Charlotte Property Management Weekly: “Sully Love”: Customers Will Like You More if You Fly Them into the Hudson River?

“I messed up. I placed a tenant into an owner’s home and they wound up tearing it up and not paying rent. There is no way they will ever hire me again…” (Charlotte Property Manager)

“It was crazy, you see. I took off and then two hours later, I landed in Charlotte. I guess technically you could say that I did my job. But the guy who crashed into the river, no, he’s the hero. It’s weird, right?” (Bitter Captain Roger Baines, played by Jason Sudeikis- Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday- 10/2/09)

Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger came to fame as the pilot who flew the 1/15/09 US Airways Flight 1549 from New York to Charlotte. Most people remember the story; it became national news for weeks because the plane went down in the Hudson River minutes after takeoff. You would figure that if you were on that flight, you’d be really upset! You paid money to be in Charlotte in roughly two hours, but instead, you were heavily delayed, drenched, your luggage was ruined, and your life flashed before your eyes. All meetings you had that day had to be cancelled. Your plans were shot. Your life was endangered. You could have been thinking about who you could sue. You would certainly never fly US Air again!

You’d appreciate Captain Baines “good pilot” joke later in the SNL skit:

Q: What did the good pilot do when he saw the flock of geese?
A: He avoided them and continued on to Charlotte where he landed seven minutes early

However, Sully became a national hero. What??? Though he saved the lives of his passengers, he still did land in a river which has to be viewed as a failure. Was he a seasoned public relations professional who spun the story well afterwards? Hardly. Sully comes across as a soft-spoken guy. His “speech” to the passengers before the crash was a brief and hardly eloquent, “Brace for impact.” Inexplicably, it didn’t matter. The passengers loved him. They were thankful and effusive in praise. No one said they wouldn’t fly with him again; in fact, most would rather have him captain their flights in the future. Many Americans said the same thing. How could this have been?

The simplest answer is that most people know that things go wrong. It’s inevitable. Sully could do little after he hit the flock of geese that caused the engines to fail. As Charles Swindoll said, “Life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% of how you react to it.” Sully calmly put the plane down and salvaged what he could out of a tough situation. His passengers knew he was in control and would work to ensure their safety.

In property management, picking tenants who will always pay and treat a rental home with respect is an inexact science. You try to mitigate risk by performing credit and criminal background checks, verifying income and employment, and calling past landlords. You collect security deposits and drive by houses to see if they look okay. At the end of the day, however, you don’t live with them and can’t force people to fulfill their obligations. It’s tough.

But when bad things happen (and they will at some point), it can be a positive as well. It creates an opportunity to show your clients that you care, it allows you to learn more about them personally, and lets you demonstrate that you have a plan to correct things. Most of our clients receive their monthly rent (directly deposited into their account) and we rarely get an opportunity to talk to them outside of our initial meeting. But when issues arise, we get to build a bond with them while working to get their properties back on track.

Paradoxically, the clients whose homes we have had an issue with tend to be life-long customers, while those who receive their rent smoothly every month are the ones I worry about losing. Relationships require give-and-take and often form out of adversity; without this, you can become a faceless entity that has no emotional connection.

Out of a disaster, Sully built a bond in one day with his passengers that few, if any, pilots will ever have with theirs, even their frequent flyers. Think about it. Who was the pilot of your last flight? Of your last ten?

So don’t cringe when something goes wrong. It will give you an opportunity to get some of that lasting “Sully Love.”

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.

Charlotte Property Management Weekly: Obama’s Entrepreneur-less Recovery Plan

“Too big to fail.” (President Obama)

“…(Then US Treasury Secretary Alexander) Hamilton regarded the national debt as ‘a national blessing,’ for it permitted the clustering of resources into the hands of a small group of enterprising men who would invest and not just spend it.” (Founding Brothers by Joseph J. Ellis)

It’s no news that President Obama has faced a huge challenge to revive the US economy, precipitated by the banking crisis of the past two years. He’s had to answer a lot of tough questions that have affected millions of Americans. What courses of action will save and create the most jobs? Should he have bailed out failing companies like Citigroup, Chrysler, AIG, and others? What about residents who were losing their homes? Do they get modified loans or do they go into foreclosure? Some companies were “too big to fail,” while some “Main Street” residents had the required qualifications to get bailed out too. It all really boiled down to one question: how should government capital best be allocated to serve the common good now and in the future?

US Treasure Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, had a similar dilemma in 1790 after the Revolutionary War. The US government was broke and its debt was at a startling $71M. It couldn’t meet its obligations without borrowing (sound familiar?); it couldn’t even compensate its own troops with cash. The soldiers were issued war bonds as payment for military service, and there was little hope the government would be able to pay those back. Speculators began to buy the war bonds at five to ten cents on the dollar hoping for a (very profitable) miracle. Meanwhile the government was worried about utilizing its meager finances to stay solvent.

