Business

As a Management Consultant and behaviourist, I was asked to write an article for Property Professional Magazine. This is why selling property is no longer about selling property!

Being a property professional is, believe it or not, not about selling property. Well it is if you have a short term approach to what it is that you do. I f you have a longer term view (generally referred to as a career view) then you view what you do somewhat differently. You are not in the property business; you are in the people business!!

I’ve been fortunate to spend time with hundreds of awesomely successful people from many walks of life. But two really great people have taken similar actions in very diverse circumstances that have allowed them to cope with really tough challenges.

One has conquered the Seven Summits, and recently returned from his last epic adventure – walking to the South Pole with compatriot Sibusiso Vilane. And the other, a lady, has had to deal with the sudden passing of her husband, an ex-World Champion Canoeist.

We're working in a world where loyalty is what you get from a dog, and career certainty or job security is all but eroded. There are also so many more career choices "out there" that it is quite foreseeable that you will get bored in your job and decide to change career at some point. I don’t wish to over-simplify this – because it is not easy, although it can be exciting – but I think I can simplify it to 4 steps.

I’ve been looking at audiences in 22 countries from the platform for 16 years, and it’s incredible what one can tell about them just from how they react. I find out even more about them during lunch breaks and dinners – particularly since my area of expertise is “the business of people”, and they are, after all, people! Here’s what I see going on in their heads when attending a conference.

There are more than 1 million meetings in South Africa per day. These are not just three or four friends getting together over a beer – these are formal gatherings ranging from budget discussions to conferences, conventions, training sessions and motivational sessions for under-performing employees. According to Gillian Saunders at Grant Thornton, there were 101 000 conferences held in South Africa in 1999. From these figures, it doesn’t take rocket science to extrapolate the need for high quality, top class speakers.

I’m speaking at the Oracle Apps Day in Johannesburg next week – presenting my new presentation 2nd Acts, but with a focus on CRM. So I’ve been looking at the world around me with my customer service and customer management glasses on for the last couple of days as I prepare.

As luck would have it, I’ve had some interesting customer experiences recently. Some good, but most of them bad.

Many years ago I was told the story about an IT technician who was called to an executive’s office to fix a computer. The techie arrived, opened the machine, turned one screw, closed it and fired it up. It worked perfectly!

When the executive received the account for USD 255 he was incensed. He phoned the techie, demanding to know how turning one screw could possibly cost so much.

Isn’t technology wonderful? I can sit in my office all day (when I’m not speaking to an audience) and communicate to my heart’s content with the entire world via my blog, e-mail, twitter and Skype. My wife doesn’t understand this – she doesn’t understand that I would rather do it this way than use the more traditional method of picking up the phone and calling someone.

Of course I have a valid reason – I spend most of my time in front of audiences where I can’t answer the phone so I want to make people used to communicating with me in other ways. But what’s your excuse?

Unbelievably, I watched as a guy at gym this morning was conducting his #1 toilet business while speaking on his mobile phone. I was astounded at his dexterity, but I was even more flummoxed by the fact that the call couldn’t wait on the call of nature. I would have (as I suspect most other people would have) let the phone ring, picked up the voice mail, and returned the call. OK, maybe this guy is frugal and didn’t want to call back.

But it kind of got me wondering about communication....

As a “motivational” speaker in the eyes of some people and clients, I’m often asked where real employee motivation comes from. It has always been my opinion that companies falsely believe motivation comes from employees’ back pocket – in other words the money they take home at the end of the month.

I know, however that almost every employee I talk with complains that there is always too much month at the end of the salary. If that is the case around the world, why are these people still working for the same company that does not pay them “enough”?