If You Don't Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons on Your Pigtails (15 page)

I was shocked to read the next morning's New York Post headline: "KENNEDY LOFT PUT ON BLOCK FOR $2.5 MILLION" with me quoted as the authority. My phone rang all day, the story was carried on every major network, and I became the spokeswoman for the John Jr. loft even though it was not even for sale.

Three months later, my competitor got the listing and listed it at $2.5 million, but they were required to sign a nondisclosure agreement. So, who do you think the press called?

The property finally sold to actor Ed Burns for . . . $2.5 million. We never listed it and we never sold it, but when Dan Rather's Evening News, CNN, and Entertainment Tonight covered the record-breaking sale, 1 was again featured as the expert "Broker to the Stars."

NEW YORK'S HIGHEST PRICED SALE

W hen a Park Avenue triplex sold for the record-breaking price of $37 million, our competitor who sold it was sworn to secrecy. When the competitor refused to speak to the press, the press soon called me. I quickly labeled the sale a "steal of a deal" and by that evening, I was on CBS News and the anchor was introducing me as the woman who made the highest-priced sale in history. I graciously corrected him, but still everyone in New York continued to think we had made the highest-priced sale in history.

WHAT TO DO WHEN THE REPORTER CALLS

1. Drop everything.

When my husband wants to reach me, he says he s calling from the New York Times. Fve learned that the first person the reporter reaches makes the story, and the next person only confirms the story. The person who makes the story always gets the quotes. When the reporter calls, pick up the phone.

2. Deliver what you promise and deliver it fast.

With the advent of e-mail, information is immediately available. I use e-mail to reach my salespeople and ferret out whatever minutiae a reporter may need for his story. I think of our public relations staff members as a service department immediately available to any newspaper, magazine, or television station that might call.

3. Talk short. Talk plain.

You might feel more astute explaining to a reporter that "marketplace conditions have declined somewhat and I have every confidence that economic conditions will improve blah. blah.

blah." But if your competitor says, "The market dumped," that's the quote you'll see in the morning paper.

4. Always tell the truth. Always.

It's in the worst of times that publicity is your very best friend. When the stock market tanked in 1987, New York City real estate prices dropped by 40 percent, as did our commissions. But as my competitors ran for cover, I took center stage. I used the media to build my business, knowing that bad news is good news in the media world.

TIPS ON PUTTING YOUR BEST FACE FORWARD

1. If you want to be noticed, dress the part.

My red suit became my trademark. Everyone noticed me when I had it on.

2. Schedule your photo shoots the day you arrive back from vacation.

You'll take your best picture when you're fully rested. Hire a professional makeup artist to help you look your best.

3. Paint your office wall in your best color.

Decide what color you look best in and paint your wall that shade and prominently display your company name on it. Since most camera crews prefer to interview executives at their desks, you'll be backed by your best color and your logo will be in the shot.

prices, and our overhead per agent was running $40,000 a year. With the real estate market at a healthy boil, when one agent didn't produce, the next agent's production was big enough to pick up the slack. But I was worried about what would happen if the market braked and slowed to a simmer. Even someone who failed algebra twice could do the math.

My sales managers had already met with each of their salespeople in the bottom of the list, only to come back and give me a long dissertation on how those who were failing were "really trying their best."

I was stumped and identified with the managers' enormous discomfort. I was asking them to do what I couldn't do myself, and it rendered my order impotent. I found that firing anyone, even when it's the right thing to do, always felt wrong. So lacking the courage to say, ''''Justfire them" I could only muster, "So, when will you ask them to leave?"

Esther stiffened in her chair, and Barbara Brine looked at the list and sighed. "Four of the bottom ten have never made a deal," Barbara admitted, "but the other six have made almost twenty thousand dollars each and that's certainly better than having an empty desk!"

"No, that's not how it works," I insisted. "With an overhead of forty thousand, that's twenty thousand dollars short for each desk! If you multiply that times six desks, that's a hundred-and-twenty-thousand-dollar lossl We might be in a fat market now, and getting away with it, but if the market goes south, we'll be dead on arrival."