The popular plan was to just default on the war bonds. The US government didn’t have the money anyway! Then the issue of fairness came up. “Why would we fund the bonds when the money is not going to go to the soldiers that it was intended for?” Essentially, the heated discussion that ensued was one that still stirs debate today; should the government endorse any plans that just make “the rich get richer,” while doing nothing directly for the common citizen?

However, Hamilton felt paying the war bonds was a great opportunity! The fact that the speculators were getting the money was a great allocation of capital. They were the entrepreneurs of this start-up nation, the risk-takers. They would be the ones starting businesses, hiring people, and building the economy from the ground-up. With their intellects and hearts, Hamilton felt America could achieve greatness. Funding the speculators was the best investment this country could make.

Obama’s capital allocation plan has been about saving huge corporations and struggling homeowners. The entrepreneurs and small business owners in the middle have been frozen out. Could the projected “jobless recovery” be a product of this? The SBA’s oft-cited statistic is that American small business creates 90% of the country’s jobs. Is an “entrepreneur-less recovery” even possible?

When I talk to my friends that are small business owners here in Charlotte, we are hamstrung. The government programs for small business are a joke; many banks don’t participate in SBA loans, or if they do, force us to qualify at heightened requirements that we can’t reach. Meanwhile, banks of all sizes (TARP and non-TARP recipients alike), are still cutting our credit lines. I’m not saying we are all going out of business (because that’s not true), but I am saying that our impact on this economic recovery will be minimal at best. We are being forced to hunker down, and have been doing so for the past two years.

And, yes, Hamilton got funding for the war bonds to pass Congress and our nation went from near-bankruptcy to a world power through the past two hundred years. If Obama wants the US to stay there, he’ll have to find a way to involve us entrepreneurs as well.

Brett Furniss is the President & Owner of BDF Realty, “Charlotte’s Most Innovative Property Management & Investment Company” (http://www.bdfrealty.com/ and http://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.

Charlotte Property Management Weekly: Coke vs. Pepsi vs. Your Real Estate Firm- What’s the Difference?

“I can’t believe that millionaire CEO who just moved to town is looking for houses with Jimmy “The Home Seeking” Missile. Doesn’t he realize Jimmy knows more about weaponry than he does real estate?” (Baffled Charlotte Real Estate Agent)

Coke and Pepsi have been warring over market share in the soda business for a long time. Coke had a gigantic lead until Pepsi started making inroads in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Today, Coke’s market share is around 43%, while Pepsi’s is 31% in a highly competitive $100B+ industry. This competitiveness has helped make brand allegiance personal; badmouth someone’s favorite soda and “they be fightin’ words”, as we say in the South.

However, industry experts will tell you that Coke and Pepsi are close to identical products. “What???” One of my UNC professors posed this fact to our MBA class and the responses were unanimous. “That’s ridiculous!” “Coke is awful, absolutely atrocious.” “I would definitely know the difference and spit the Pepsi out!” So the professor proceeded to pour Pepsi into three glasses and Coke into three glasses. The most indignant students “who loved their brand of soda more than life itself” were given the chance to conduct a blind taste test to prove their mettle.

The taste test unfolded and the results were tallied. Afterwards, several things came to mind:
1. Phrases like “Talking the talk, but not walking the walk” and “Singing it, but not bringing it”
2. NBA players that “guarantee” a win
3. The “unsinkable” Titanic

The best student was right only 50% of the time (naming 3 out of the 6 cups correctly), and the other students’ results were downhill from there. For such sheer, stated loyalty to a product, they couldn’t tell the difference between the one they drink several times a day and its biggest competitor!

If the products aren’t really different, how does Coke sway consumers to buy their brand and not Pepsi’s? They market differentiation (even when there isn’t any!). They have Paula Abdul sing about it, make their bottles in cool shapes, and sponsor the Olympics. They run tons of commercials that make you feel like “buying the world a Coke”. Pepsi does the same types of things with their brand. They both do a tremendous job of getting their name out there and associating it with things you like. And you, in turn, buy their product exclusively (even if it costs more)!

So, what separates your real estate firm from the others? “We’re just better! And consumers should know that!” Unfortunately, data suggests that it’s more about the sizzle, and less about the steak. Or, simply stated, exactly like the “Cola Wars”. If you don’t believe that, look at the National Association of Realtors’ statistics. 70%+ of consumers use the first firm they contact and most of them do this over the internet (they don’t even meet a Realtor in person first!). In layman’s terms, if your internet presence is seen by the consumer and it resonates with them, you’re hired.

Why are consumers hiring Jimmy (and not your firm) even though you’re better? Why don’t they do the research, find out you’re superior, and staunchly hold out for your services?

It’s because Jimmy’s marketing made it easier for the CEO’s assistant to find him and his content (which included his military background- hence the nickname) made him seem like a better fit. The old mantra, “perception is more important than reality”, holds true. It’s not necessarily about being better or different, it’s about having people believe that you are.

As you sip on your can of Pepsi, you can ponder the unfairness of it all.

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.

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.