Is competition-bashing fair game?
Perspective: Sherry Chris
By Inman News, Tuesday, February 17, 2009.
Flickr photo by headexplodie.Editor's note: This industry commentary, originally published at Clean Slate, the Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate corporate blog, is republished here with permission by the author, company CEO Sherry Chris.
By SHERRY CHRIS
Throughout my career I have always prided myself in acknowledging the competition. After all, this is an industry where we coexist in a very unique way.
Through years spent recruiting agents and building teams I've found that agents are motivated and inspired by positive attributes, such as the strength of a company, its market share, the tools and training they will be exposed to, and most importantly the overall culture. I have never witnessed an agent lean toward an opportunity based solely on negative recruitment tactics that include exaggerating a competitor's weaknesses or criticizing their products or services.
Sadly, right now, we are seeing what I would call epic levels of "competition-bashing" taking place within our industry -- verbally, in written communications, and through the Internet, where it is equally as despicable if not altogether cowardly.
I bring this up now for many reasons but foremost is the sadness I feel given the times. After all, every single one of us faces challenges. In fact, I don't know of a single firm that has escaped the economic vice grip and the pain that it creates.
Disheartening as it may be, the competition-bashing taking place right now is so real that in the process of reorganizing their companies, managing layoffs and reconciling costs, broker-owners and firms must now make it a point to include in communications to their agents a plea not to succumb to the rumors, the letters, the e-mails and the callous jokes that are being circulated by competitors.
This is real. It's happening everyday. And I personally find it reprehensible.
Receiving an e-mail with a photo of a fellow broker's office rendered to include a foreclosure sign pasted across it is not funny. It's sad. This stuff is coming from agents, from broker-owners -- and shockingly, from corporate executives who should know better. We should all know better.
What a dual message we're sending: On one hand we appear as warm, caring servants to the consumer, but behind the scenes we expose ourselves as backstabbers, gossipers or conspirators who apparently take glee in the demise of our peers.
These actions clearly indicate more than poor judgment. They highlight a complete absence of core values that begin at the top and extend out and across the ranks. Without values, behavior never has to answer to the single-most important question any member of any organization should be asking themselves: How does this action support the brand we stand for and help me serve the consumer and our industry?
Our industry is faced with unprecedented challenges that will lead to unprecedented change. But there are those inside our industry who seem intent on making us all look as bad as we possibly can.
Come on, folks, wake up.
Sherry Chris is CEO for Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, a real estate franchise network that is a part of Realogy Corp.
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Submitted by Jeffrey Bastress on February 17, 2009 - 4:31am.
I would agree that competition bashing is out of control. But I must say that it is just as reprehensible for the largest real estate company in the world, that Sherry just happens to be affiliated with, blocks email accounts from companies they don't want agents communicating with their agents from, place their people on all the MLS and REALTOR boards as directors to influence practices that don't suit their ends, write white papers and threaten NAR into squashing anything not in their interests, and on and on of reprehensible back room tactics in outright squashing their competition.
I think this largest real estate company in the world will fall like Goliath, as they simply have not seen the stone hurling directly at their forhead...until just now...and it is to late to get out of the way.
So it is a very competitive business, and I am afraid Goliath's tactics and business plan simply have taught the David's to fight back for their own existense...and for what consumers really want.
What has given the industry a bad name, is simply filling offices on every corner with hordes of inexperienced agents and charging clients top producer fees based on policy and not agent experience.
So as they laughed at little David coming to take on Goliath...they are not laughing now.
Jeffrey Bastress
Startpoint Realty
jeffrey@startpoint.com
www.HomesByJeffrey.com
blog: www.RealtyRag.com
Submitted by Rob Aubrey on February 17, 2009 - 5:05am.
I agree Sherry, culturally it is bad. I don’t think anyone looks good trash talking. Culture starts at the top of these organizations and tough times brings out the best and worst of people.
Agents on the street do not trust the corporate overlords. We watch Wall Street fleece people and companies like Enron over the years and then the last batch in the credit meltdown…
If the overlords want respect they need to start telling the truth, you know as well as I do while the big franchises are telling their agents one thing the people at the top are folding their parachutes just in case.
Submitted by Walter Boomsma on February 17, 2009 - 5:55am.
We've never talked about the balance and we've always been one of the most self-serving industries in existence. So while "bashing" the competition may not be very professional, ignoring the weaknesses -- and in some cases incompetency -- of competitors isn't the answer either.
It's a good time time to worry more about the folks who make us look bad through gross neglience and incompetence. That exists at all levels of organizations from the agent chasing a commission while ignoring fiduciary responsiblity to the "corporate" leaders who allow it.
Good agents may not be influenced by negative recruiting, but there's also some tragedy when good, well-intentioned agents naively end up working for companies who are focused on short cuts to the bottom-line while clients shift for themselves.
Submitted by REALonomics .net on February 17, 2009 - 7:10am.
I found Jeffrey Bastress' comment to Sherry's piece, enlightening and historically accurate. The Goliath's of our industry are not agile and streamlined enough to survive and often it is they who are the captains of the bashing.
We need to understand that "bashing" has many forms and connotations and that one company's bashing is another's defense mechanism.
But let's get real; we've been beating up one another for as long as I can remember, that's nearly 25 years running.
Companyies have seized opportunities presented to them to take hoards of agents and offices from competitors at the first sign of weakness and never blinked an eye or missed a night of sleep. In fact, I have seen some entities gloat and beat their chests over their conquest and destruction of competitors.
Organizations that Sherry has belonged to have specialized in "walk-overs" that annihilated one brand to the advancement of a competitor. This kind of "economic bashing" is part of business and has been for decades.
Now, let's redirect the conversation a bit. What we should be engaged in is a thorough and collective bashing of ourselves for our inability to erect business models that don't require the "cannibalization" (a term large franchisors use regularly) of one another in order to survive economically.
We have, for as long as I can remember, bashed and clubbed one another in clever ways while using carefully crafted euphemisms to justify the actions.
This type of "calculated bashing" occurs in any industry where there are too many so called "real estate professionals" and too little profit. It exists when and where the only way to sustain market presence is to take out the baseball bat in the dark of night and start clubbing.
Our collective industry incompetence breeds lower level behaviors, that's the bottom line, at the moment...sadly.
Donald Teel - Founder
e-Partner
www.epartnerusa.com
REALonomics
www.realonomics.net
877-380-1000
Submitted by InvestorMatt on February 17, 2009 - 9:33am.
The Bastress feedback just feeds into why Chris wrote the posting. It is somewhat amusing to me the first comment is a bashing. Granted there may be one grain of truth in his reply but lets remember the industry is trying to change the way it thinks. Also David and Goliath was a story based on faith not reality and its seems Bastress and others are more interested in throwing that fabled stone and promoting themselves via Inman then trying to see the good in what Ms Chris is saying. At very least she’s saying something new and sparking debate rather then rehashing, being negative and spouting “whoa is me”
I’m sure I’ll now get even more negativity