. If ignored, big issues can spiral into an unexpected chain of events. Dealing with low-level issues and tasks undervalues our time and diverts resources away from what matters…growth.

"I never worry about action, but only inaction." ~ Winston Churchill