In this final recording from TWLX 2022, Phil Owen (Onsight Pros) moderates an incredible panel with Melissa Prandi (PRANDI Property Management), DD Lee (Skyline Properties Group), and Ian Joseph (The Joseph Group) as they talk about creating a triple win culture of customer service that impacts their residents, their investors, and their teams.
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Hosted by Phil Owen
Featuring Melissa Prandi, DD Lee, Ian Joseph
Produced by Andrew Smallwood, Laura Mac, and Carol Housel
Edited by Isaac Balachandran
Episode Transcript:
Phil Owen
What happens when you have a customer who is toxic? How do you approach that and still maintain a culture of customer service? Those things at their surface seem to be at odds with one another. But what does that look like?
I want to start by introducing our panel, and I want you to know that as we started talking about this topic in this conversation we started asking my team and professionals in the industry, hey, can you give me some names of people who really get this? And these were names that came up over and over and over again. And I'm so honored to be able to moderate this panel. So I'm going to go ahead and ask each of you to introduce yourselves. Melissa, if you don't mind, go ahead and get started there.
Melissa Prandi
Is that because I'm a seasoned veteran? Hi, everybody. I'm Melissa Prandi, coming to you from northern California. Just between the Golden Gate Bridge and the wine country, Marin County. And I've got 40 years, March 27th, knowing this, and I learned from all of you, I can't wait to share best practices. Hi, Karen Jordan.
Phil Owen
Now I'm 41 years old, but I'll be 42 in May. You're talking about birthdays, right?
Melissa Prandi
Yeah. Yeah, I'm turning 60 now. Well, you had to bring that up.
Phil Owen
So awesome. All right, DD.
DD Lee
Hey everybody, DD Lee here. 18 years in the business broker of Skyline Properties Group, if you're a property management company out here in Woodstock, Georgia.
Phil Owen
All right. And let's go to Ian Joseph.
Ian Joseph
I'm Ian Joseph, the Joseph Group. We're just north of Seattle in Washington. 15 years in the business. We do property management, sales, construction, and maintenance.
Phil Owen
Awesome. Very good. Well, what an incredible group of people. And just so you guys know, I've got the chat. Hold up. So if there are those of you who want to ask questions about the panel, I'll try to work those in as we go. But what we want to talk about today is creating a culture of customer service and how to make that an institutional part of the fabric of your identity, where it's not something that is an afterthought I mentioned and got made fun of for using the word entropy in my introduction, but there is this concept of entropy that things don't naturally get better, they naturally get worse. And if it's not something that you have a laser focus on, it's not something that is going to just organically happen. It's got to be something that you believe in. So how do you build something? How do you create a team? How do you create a culture within your company that is going to consistently deliver wow experiences? Mitt Romney of Bain Capital and a former presidential candidate said that with every interaction that you have with another human being, you either raise or lower your stock. How do we make it so that with every engagement with a client, our stock as a company, and our stock as an individual goes up? What does that look like? Because if you get the culture right, a lot of that other stuff just kind of falls in on its own. Right. So let's talk at the beginning I asked this question about the Facebook group, but who do you guys define as? When we talk about customer service and creating a culture of customer service, how do you guys define the customer in your business?
Ian Joseph
I could jump in, fill. This was an interesting question that you kind of pose. And I'm looking at this from the firm, owner, or broker. And it's a hard lesson I actually had to learn, but about two years ago I totally switched my outlook on this and my job each and every day is to grow and focus on my team. So for me, the team is my client. And if I take care of the people in the business, they're going to take care of the business.
DD Lee
So for me, I, you know, when I talk with potential owners, clients, I always tell them, you know, at the end of the day, the tenants are the ones paying you rent. And if you don't get rent, we don't get paid as property managers. So I asked my owners, you know, our tenants are our customers. And how would you want to be like what kind of service provider do you want to be? Do you want to be the Chick-Fil-A kind of service provider to our customers? Or do you want to be, you know, the McDonald's or any McDonald's fans? I apologize. But it kind of starts their mindset of seeing the tenants as a customer and helping them understand that we want to be the top-class service providers to our tenants.
Phil Owen
And if you're a McDonald's man, you chose the wrong room. I'm just saying, Melissa.
