Yep, I was fortunate to be invited to participate in a meeting over the past couple of days with a group of brokerage principals that are really smart.  As you might expect, they were both Visionaries and Cost Containers - profiles of successful business people.  Each of you has these two traits, but you have a dominant one and as a result, you process information very differently.  They gave us all a tip, "Now is the time to focus on the visionary side because we need to see what's going to happen next".   Most of the important work of cost containment is behind us.  So if "cost containment" is dominate for you, push that trait to the back a bit and give your visionary trait a big push to the front.  If your visionary trait is more dominate ,you've got a little less work to do, but work nevertheless.

 

I spent some time with these folks helping them refine what they already know...competitive strategy is all about identifying and exploiting opportunities to gain advantage.  The market is repositioning like we haven't seen in a number of years, ok, over a decade. So, like my dear, very successful 30 year veteran of commercial real estate says, "There's no reason to waste a good recession".  Seriously, it's where fortunes are made.

 

So what to do?  Take some time to approach things systematically and from a solid base.  The processes, systems and tools you use everyday are the ones that will give you the small edge  you need.  Leverage the power of information.  If you need to change the way you're doing things now, do it. If you need to spend a  buck or two to upgrade something, do some training or buy some software, do it.  It's the admission fee to play.  It's the cost of doing business to get good returns.  It's going to feel like we're working through a fundamental market for the next couple of years, because it is just that...a "boggy market".  But what you do now will prepare you for the next "frothy" market when the little edge you create now throws off profit.  You go from surviving, which is a significant badge to wear as many won't survive, to thriving which obviously is the right goal.

 

So, do these things:

 

1.     Nail your Contact and Customer management or best named Customer Intelligence by creating and using a great database.  Oh, and great means you just have something simple and easy that really gets used.  No excuses.

 

2.     Double nail your workflow, internally and externally.  The transactions that you're going to find yourself involved in will either be fast and furious (getting properties off banks books) or long assignments of repositioning and marketing with lots of people involved who need to know what's going on along the way.  Very little will be classified as "normal" transactions.  So for the bulk of what you'll be doing - the fast or really slow - how you handle communications and workflow will have significant impact on your profits and maybe even your sanity!

 

What was really cool about the time with the principals I met was witnessing their collaborative nature.  They epitomize good business and prove the value of the collective mind.  I came away smarter and more convinced than ever that collaboration is the only correct strategy.  I love that fact I get to help people improve their efforts

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