What I really wanted to say was: Listen! Pre been talking to you about cleaning up this mess for three months now and nothing has changed! What do I have to do to move this thing along? I won 9 t carry the deadwood any longer. We 9 ve got to clean up our mess and we've got to do it now!

But what 1 said instead was: "How about we go to the movies?" It seemed the more attainable option.

Esther and Barbara looked bewildered, and then relieved. Barbara spoke first: "That sounds like a lovely idea. Doesn't it, Esther?"

IF YOU DON'T HAVE BIG BREASTS 137

We left the office and spent the rest of the afternoon drooling over Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon.

Fall. Hilliard Avenue.

We were halfway up Hilliard Avenue when my older sister Denise and I saw our house through the school bus window. There were lots of colored streamers dangling in the big side-yard tree, and the front retaining wall was draped with dozens of brightlv colored flags.

"Whose birthday is it?" Denise asked.

"Don't know," I said, turning and squinting my eyes to get a better look. "Maybe it's Tommy's?"

"Nah, his was last month, but it could be Eddies. Isn't his after Tommys?"

"Well, whosever birthday it is, it sure looks like Mom outdid herself this time!"

As we neared our house at the top of the hill, the wall decorations began to look less like a party and more like a mess.^ "De-Denise!" I stammered, nudging her arm and pointing. "Isn't that your new green sweater on the front wall?"

"What!?" she gasped, covering her mouth with both hands.

"Oh, God!" I said, slumping down into the bus seat. "Don't look now, but I think our bras are hanging in the tree!"

By now every kid on the bus had rushed the left windows, pushing each other aside for a better look. Denise slid down eye level with me and whispered, "It's our clothes, I think maybe all of them, and they're all over the yard!"

"Getting off! ?" the bus driver shouted back through the catcalls. I grabbed Denises arm and we made our escape through the accordion doors. "Don't look," I directed through clenched teeth, just keep walking straight ahead and pretend we live at the Gearys' house.*

"Nice pantiesT a boy shouted as the bus pulled away. We walked on, our faces flushed. Denise was swearing under her breath.

"Who?" my sister hissed. "Who would have done such a disgusting thing? "

Together we answered, "Mom! "

Mom liked a clean house and surprised us on more than one occasion when she appeared in the girls' room, broom and dustpan in hand, eager to demonstrate her theory on housecleaning.

Mom believed in sweeping corners. First she pulled all the furniture away from the walls, and jammed her broom into the nearest corner. Next, she followed the woodwork around clockwise, sweeping the dirt toward the center of the room as she went. Then she pushed the furniture back against the walls, scooped up the dirt pile with her dustpan, and dumped it into a brown paper bag. "Now, remember, girls," she said as she finished a cleaning demonstration. "If you sweep the corners, the whole house stays clean."

When the girls moved upstairs into the new girls' room, Mom made Saturday cleaning our responsibility, but we took our extra freedom and ran with it. After we failed Mom's weekly inspections a few times, she began to threaten us with: "If you don't take care of your room in a proper fashion, Fm going to take care of it for you!"

Mom had made good on her promise.

Denise and I ran up the two flights to our room, and surveyed it in horror. Our beds had been stripped. Our blankets were gone, our pillows were gone, and every drawer in our dresser was open and empty. Our room looked as if we had moved out. Only the pink-checked curtains remained, flapping back and forth in the open window.

I walked over and sat down on my bare mattress and reached under it. I was relieved to find my pack of cigarettes undiscovered. "Want a smoke?" I asked Denise as I pulled one out. It was only a filter. I pulled out another, and it was a filter. I dumped out the whole

IF YOU DON'T HAVE BIG BREASTS 139

box. Mom had cut every cigarette into thirds and put them, filters up, back in the box. I threw the box across the room into the emptv trash can, and lay back on my bed.

"Look!" Denise shrieked. I followed her pointing arm. Six-inch letters, scrawled across our dresser mirror in Mom's signature white shoe polish, denounced us as:

PIGS!