Melissa Prandi I just want to add, I've learned a lot about Chick-fil-A. I've never been there and never been to McDonald's either. But anyway. So I just want to add that I think everyone's our customer and that sounds so generic. But the greatest compliment we ever get here at Branding Property Imagine is when a tenant comes back as an owner and has bought a piece of investment property and they hire us. So I think from the time I walk into a coffee shop to a restaurant, you know, customers are everywhere. But I really believe I really listened. And when we did our practice, part of it was empowering our employees. Our team members are happy. That goes straight out to the community. So I think that looking at our team is always one of the most important factors, but the customers are everywhere.
Phil Owen
And that's really valuable. You know, we talk with our team at onsite pros that the property manager is our client. We have nothing to gain from having a wow experience with the tenant. And yet one of our core values is we value people and we treat everyone with dignity and respect. And as a result, it doesn't matter whether there's a financial benefit for us to have a wow experience with the tenant. It matters whether you live your core values. And so for us, we treat everyone with that mentality of having a great customer service experience because it's who we want to be. So well, let me ask this. You all have a reputation in this industry and you're on the panel. When did you start to realize the importance of customer service and why? We talked about the aha moment. And I'm going to go to Ian first because Ian, I've seen some incredible things that you've been doing, they reference. I hope everyone will go back and see Ian's welcome packet that he's doing for tenants in the triple win Facebook group. But Ian, when did you start to realize the importance of customer service and why did you make that pivot?
Ian Joseph
Great question. So, one of my mentors, was a big systems process, a kind of command and control. And, and that's kind of where I came from. And so that's sort of how I ran my business. When I first started it in 2017, when we started our own company. And it was just constant headaches, constant letdowns, not a fun environment, and a lot of turnovers. And I just said, Hey, this obviously isn't working and it starts with you, right? You're the leader. It has to start with you. And I said, Well, even though my tagline was Everyone's replaceable, I said, Well, what's the opposite of that? And it was, Hey, no one's replaceable. And then, what does that mean? And I had to learn that. And we just started investing in the team and kind of changing our outlook and our hiring process. And that did start to bleed out. And this is, you know, we're still in the middle of our journey, but it's been about two years now and it's just a totally different environment here. And every day we are sort of focused on the kind of the resident experience, the owner experience taking care of our vendors as Melissa said. And in fact, when we did strategic planning for this year, the only goal for me was, was that in engineering these wow moments, the client experience, and if I just focus on this, then everything else will just sort of fall in place. And I did drop the resident experience into Facebook. I don't post a lot, but I was proud of that. But also because it took me nine months to get there it was kind of sad that it took me so long, but that is the level of effort and thought put into this one little moment. And to me, that's a wow moment. A wow moment is not a gift card or these if they're not having tingles, you know, or literally saying, wow, you're just doing a good job. Do you know? And so working nine months for this, you know, 10 seconds of them moving into the house was an accomplishment for me and my team, really, because now, you know, they got to make it happen.
Phil Owen
Yeah, I was in your office in Seattle a little less than a month ago, and I was in your conference room, and I saw the materials that you had put together for your welcome packet. And that was something that I looked at and thought, Man, they have done this at such a high level, you can tell the value they put into this through the effort you had put into that. And then when I saw it in the picture, I was like, Man, I'm getting tingles looking at a picture. I can't imagine what it'd be like for a resident to move in and see that and that. Welcome into the home. Melissa Deedee Anything that you would have to add, when did you start to realize the importance of a customer service culture? And, what did that look like in your business?
Melissa Prandi
Well, I'll jump in. So day one, of course, but I'm bi. I love customers. I love people. But I think the way to look at it nowadays is with reviews online, take that negative review and experience that to turn it around. So I get a lot of those. So we get a negative review and hopefully, they're few and far between. But take a team member in and let the team member be with you as you put out the fire, so to speak. And it's amazing how they can be rude to my team, but I get on the phone and they're as nice as can be because I'm the owner, but I think I'm empowering my team. I love to see someone start my company as a receptionist and become the head of the accounting department now. And she and I all do retreats and if you're not doing the retreat, you should talk to your owner, and your manager, company retreats once a year or twice a year are some of the best things we've done and we would take a blast. One was communication and the one before that was customer service. You learn a lot from each other. Team members not just are not from family, so learn from each other within your company.
