Sharing Makes Us All Winners

As Relocation professionals, it is our responsibility to share our expertise in the relocation and mobility business to ensure that our industry continues to grow and thrive. When I think about all of the Relocation Directors I have met in my years in the industry, I can confidently say that there are no two that handle their business exactly the same. I have observed that many of them bear similar strengths. But I have yet to meet one that personally holds all of the experience or expertise to make them perfectly well rounded in their job. We basically need all of the skills that we often find in owners of successful small businesses.

I was lucky enough to have a large staff in my long time role at CB/NRT. Because of our large territory huge volume of business and profitability, I could selectively hire people that were part of my leadership team with various areas of expertise.  One with extraordinary tech and data management skills, one with strong sales, training and customer service skills, and one with amazing people management acumen. They fulfilled the areas where I needed help or where I was weak.

But what about Relocation Departments that are made up of one or two people? It is very challenging to find one person in our industry who can manage a budget and financial reporting, understand the  dynamics of a real estate company and the relocation industry, have strong sales and marketing skills, is customer service oriented, can manage and grow relationships, understands and embraces technology, can speak publicly and deliver effective training, creates business strategies and programs and execute them, has good time management skills, and all the while, be personable. These people seemingly do exist, I have known a lot of them. But they are typically working in brokerages with a large support staff to backfill their areas of weakness just like I had. So the support from behind rounds out the necessary skills to run a highly productive relocation department. It’s not just the front person that makes it happen, it’s a team effort.

Being a Relocation Director can be a lonely position particularly when you fulfill every role in the department. We are the only one in the company bearing that title, so relocation education and best practices must come from outside sources. One of the challenges Relocation Department leaders face, particularly in small firms, is that they are usually really busy. They are often understaffed and find themselves operating in situations that are completely reactive. We need to run more offense and less defense. There is never one minute to proactively do all of the things a small business manager must do to ensure that they not only maintain their business, but that it grows. Because if growth and improved service delivery isn’t a daily focus, the business may become stagnant or loose opportunities to those who are happy to take it away. The additional challenge is that typically broker owners don’t really understand the daily inner workings of the relocation department, so when an RD asks for additional resources, the broker doesn’t know how to benchmark the request.

When understaffed, everyone is always down in the weeds taking referrals and solving problems. Sometimes we need a view from the tree tops to really understand what our next move should be. There has to be some time for reflection and projection. What have I done in the past and what can I do better or differently in the future?

Worldwide ERC principally focuses all educational efforts on its corporate base.  We can tap into Relocation Directors Council, but that group meets twice a year and the varied size and brands of the brokers sometimes makes it difficult to effectively translate the information to fit our specific needs. We can tap into our broker networks, but again, we are looking at once a year events and a few webinars. I have never found the information provided by networks to be detailed enough or have the success rates provided to be able to easily implement. Maybe it is because networks often have competing brokers in them and not everyone wants to pull back the curtain for their competitor. 

I have worked with brokers who are members of the big networks and franchises and what I hear time and again is they wish for more best practices sharing. When you have a network or a franchise that has some brokers who are wildly successful in relocation and some that barely generate enough to support one staff member, then there is a disconnect. Why would you not replicate elements of the model as long as it fits the culture and size of the market and the company? Why would you leave each broker to market their relocation services individually? There is power in market share and a wide coverage area.

What if McDonalds let every location just make their hamburgers however they wanted? There would be some that did it well and some that did not, leading to varying levels of success. Franchised retail and restaurants are brilliant at creating a consistent product. I’m not suggesting that we all do things exactly the same or that we are doing something as simple as making hamburgers, but sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know. Real estate franchises actually create models to deliver consistent business practices and brand marketing. Why would they not do the same for their brokers that do relocation?

So what can our industry do about helping people in small departments or who are new in relocation gain the broad business experience and resources they need to effectively run and grow company generated business?  

We must create better mentoring and sharing opportunities within our own network of brokers, franchises and associations and through consortiums with non-competing brokers. And we need to educate broker owners and leaders that hiring a consultant, like me, to come in and evaluate their relocation departments from a neutral perspective to determine if their staff has the most productive and profitable infrastructure and whether they have the resources they need, is a smart business move. If the network or franchise itself hires staff or consultants to provide outside perspective and to gather and share best practices, they would ultimately easily recover the cost through increased production. By extracting the information and regenerating it back out to the brokers to implement as it fits their culture, it relieves the brokers from having to try and seek out the information themselves. There is no reason to feel threatened by consultants. A consultant has the benefit of neutrality, we don’t have a dog in this fight. We want everyone to win.

So if, as a Relocation Director, you feel overwhelmed, underappreciated, and as if you can’t to continue to grow your business, then you should seek out resources to allow you to run the most productive department possible. If you can’t convince your broker owner to get you help, then align yourself with someone who can. Status quo, is no way to run a business. There is a wealth of knowledge in our industry and a lot of people willing to share it. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel, the wheel already exists.

“Being successful requires being proactive and not waiting for life to come to you. It means you’re on offense, not defense. You’re active, not passive.” ~ Benjamin J. Hardy, PhD, Author, Psychologist