Relocation Directors, are You Ready?
The last twelve months have forced all of us to pivot personally and professionally. While we are starting to see small signs of normalcy on the horizon, it doesn’t mean everything will just magically return to the ‘before’ picture. For the relocation industry, there is a lot of pent up demand on the corporate relocation side. Companies and prospective transferees put moves on hold or cancelled travel, but what happens when all of those restrictions are finally lifted or modified? Will you be ready?
Real Estate Brokers are busier than ever with people making the choice to upsize or downsize or move to a new community or state. The relocation companies have not had the benefit of that migration effect. They have been in a holding pattern that will soon lift. Based on the many conversations I have had with Relocation Directors, their closing numbers where similar to 2019, but the make-up of those numbers was different in 2020. It was more broker to broker referrals and less corporate relocation.
There is no doubt that corporations may take a harder look at where and why they relocate prospective and current employees in the future. We may see more requested relocations by employees to locations that do not involve being close to a company office. If remote work is going to stay as a viable option for many industries, employees may insist that their choice of work location be a part of their benefits package. But until companies settle into what their ongoing benefits and mobility packages will look like post-COVID, there will likely be a flurry of activity that was stalled from last year as people decide if they want to go through with the move that was halted due to the pandemic.
To be ready for what is likely to be a robust summer and fall for corporate relocation, it’s a good idea to have a strategy. Corporations and RMC’s are looking to their suppliers to fulfill their real estate needs no matter how busy they are.
If your staff is already stretched thin, here are some thoughts about how to prepare your department to remain the rock star of the supply chain even with the volume is off the chart:
Seek out an intern that might be able to give you some free support
College kids off for the summer are a great resource for hourly help and they are often technical wizzes!
Consider creating a support consortium with other non competing brokers. Share admin staff and divide the salary.
Look at admins in your company from other departments or branches and find out who might have a few hours a week to devote to relocation. You might want to shift the cost of part of their salary to your bottom line temporarily as a thank you to their boss.
Queue up a temporary employee that might be right to keep on permanently if the business need remains high. It’s a great way to test drive them to see if they are up for the task.
See if there are any agent’s assistants in your company who are part time and might be looking to add more hours to their work week. They might even be willing to help out after hours if they are full time and are looking for a side hustle. Just make sure the agent is ok with it.
Relocation Directors are often heard saying, “I’m so busy!” and sometimes it actually sounds like a complaint. If we are in a situation where the business is so overwhelming at all times that we are unable to effectively handle it, then that a different challenge. That is when we need to be able to convince our leadership that we need more staff permanently. Benchmarking our own volume against other brokers that are similar in size is a great way to start. But being able to effectively create a case for adding another staff member means educating leadership on what isn’t getting done that is costing them money. Every case for adding staff should tell a story that leads to more revenue, higher conversion and better service scores which all points to more bottom line profits and agent and client satisfaction.
The key to being prepared for an uptick in business is to delegate the lower skill level tasks like data entry, running reports, etc. and reserve your experienced staff for the high performance tasks they handle so well. By having detailed job descriptions for all of your staff, you can quickly search out the administrative functions that can be redirected. It’s a good thing to be busy, as long as you have a strategy to handle it like a pro.
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