"Size eight," I told the woman behind the counter at Celine s Boutique on Park Avenue. We were walking back from Lethal Weapon when I spotted the pink suede shoes in the window. The shoes must have been for the woman who had everything. They had little pink bunny ears attached to the front, a set of rolling glass eyes beneath curly black lashes, and a black sculpted nose attached to a set of long bunny whiskers..

"That will be two hundred and twenty-two dollars, please," the woman behind the counter said. Esther and Barbara Brine looked at me as if I had lost my mind as I wrote out the check.

When I got back to the office, I removed my new bunny shoes from their box and placed them on my desk. I took out the list of nonproductive salespeople and reached for a cube of paper.

"H. H.," I wrote on the first small yellow square.

"A. Z.," I wrote on the next.

"S. K.," I wTote on the one after that and continued until all ten of the salespeople's initials were written on individual squares. I folded the papers in half, then in quarters, and then in eighths. I dropped five of the tinv notes in each shoe, placed the bunnies back in their box, and taped my handwritten note to Barbara Brine on top. It read:

Barbara Corcoran

I sealed the box and sent it by messenger to the West Side office.

Within an hour of getting the shoes, Barbara Brine called. She was laughing, and said shed "hop right to it."

MOM'S LESSON #16: Sweep the corners and the whole house stays clean.

THE LESSON LEARNED

ABOUT KEEPING

THE HOUSE CLEAN

The bunny shoes allowed me to dress something disagreeable as more agreeable. I succeeded in making the dreadful topic of firing a bit friendlier and gave myself the courage to set the needed deadline.

The $222 bunny shoes saved The Corcoran Group $120,000 that year. The money was no longer being spent to support the bottom 25 percent of nonproductive salespeople. Using the 25 percent rule, we've been cleaning out the corners of our company ever since.

Firing people is the least popular task of any manager, and those who are the best at hiring are usually the worst at firing. My managers were great recruiters and loved their salespeople. But they were leading with their hearts instead of their heads.

Firing is also a personal admission that you hired the wrong person, that your judgment was wrong. But even with the most arduous screening and choosing, in real estate sales only one in six salespeople make it. In fact, in most real estate brokerage companies, more than half the salespeople don't meet their desk costs even after two years in the business. Nothing is more deceiving than a desk that looks productive simply because someone is sitting there.

Here are the four ways I sweep the corners and keep my sales house clean:

1. Fire Before You Hire.

Create a method to keep track of each new salesperson's progress so you can fire the nonproductive ones before they get lost in the shuffle.

DAY 1. During the interview, state your expectations clearly.

Tell the would-be salesperson that they have a limited time to produce their first sale. In the real estate sales business, that translates into one signed contract within the first ninety days.

DAY 30. Schedule a meeting with each new salesperson.

The purpose is to check their progress and offer them the help they might need.

DAY 60. Extend or keep the deadline.

By Day 60, salespeople begin to panic. As great salespeople are sometimes slow starters, it's the managers option to either slick

to the ninety-day deadline or take off the pressure with a stay of execution. If you're confident that the salesperson is on the right track, now's the time to extend a benevolent hand to help him across the finish line.

D-DAY. By ninety days, the nonproducers fire themselves.

Because the expectations were stated clearly on Day 1, nonproducers can plan for their own departure and leave with dignity before the deadline. And a well-defined exit strategy allows the manager to feel fair as the salesperson says good-bye.

2. Know the Cost of Each Desk.

The starting gate of making any sales organization productive is to know how much each salesperson must produce to turn a profit. Simply divide your total yearly overhead (including expected expansion costs and profits) and divide the figure by the number of salespeople in your organization. With your eyes wide open, you'll work toward making every desk productive.

3. Clean Out the Bottom 25 Percent.

The 25 percent rule is simply this: When a salesperson remains in the bottom 25 percent of the company for more than one quarter, the individual is reviewed for possible notice of termination.

Here are the three steps that make this system work: