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Average is Everywhere

I was recently listening to a podcast with Chris Smith of Curaytor and he said, “Average is everywhere”.

It made me think about how the recent events have put us all in the unusual position to have a free pass to be able to reset our business models.

Being average is no longer an option in a time of heightened expectations and uncertainty. 

Now is the time to look at new opportunities and reset our goals and our processes. We can take apart the process and rebuild it. Maybe it’s time to outsource or find partners for the services and functions that aren’t mission critical or are not our area of expertise.

It may be also time to add new lines of business and expand our product lines. We need to take a hard look at our staff. Do we have the right people in the seats on the bus.

We don’t just want the seats filled, we want the right people for this particular time in history.

Will they rise to change? 

Can they adjust to the new way of doing business?

Who is doing what and why?

Do we have people with the highest skill level burdened with paperwork when they should be the ones who are client facing and helping to increase business and services?

Elevate your highly skilled staff and allow them to delegate to be able to focus on the work that creates conversion and increases sales and satisfaction.

What services or programs have you thought about adding to your service delivery, but you never got around to it?

Use this time to hit the reset button.

Real estate and relocation have long been mired in inefficiency. The same information asked of the same people over and over. Cumbersome processes based on the many different requirements from our clients and the industry. While relocation is definitely a people business, maybe it’s time to take a look at what can be automated or abandoned or outsourced to a partner without losing that feeling of personal service.

Agents have been forced to use virtual showings and remote signings, and I am confident even when COVID-19 is under control, we won’t go back to the number of live showings and open houses as we had before. Table closings will become a thing of the past. The consumer and agents and the process adjusted because they had to.


So I implore you to ask yourself this question; How can we all use this pause to be more strategic and tactical to bring value to our current and prospective clients?


It’s time the relocation service providers really started talking to each other to understand the pressures and the processes that control each step in the relocation.

If each provider better understood each role, there could be a more cohesive process that would not only benefit the transferee and the corporation, it would benefit each provider. In this competitive environment, most relocation management companies principally cater to the corporate client and don’t really take into consideration how certain requests of their supply chain may impact the provider.

I have been on several advisory councils throughout the years and attended many conferences held by broker networks and RMC’s. I found that at some of these meetings, instead of asking our advice on how we could make processes better, they used it as a forum to reinforce what their expectations are. So much opportunity for brainstorming and idea sharing wasted. Several years ago, I was invited into a relocation management company with a handful of other brokers to brainstorm how to make their process better. We need more of that. We need to be asking questions as to how we all might shape this industry to withstand the long term challenges and changes that are likely coming as a result of this crisis.


If we talked more, educated more and shared more, we could not only create efficiencies throughout the industry, we could experience more empathy for the challenges that each of the entities involved in corporate relocation face currently and will face in the future.


We all have a vested interest in the future of relocation.

We provide a vital role by supporting the corporate world so they may secure the right talent in the right position.

The hierarchy needs to flatten out and we should use this time to form a circle, not a pyramid. There is a time to compete, and a time to lock arms.

If we talked more, educated more and shared more, we could not only create efficiencies throughout the industry, we could experience more empathy for the challenges that each of the entities involved in corporate relocation face currently and will face in the future. 

Our job, when it comes down to it, is helping people. But if we don’t help each other morph this industry into a better version of itself, we can’t deliver anything better than average. This is no time for status quo, because average is everywhere.

“All I knew is that I never wanted to be average.”

~ Michael Jordan