Charlotte Property Management Weekly: How Rudy Giuliani Gained Market Share during 9/11

"I just spoke to that guy last week; he was going to look at houses with me. Now he won’t take my calls and has reportedly been cavorting with a member of another realty firm. Scandalous!” (Unhappy Charlotte Realtor who just lost a client)

When the September 11th tragedy happened, everyone was shocked. I was living in New York City at the time and was up in Stamford (CT) that morning on a sales appointment. It was surreal. The news started with one plane hitting the World Trade Center which everyone thought was an accident; then the second plane hit. Pandemonium ensued.

My office was three blocks from the Trade Center and I had several friends that worked in it. As I tried to figure out what was going on, my cell phone stopped working as the area’s cellular phone networks were overloaded. New York City was then closed off and I couldn’t get back to my apartment and had to stay in Stamford that night. Meanwhile, new information coming from the media was sporadic and inaccurate; death estimates were coming over the news as high as 20,000. People were panicked and were looking for someone to make sense of it all.

When I was in class this summer, the professor asked the class who we thought was the best example of leadership in our lifetime; the person I chose was Rudy Giuliani after 9/11. The funny thing is, he wasn’t the natural choice to be the leader. Yes, he was the Mayor of New York City at the time, but there were other players more qualified to lead during the crisis. George W. Bush was the President and this was a national disaster; it was rightfully his position to lead. New York Governor George Pataki was another viable candidate. This was affecting everyone in his state; he could have easily stepped up and been the guy. So why will Rudy go down in history as the face of 9/11?

I believe it came down to 2 things:

1. Rudy gathered the information that mattered
2. Rudy dispensed the information consistently and calmly

The public was starving for timely information. Rumors were rampant, ground zero was closed off to non-emergency personnel (as well as the rest of lower Manhattan), and people were scared. Rudy put a calm face on, exuded confidence, and gave news reports personally. There was no need to go elsewhere to try to gather data; it came regularly every hour, was candid, and spoke to what people wanted to know most. He became the person that the public (his customers) looked up to and followed.

So why did your client go to work with someone at a competing firm? Why weren’t you the person that they felt could help them best? Did you have the information the client needed? Did you deliver it when you said it would? Did you put them at ease? Did they know they didn’t need to go anywhere else to get what they were looking for?

Former Governor Pataki and “Dubya” could have had the September 11th leadership mantle. They didn’t do anything wrong to lose it per se, but Rudy did more things right to gain it. Rudy didn’t badmouth Bush and Pataki; there wasn’t anything “scandalous” going on. The customers followed who they felt would best fill their needs. Don’t you?

Even presidents are susceptible to losing customers; why would you be different?

Brett Furniss is the President & Owner of BDF Realty, “Charlotte’s Most Innovative Property Management & Investment Company” (www.BDFRealty.com and www.RentToSell.com). You can follow his Twitter thoughts on the Charlotte real estate market by clicking on http://twitter.com/bdfrealty. He is the author of the FREE E-Manual entitled “How to Rent-To-Sell Your Own Home” (http://www.renttosell.com/RTS-Book.html) which details how to get the most potential buyers to your home in this challenging real estate market.