Why don’t you love me?!

One of my businesses, Elephant Property, works in the notoriously underappreciated category of residential property management. The old adage in property management is that you don’t hear anything from your clients or customers (property owners or tenants) unless something’s going wrong. I hear lots of property managers – in my work as a trainer – bemoan this fact.

From now on – I’d like to impose a new rule.

No complaining about people not loving you, no whining about lack of client appreciation and certainly no bitching about your customers only calling you when something is wrong UNLESS….

1. You’ve shown five people that you think they’re amazing this week. Five every week needs to be the minimum goal. If you tell five people they’re amazing reciprocity will reward you with feedback coming in the other direction. Here are some examples you can try:

• If you get great service at a restaurant write a thank you note on the receipt or post a review on their Facebook page.
• Use the “share” button on Facebook and share a link or business that you think is fantastic. 
• If your insurance broker does an amazing job, ask for his boss’ email and let them know what a great staff member they have. (Thank you Aaron Jones at Armstrong’s Insurance).
• If you call up telephone banking be polite, treat the person like they’re human and tell them they’re doing a good job. Okay – that’s a personal one in there because my 21-year-old brother is in phone banking and I know that they’re not often met with the happiest of people on the other end of the phone!
• Call your Mum and thank her for doing the best job she knew how in raising you.
• Write a card of appreciate to your boss or workmate. (Megan, Bella and Mon – you are Elephant Property and I look forward to seeing your smiling faces every day).
• Send a referral to a current client for whatever their line of work is. (In my case it was my plumber this week).
• Thank EVERYONE who has referred you business in a memorable way; put a system in place. Our system is to reward referrers when any new owner comes to our business. Thank you Novaros and Alchemy Restaurants for being two of our best ways to reward!

2. You’ve given your clients an opportunity to praise you. Ask all of your current clients for at least three points of feedback:

• “What are we doing that you like?” You’ll feel instantly appreciated reading these responses – well – providing that you do a good job!
• “What’s the most memorable thing about dealing with us?” If there isn’t anything memorable – insert something!
• “What can we improve?” You can’t just get the good stuff, this question is vital. We ask our owners to provide feedback at this simple form and then we compile the answers here. Remember to make it easy for them – our survey only takes a couple of minutes.

3. You’re doing something worthy of praise. What’s unique about your business, what do you do that really knocks people’s socks off, what do you do that is going to make someone HAVE to tell you that you’re awesome? Good service is the price of entry – if you want people to tell you you’re fantastic do something worth talking about.

Kirsty Dunphey is the youngest ever Australian Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year, author of two books (her latest release is Retired at 27, If I Can do it Anyone Can) and a passionate entrepreneur who started her first business at age 15 and opened her own real estate agency at 21. Now Kirsty does lots of fun things which you can read about here. Her favourite current projects are Elephant Property, a boutique property management agency, Baby Teresa, a baby clothing line that donates an outfit to a baby in need for each one they sell andReallySold, which helps real estate agents stop writing boring, uninteresting ads.