DD Lee
And totally. Easy to add to that. Yeah, I totally agree with Melissa on the company retreats. We do that once a year as well. Huge benefits and for me, you know, I'm a natural nurturer. If you guys know about five voices, that's one of my top voices. So customer service is kind of natural to me. I'm a people pleaser, but, you know, when it comes to the team, not everyone was born that way. So it's on us as owners to continue the training, right? So we implement training all the time, not just at the one-time company retreats. We take the book, the customer service revolution, and I break down the chapters. And during our staff meetings, I'll take one tidbit from that book and we talk about it as part of our meetings. So we discuss customer service all the time. It's always on top of my mind. So when you know, staff members go about their day, they remember customer service.
Melissa Prandi
Customer service picks up the phone. It's so easy. Pick up the phone. Wow, what a phenomenon. I mean, pick up the phone and call the person. They are so shocked when you do.
DD Lee
I think we talk. You know, someone mentioned this before is so interesting. It's like, you know, our job is not easy. We get complaints. We get angry people. When we do our jobs, we get angry. So it's easy to lose that. But, you know, if you continue to remind your team, your teammates, remind each other, don't forget. Right. Don't forget to always do the right thing.
Phil Owen
Yeah. So, okay, so you guys, you know, you had the light bulb. It's part of your DNA to say, hey, you want to have a culture that is defined by those wow experiences. You know, whether it was inherently a part of who you are like it was from Melissa and Eddie, or it was an aha moment that was almost antithetical to the way that Ian had started to approach the business. You started to believe that, okay, but how do you then take your team with you? How do you get from point A to point B and get your team on board with that? What does that look like to bring them along with you?
Melissa Prandi
And so we have a board called Positively Pressured, and we found that giving each other outlet. So we're in a negative world, right? So what I think is really cool, we have a goal of sending 3 to 5. Thank you cards a week when it gets busy, that's the first thing to go. But what I really love is when people started writing on the board good things about each other, thanking each other, stopping and thanking your coworkers because if we can get the energy up in a positive light, the customer, Ian said this when we were talking on our panelists' rehearsal is if we can get our employees happy it the customer service just goes out naturally with the wow moment so start within your team and be kind to one another. Go for a walk, and do things together because that goes out to the public every single day, every single minute.
Ian Joseph
I can jump. And let's suppose you want to go next. Yeah. For me again, it always starts with the always, you know, extreme ownership is one of my values. And so for me, I had to define my company values which should come from your personal and family values. And one thing we've learned is that our core values are the filter through which all decisions should be made. And so whether or not you're the broker-owner or leadership or property manager or leasing coordinator, your values need to match the company values or it's not going to work. And so we talk about it. You know, once we've defined it, they're not just words on a wall. We talk about it every week. You know, I sort of have a definition of them, but I want to know from my team how they define them, what it means to them, how they're living it, where they are showing up or falling short, where I am showing up or falling short and as a company and now again, two years later, since we've sort of made this the shift, the teammates that weren't going to fit that have sort of filtered out themselves or I've had to sort of liberate them back to the workforce and, and again. Really? Yeah, that's it. I mean, the hardest lesson I have to learn is the values or the filter in which all decisions are made, you know, day in and day out.
DD Lee
So, I love to liberate them out into the world. For me, I think it starts with the hiring process. I'm a firm believer in using personality tests. Right. We use desc to see if they might be good at a certain job and then I use the five voices test to determine whether they have some nurture in them. Because over time I just learned that if their voice is super low on the scale, it's going to take a lot more training to get them to understand customer service, like somebody in an accounting role or something like that. They might have a low right nurturer voice, but I think customer service can be trained, which is why we train constantly and then, you know, going back to the team is, is how you treat your team is it will bleed through to your customers, your clients, our team language like we only use support and clarify languages. What that means is that we're either supporting each other or if you're in a disagreement with each other, you don't understand why someone did something. We asked, hey, just for clarification, you know, this is the way I see it. Is that the case? Instead of using blame or criticizing and like instead when that becomes your team company language, anyone else who doesn't fit that, we have someone who just left us. We liberated them. They were always criticizing and blaming other team members. And that just you were so obvious that they were not upset because that language was so different.
Melissa Prandi
It's amazing when you have somebody new. I think it also starts from the day that person starts. So we have I think I will write a handwritten thank you note welcoming them to their cubicle. I have a beautiful orchid on their desk. We give them the book, the four agreements. If you haven't read it, putting it on your list is an easy read. So we give them a list of the four agreements and we also have these four agreements in our employee manual, which we still give them live, not just on electronic formats. We have a little recap of the four agreements, but it's the moment they start. So it's kind of what Amy said. It starts with us. So I have to lead by example. We say family-owned and community-focused. How many of you have done some community work with your team members out in the community and how that makes you feel and how that brings your group together, not just in a retreat when you're going, but also giving back? It's amazing how you can bring everybody together with a given project, especially during the holiday season. Do it together.
Phil Owen
So I'm going to start to try to summarize some of the things that I'm hearing. It starts with, you know, defining your vision, defining your core values, then articulating that vision, communicating it to your team. And then I'm hearing you guys say hire around that. And, you know, so but what if, you know, you don't just define your vision and then like start hiring your team? Everybody here, you know, has a team in place or is on a team. How do you bring your existing team along? And great that you communicate your vision. Great that you tell people what you believe and what it wants, what you want that to look like, and maybe even great that they give cognitive sense to. Yeah, yeah. Cool, let's do that. But there's a difference between conversion and culture. How do you go from the conversion? Yeah, we've said it, we've defined it to culture. It becomes a part of who we are that begins to grow and just becomes part of the DNA of our business. Let's start. I'm going to go back to you, Melissa.
Melissa Prandi
Okay. So I brought up the retreat. Someone asked in the chat already. So we do the retreat, but we bring it out. We do it during the workday because no one should have to do it on their weekends. I value the Sundays and the things we have at our own time but bring in outside in person so they come in and do it. So I think team members get involved with it. So in December when we do our fun, fun weekly parties, the teams plan it all. I just pay for everything. So doing, fun building, getting out of the way, having a team member involved with the interviewing, share the processes. I always get to share the process so we can understand a lot of times we put our blinders on, which take our blinders off and see it from a 30,000-foot view, which I do all the time but make sure I don't forget to share it with my team going, Oh yeah, I have this idea. They're like, Oh, no, get out of the way. So I think the retreat is where we really take our vision apart and it's a pod. I'll be happy to share that with you. But we take it apart about education, continued education, technology, and customer service, and we have an outsider tell us what that means. It doesn't have to be specific to property management, but somebody else does the retreat and I don't get to know ahead of time. I'm a participant equally, just like everybody else on the playing field.
DD Lee
I think part of the stickiness of customer service and converting your team into just almost automated a more automated thing is we have to provide them with tools first to make it easy for them. You have to remove all the barriers. So why are the tools that we use? It's actually a lady. She's an appreciation and marketing specialist, so I outsource her. She does. She's not on my payroll, but I pay her a very minimum amount. And what she does is she manages to gift for our company. So it's a Google drive really. I mean, you guys can designate somebody on your team to do this too, if we maintain Aggarwal's spreadsheet on a monthly basis and each team member is responsible for putting in a person to people a week, right? So whether as a tenant and owner or a vendor to send them something, an appreciation gift, this gift is, I mean, $25 worth of brownies, cookies, a card, flowers, whatever it is. Bricks can yeah. Chris candy bar. So we have a team. We hold them accountable for coming up with two names a week and based on their conversations with tenants, owners, vendors, whatever it is, they put it in and then and then Christi will send out the gifts or the appreciation cards on our behalf because it does take time to handwrite a card. It does take time just to shop. We don't have time, right? So get someone else to do it. And the great thing is, when we started doing this a couple of years ago, the team started getting thank you's and phone calls from tenants crying because, you know, we did something that was completely unexpected from a property management company. And it's the little things that we appreciate. And then, you know, the team actually started running out of people to appreciate. So they started appreciating the tiniest little things like, hey, thank you so much for approving that estimate to get this fixed. And the owner is like, Oh, I know, I can't really do that, but okay, awesome. But yeah, so they, they got these appreciations back and then the team got addicted to this process. So now it's automated. They don't have to think about it.
Phil Owen
Ian, what would you add to that?
Ian Joseph
Gosh, there's so much meat here that I'm going to try and hit a lot of points quickly for the sake of time. And Phil, just tell me to shut up whenever. But one thing we talk about is it's never too late to do the right thing. And we all do have a team, but it's never too late to hire. Right. And so the speaker earlier today said you're not just selling, you're buying. Right. And it's a selection process. When you're hiring, don't think of it as you're just hiring or recruiting or, you know, there are people out there and you should be filtering down and then selecting the right fit for who you want. It's never too late to do that.
