If You Don't Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons on Your Pigtails (6 page)

School day. Edgewater.

"Good morning, everyone!" Mom's voice boomed as she ripped the covers from each of our beds. Dazed, I made my way to the kitchen table, took a cereal bowl from the stack, and stumbled to the stove for my one scoop of hot Quaker Oats.

"Good morning, Mom," I mumbled.

"Good morning, Barbara Ann," she smiled back.

I sat down as I always did in my assigned seat next to the bathroom door, and stirred milk and brown sugar into my oatmeal as it cooled. My brothers and sisters were all doing the same. At 7:00 a.m. sharp, with only three spoonfuls to go, Mom declared breakfast over. We had twenty minutes to wait in line for the bathroom to brush our teeth and comb our hair, and then put on the clothes Mom had placed at the foot of our beds.

"Where's my socks?" Eddie yelled to no one.

"Where's my socks?" was a question you only asked once in our house. Every sock in our house was stored in the two square drawers on the skinny wall between the bathroom and the stove. The top

drawer was filled with the girls' white nylon socks, and the bottom

with the boys' navy eotton socks.

Mom pulled Eddie by his ear into the kitchen, opened the bottom sock drawer, and pointed.

"Socks,"' she pronounced slowly with emphasis, "are always in the sock drawer." She left Eddie rubbing his ear and darted off to sort the laundry.

My mother had a routine for everything. When she sorted the laundry, she started by dumping it all in the middle of the living room floor. Then she divided it into the "white pile" and the "color pile." and subdivided those into "heavy'' and "light" fabrics. Next, she placed the four piles atop four dirty bedsheets, tied a knot in each, and slung them two-to-a-shoulder into the kitchen. By day's end, Mom sorted, washed, hung, folded, and put away eight loads of laundry.

She prepared for school mornings the night before, painting our white bucks on top of the living room radiator with Kiwi shoe polish and her two-inch Sherwin-Williams paintbrush. Early on, she painted the radiator white so her late-night drips wouldn't show.

Then Mom made our lunches in less than two minutes. First, she plopped a tub of Skippy peanut butter, a jar of Welch s grape jelly, and a five-pound bag of Mcintosh apples on the kitchen table. She dealt out twenty slices of Wonder Bread into two perfectly parallel rows and, with her ten-inch icing knife, spread the top row with peanut butter and the bottom row with jelly. Then she flipped the top slices onto the bottoms, halved each sandwich on the diagonal and wrapped each in waxed paper. After punching open ten brown paper bags, Mom dropped a sandwich and an apple inside. At noon the next dav, we opened our bags to find one apple and a concave peanut butter and jelly on white.

"C'mon, c'mon!" Mom yelled to us every morning at ^:2(). as she stood by the door guarding our white bucks warming in size order beneath the radiator. "Hurry or you're going to be late!

We slid in our socked feet across the turquoise tile of the living room, dropped into our white bucks, grabbed a lunch bag, and headed out the door.

After I thought about the systems that made my mother's house work, I knew the only chance I had of having a well-run office rested on having a place and a system for everything. So, I spent the weekend planning and getting organized.

First, I made a list of everything that didn *t work at the old office, a long list of time-wasters, and figured out how to eliminate them. Then, I made a list of what did work and devised ways to do them even better. I thought through my salespeople's office needs, numbered the most important ones, and crossed out the ones that could wait. I tore the lists from my yellow legal pad and hailed a cab over to Hayman and Sumner stationers. I browsed through the merchandise, sizing up its usefulness, and came home with a large carton full of file folders, colored index cards, and labels.

9:15 A.M. The Corcoran Group. First day.

"Good morning, 1 ' I said as each of my seven salespeople cautiously walked through the door. "After you hang up your coat, please come over here, reach in, and pull out a number." I had numbered and folded fourteen pieces of paper and put them in a red Bloomingdale's shopping bag. Each number in the bag corresponded with a number I had taped to the desks.

Cathy picked first, tentatively reaching into the bag. "Oh, Cathy!" I exclaimed. "Congratulations! You got number seven! You picked the best desk here!" David was next and pulled out number three. "Is that number three you have there, David?" I gushed. "Congratulations, David! You picked the best desk here."

The number I was pulling had everyone laughing.

"Now, remember/' I shouted into the excited sales area, "if you don t like your desk, don't even give it a moment's thought, because we'll be changing all our seats in six months anyway! And if you do like your desk, don't get used to it, because we'll be changing all our seats in six months anyway! And please don't put your things on the empty desk next to yours, because we'll be filling that seat in no time at all."

On each of the seven assigned desks, I had placed a small yellow rose in a white vase with a handwritten note. The salespeople settled in and smiled as they read, "I'm so happy you're here! xoxo—Barb."

I spotted John Bachman about to post his cardboard do not disturb sign high above desk number five. From his perfectly parted blond hair to his stiff ironing-board walk, everything about John said, "Leave me alone."

I approached cautiously. "John?" I interrupted. "You may have needed that do not disturb sign in our old office, but you won't need it around here. In this office, everyone can disturb everyone.''''

John turned his starched neck, twisted his pinky ring a half-turn to the right, and nodded, "Veil, if zat's vat you vant..." And took down the sign.

I walked to the front of the office and shouted, "Okay, now, please get yourself a cup of coffee and a doughnut, and we'll start our meeting." While they sugared, milked, and stirred, I began. "Good morning, everyone!"

Everyone humored me and chimed back, "Good morning, Barbara."

"Today, I have six announcements to make, and the first is that we're going to have breakfast here together every Monday morning. It will begin at nine-thirty and end promptly at ten-fifteen." Everyone looked around at each other and seemed pleased.

"The second announcement is that we'll be starting a new system for our listing information, and here's how the system will work. I held up four different-colored index cards. "The new listing cards carry the same property information as our old ones did, but the new

colors will make it easier to find the right-size apartment when you need it." I demonstrated each color as I spoke. "All studio apartment information will be written on the white cards, all one-bedrooms on the yellow cards, two-bedrooms on blue, and three-bedrooms and larger will always be pink. Every time you get a new listing, you'll write it on the appropriate colored card and file it in the corresponding colored box. As our new listing system helps everyone, no one will receive listing credit if the apartment is written on the wrong-colored card."

I smiled and nodded, and everyone nodded along.

"The third announcement is about getting better property information. Pm sure you all agree that the more we know about each property, the better chance we have of selling it. So, from now on, I'll be paying cash for better information. For example, when David writes up all the details about his new listing, and Sandy, after seeing it, is able to add one more fact to David's information, I'll give Sandy one dollar for helping David." I waved a fistful of dollars in the air and smiled.

Everyone smiled back.

"Announcement four is about the form you fill out to get your commissions." I held up the familiar eight-by-eleven sheet of paper. "Well, now, the commission request form is green and it has a back side." I flipped it over, showing the list of questions I had worked hours to create. "When you answer the questions on the back, we'll all have a much better idea of where our business is actually coming from.

"For example, where did you get the customer? Did they call you on a Sunday ad? Find you in an open house? Or were they referred by a friend or business associate? Simply check a box. Where is your customer living now? Is he here in the city? Or is he moving from another state? Another country? Or another planet? Check a box. And what business is your customer in? Is he married? Single? Children? How old is he? Simply check a box. Knowing where our business is coming from will help us get more business."

Everyone nodded along with me.

"If we know more about our sellers and how each deal was made." I continued, "we'll all be much I>etter negotiators. So some of the other questions are about the sale itself. How long was the property on the market before it sold? What was the first offer? And how much was negotiated before the deal was done?

"The new commission form will take only three minutes to complete. All you have to do is check the appropriate boxes. Commissions will be paid every Friday, and no commission will be paid without it."