Ian Joseph
And when your team sees that they'll be changed, your current team will start changing. When they see that you are working out to protect them, the culture invested in them, they'll be changed. So it's never too late to kind of go back. And one thing, you know, our tagline I Love Taglines is, you know, we want patriots, not mercenaries. And so if you are the firm owner, if you've got some mercenaries that are just for a paycheck, you know, they should be on your radar and vice versa. If you're not having joy or passion and you're in your job or your career, I would encourage you to look elsewhere, man. Then life's too short. As far as the company culture side. Melissa nailed it on a couple of items. I love to bring in outside experts. I've been telling my team things for years. They don't listen to me, but I bring in an outside expert for 30 minutes, and now it's like they're changed, you know. So one thing that helped me and so if you're not the firm owner or team leader, go go to them with some things, you know, that you want to improve on. And so we started this year off and we sort of brainstormed with the team what are some areas we struggle with and whether it's, you know, tactical empathy or having the hardest actions or, you know, avoiding difficult things. And we came up with a list of like 15 or 20 things we wanted to improve both professionally and personally. And then there's my job to go get these outside experts or these workshops or these training sessions. And if you don't feel you can approach your leader and have these discussions, well, what I would challenge you to do because I think they're being more receptive than you think. But also, you know, I don't want anybody to quit their job, but, you know, find a better fit for you as well. It works both ways. And people don't quit companies like they quit leaders. Right.
Melissa Prandi
I like that.
Phil Owen
That's good to know.
Melissa Prandi
So I'm going to jump in and also say that I don't know how many people celebrate their work anniversaries, but when someone comes to work and you celebrate, we send it out to the company and you celebrate their anniversary, especially if they don't quite remember. They probably know it sometimes, but then they come to work and there's a gift on their chair. There's a giant sweatshirt from baseball, whatever it is. And we actually don't do it. I just got a list for September. How many birthdays are coming up and how many anniversaries? And one of our party leaders assigns it out to team members that don't necessarily work together. So if I wanted to work with Didi and we weren't on the same team we'd work that month to put the birthdays and the anniversaries together. And it's so much fun to see what they're doing. Oh, we're having an ice cream social. I had nothing to do with that. And then paying the bill, so empowering each other, whether you're an owner or a manager or accounting department, it's amazing how we have to take care of one another within Napoléon, within our own team. And it's just amazing when you do that how good people feel.
Phil Owen
So you talked at the beginning, Melissa, about retreat, retreat, retreat. I'm going to modify that to repeat, repeat, repeat based on what the rest of you guys have said. You keep emphasizing those messages you keep by modeling them, by living them to them, by doing things for your team, and then encouraging and rewarding them when they do things for the landlord or the resident. I love that we have a saying in our company and we talk about it in the interview process. And every now and then you're going to have me come into our team meetings and I'll get a message from one of our supervisors and they'll say, Hey, can you, can you come and smile and say, I love you because it's something that we talk about all the time. We tell people, to listen, in every interaction with any human being, I want you to do two things. Number one, smile. I don't care if that is you know if you're texting if you're emailing, if you're calling if you're on the phone, people can hear a smile in your voice. It changes the sound of your voice. But even if you're writing a text message or an email, it rewires your brain. When you smile, you will communicate differently. So any time you're communicating with another human being, whether it's a tenant, whether it's a property manager, whether it's whatever field technician, it doesn't matter who it is. Always smile. And if you think that's weird, wait till you hear the second one. Always say, I love you. And I don't mean that literally. I mean it for you to leave because that would be creepy. But what I mean is you care about that person, care about that individual, find a way to connect with them on a human level, and don't just let it be the next thing to check off on your list. Find a way to care and have compassion and take interest in them. Find a way to communicate. I love you. And we talk about that all the time. Smile and say I love you. Smile and say I love you. Did you smile and say I love you? And just repeating that and pounding that message over and over again to where it just becomes a part of your culture and our team starts to abbreviate it now. SASILY, smile and say I love you? So it's a fun way to repeat, repeat, repeat. But you've talked about recognizing the efforts of your team and rewarding what they've done. What about when you have counterexamples of people that you look at and go, oh, gosh, it's not I mean, do you how do you address that? What what, what do you just immediately release them back into the workforce, as Ian said so eloquently, what does that look like when you see somebody that's just not smiling and saying, I love you on our team or whatever that is on your team? How do you handle that? Melissa, I know you've had some experience with that. Can you tell us a little bit about what happens when you have somebody in your culture that doesn't buy into that? What does that look like?
Melissa Prandi
Yeah. So we're all sharing the good, bad, and ugly today. So mistakes as well, because that's how we learn. And I waited too long to get rid of somebody that was very cancerous. And not only did she hurt the company with her attitude and the big sighs walking down the hallway, but I didn't really hear her fast enough. And so I didn't I didn't put her back into the workforce. And she took two other employees out with it, with her meaning that that negativity took the tumor out. It's my fault. It's 100% on my shoulders because I was busy or I didn't want to admit this person. It was so awesome that almost seven years went negative and I should have addressed it, I did what I wanted, but I should have walked out the door, and instead we lost two more employees. And this has been a really rough year on my team, but I was hired for culture and I've got amazing energy going on right now and it's so exciting. I even brought back some of my colorized checks off the list and forums for training instead of just using the paperless world. So I brought back like I'm a freak with colored coordinated form, so I brought back all of my old ways of teaching and motivating because the one more thing I want to share with you all before the next one talks is don't forget about Arkham. So I do motivational speaking, but you can knock a member right down the street and Michael McCrory is the teacher. And you can have someone like Michael in Atlanta go down and motivate his team. I mean, don't forget your neighbor from the family that'll come walking in. And guess what Ian said I don't always listen to him, but they will listen to another property manager who speaks our language should not forget you have your own, not from family down the street who are in the same state. They will drive. I mean, Karen Jordan and I are not that far away, but we can motivate each other's teams and it wouldn't cost a lot of money. Probably a little luncheon and a smile. So don't forget that resource. When you look to plan some of your next visions.
Phil Owen
So, Melissa, you talked a little bit about having somebody on your team that was toxic, Didi or Ian. I would love to hear what you guys hear about what happens. I mean, we talk about customer service, but I'm not a believer that customers are always right. I just don't. And Ian talked about, you know, his primary customer is his team. What happens when you have a customer who is toxic? How do you approach that and still maintain a culture of customer service? Those things at their surface seem to be at odds with one another. But what does that look like? Let's start with Ian. Since he had the idea that his team was his first customer.
Ian Joseph
Yeah. So I'm a firm believer that no one you liberate back to the workforce should ever be surprised. And so this concept of hire slow, fire fast, to me, it's not so much the speed. It's, you know when they come in and that moment when you're having that tough conversation with them, which is your job, you know, you need to protect the culture and get rid of the toxicity, but they shouldn't be surprised or it's a failure on your part. And so what we've tried to engineer is people will continue to continually rise up and grow or they're going to fail out right? Either they will self-recognize they're not a good fit or I'll recognize them. And so we sort of engineer pressure. You know, diamonds are made through pressure, right? And so I want an 18 that's just going to continually rise and pull together and that's sort of what we do. I don't know if that answers your question or not, Phil, so if you have a follow-up question or.
Phil Owen
Yeah, no, you're good. And just so you know, I'm getting messages that we've got 6 minutes left from Emily in the main room. But what about toxic customers? Yeah. How do you handle that when you're in your business?
DD Lee
Yeah, we always do our best to like it. I just recently had a client who refused to fix an AC. It was 85 degrees outside. He's like, I don't see why that's my problem. I'm selling the property. I don't need to fix it. And we explain, you know, you do your best to explain the reason behind the right meeting to do something and at some point, you just say, well, we have to do the right thing. Just because you're my client doesn't mean I'm going to do everything you asked me to do. The right thing is to take care of the AC for this tenant. And so we are property managers, right? We're not secretaries. We're not note takers. So we're here to do the right thing at the end of the day. And a client like that, we will liberate them all day long as well.
Ian Joseph
So to jump in there, I will say that we have a saying here. Another one. I love these sayings and taglines. You know, people are fascinating, right? So anytime we're talking about someone like Mann, you know, John's John is fascinating. And that's just code for we got to work harder for them or this or that. But if they become disrespectful or undermine us or do certain things that we just won't put up with. And at the end of the day, my team knows that I got their back. So we're going to just like DD, if, if I know they're working harder and trying to deliver a great experience for these clients, and sometimes you just have to break out. It's just the way it goes. They're a better fit for another company and we'll refer them to someone down the street.
Melissa Prandi
I was going to segue into that. You want to have your employees really happy. Ask them for the top 1 to 3 clients. They would fire and fire them. And we just fired two. Oh, my God. It's so awesome. She just got 65, 75 emails from her. She won't go away, but just and lead, like, help exit them out the door. Fire. One, two, three of your clients. Ask your teams about the top three and why and don't let them share. Say just give it to me. Delivered me in an envelope or a sealed piece of paper whose top three clients you would fire and do it, get rid of.
Phil Owen
There are a lot of good ones right now. I love the word `` fascinating. We have our own code word in our company. They'll say I have a precious one on the line. Precious is our code word. Can somebody talk to a precious one? But so we got 3 minutes left and I do want to say, I love what you were saying there, Melissa, a question that I ask my team all the time. You know, when something gets escalated to the CEO level, I take it pretty seriously. And so they'll hear me ask them, hey, do you want me to salvage this client or do you want me to sever from this client, liberate, I think is our new were right the only to liberate this client. But it is amazing the cultural impact that it has on your team when they know that you're looking at them going, Hey, I've got your back. If you feel like this is a person who's being unreasonable and we need to part ways with them, most of the time they'll say, No, no, fix it, fix it, fix it. But sometimes they'll go Done with this guy. Let's be done. And it's amazing the impact that it has in the room. So let me just say I've been taking some notes. I'm going to kind of want to get some stories, but we're not going to have time. So I want to summarize what I'm hearing from you guys, and I hope I'm getting this right. But number one, start with you. And I think it's important in this room, even if you're not the broker-owner, the fountainhead of the organization, customer service is contagious and that culture is contagious. So it can start with anybody in an organization who starts to plant that because you're going to see results, whether it starts with the broker-owner, it starts with somebody who's directly in the trenches. It starts with you. And you can impact that for the broker-owner, it's important for you to articulate your vision, and identify your core values. Number three, hire true believers, hire around those values, and fire around those values. Make sure that you're reinforcing that retreat, retreat, retreat, repeat, repeat, repeat. Continue to hammer home those core values at every opportunity so that you can smile and say, I love you. Whatever you want to use to communicate that recognizes reward, reinforce love that recognizes the people who are doing it well, reward them for doing it well, and reinforce that when they're not doing it well. And then the last thing we talked about was to protect that fiercely, whether it's a team member or a client who is hurting that culture, protect it fiercely and never allow anything to come between you and that core DNA. So I love some really rich content. Thank you guys for that. I did have a question that came in that I think is valuable and we got one minute if somebody wants to speak to this, how does this translate to remote team members? A lot of the things you're talking about are easy within the office. How does this translate to remote team members?
Melissa Prandi
I'll take it. I just hired my remote team member. I value them when? When we had new staff just come on board. We actually did a zoom with them. We respect them. So we include them in our daily fun and things we're doing. And we recognize their anniversary. But make sure that when you have somebody new, don't forget they want to meet them, too. So we did a big welcome. And oh my God, the smile. We gave a little bonus on every anniversary to remote team members. And something like $100 as a bonus is like a thousand or more dollars to somewhat live in the Philippines. So I really think that including them and things and recognizing them and having them be a part of our big celebrations makes them feel like they're a part of us, even though they're thousands of miles away.
Phil Owen
Love that. We're out of time. Can you guys just give these guys so much to the industry? Thank you all so much for contributing your wisdom.
Andrew Smallwood
That's all for today's Triple Win Property Management podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for sharing a piece of your life with us. We do not take it for granted. I also want to give a shout-out to Carol Housel for everything she and our team does to make this possible. It's crazy to think about. Over 5000 professional property managers have press plays on episodes and season one and season two now, and we really want to encourage you to keep giving feedback because more and more people are listening. It's getting better and better and better thanks to everything that you're sharing with us. If you liked this enough to listen, I want to encourage you to share it with other people. You can give us feedback directly on the social media channels, Facebook, LinkedIn, and wherever you're hanging out, you can also send us an email, at triplewin@secondnature.com we just want to give more we're there's no sales pitch here just want to offer more resources that help you find and stack your next triple-win and become a triple-win-driven property manager. So where can you find that? You can find a private Facebook group. You can find our blog and find our newsletters and find more resources at RBP.secondnature.com to search for what you're looking for there and every time we see you, we want to see a better version of you and your business. To that end, keep it going, feel inspired, take our encouragement and we'll see you next time.