Everyone nodded. So I went on: "Do you remember back at Corcoran-Simone when we desperately looked for floor plans while our customers waited in the lobby? Do you remember the day we actually dumped out Johns drawer looking for the floor plan of his new listing at 2 Sutton Place? After today, here at The Corcoran Group, we're never going to search for a lost floor plan again. Because now, when you get a floor plan for your new listing, you'll immediately create a 'floor plan folder' for everyone to use."

I stood and waved a sample folder for everyone to see, and demonstrated.

"First, before the floor plan can get lost, you staple the new floor plan to the inside of a manila folder and print the address boldly on the folder's tab." I walked over to the copy machine, placed the file facedown, and pressed the print button. "Next, you make ten copies of the original and put them inside the folder. Then you place the floor plan file by street order in the new r 'floor plan drawer' at the front of the office. Remember, if you take the last copy from the folder, you're the one responsible for using the stapled original to make ten more copies." As the copv machine finished, I said, "Ta-dah!! No more lost floor plans."

Everyone nodded.

"And this brings us to our last announcement, the 'Good Idea Box.'" I pulled out a cardboard shoebox on which I had drawn a giant yellow lightbulb. "This box is for Good Ideas" I enunciated. "Whenever you have an idea. I'd like to know about it. I don't care if

it's a big idea, small idea, or even a stupid idea—all ideas are welcome! Fll pay five dollars for every idea, and I'll even give you five bucks for a complaint—but only if it's accompanied by a solution. So, here's the first five bucks for John Bachman, who suggested only ten minutes ago that we eliminate the do not disturb signs from the office. Great job, John!" I said, and placed the money in his limp hand.

I looked around the room, took a breath, and asked, "Does anyone have any questions?" Seven dazed salespeople shook their heads no. "Okay, then, I guess that's everything. The Monday meeting is now over."

The phone rang, I reached over the reception desk, and answered, "Good morning, The Corcoran Group."

MOM'S LESSON #6: Put the socks in the sock drawer.

THE LESSON LEARNED ABOUT ORGANIZING A BUSINESS

Good systems make plans happen. Here's how the organizational systems introduced at the first Corcoran Group sales meeting would help build my business over the next twenty-five years.

1. Check the Box

The commission request form enabled me to get an unprecedented amount of information from my sales agents. Like other

independent contractors, real estate agents closely guard information related to their clients. But they willingly gave me the information simply because I made the process easy and because they wouldn't get paid without it.

In New York, change happens in a New York minute, and the back side of my commission request form captured it as it happened.

Here are three ways to use the power of information to help build a business:

Early information helps predict emerging markets.

New York's a town where there's always someone coining and someone going, and the answers my salespeople consistently provided on the commission request form enabled me to stay ahead of those changes.

In the late seventies, my little checked boxes helped predict the emergence of Manhattan's "new'' West Side. For decades, property values on the West Side had trailed far behind those of the East Side, but in 1979, the margin narrowed dramatically, almost overnight. The answers my sales agents provided showed that the customers moving to the West Side were the children of affluent parents on the East Side, and the young "thirtysome-things ' were fast becoming the norm. Although everybody said I was crazy, I immediately opened a huge West Side office and was positioned to ride the crest of the wave.

Information positions your company as the reliable source for facts and figures.

Our Corcoran Group offices became a veritable research center for the numbers-hungry New York press because when a reporter called, I had the answer. And the press called us for information on everything, including stories that had nothing to do w ith real estate. If a reporter wanted to talk to a young Czecho-

slovakian metal sculptor living in a Greenwich Village walk-up. we could find him in twenty minutes or less. And today, with the advent of e-mail, we can do it in ten.

Tracking the source of your customers helps you spend your advertising dollars wisely.

Most real estate advertising money is spent in the Sunday classified section of the local newspaper. By knowing which ads produced the most customers we were able to redirect our advertising dollars as the business changed, placing different-size ads in different publications on different days of the week.

In short, the back side of the commission request form told me everything I needed to know to reach my target market, place effective advertising, and grab media attention while doing it.