Karen Derr is a tightrope
walker.
That’s the feeling that Derr
gets at Karen Derr & Associates
Realty Inc. as she tries to balance growing her midsized real
estate firm and staying small
enough to innovate.
“People start trying to buy
you or merge with you, and
there’s this lure of getting bigger and bigger, and yet, you
have some assets and resources
that are very difficult for a very
small company to have,” says
the founder, president and CEO.
“Staying at that plateau in the
middle gives you the advantage
of being able to move and innovate much quicker than a large
company.”
Her other advantage is that
when she founded the real
estate company, she did it all,
so she understands firsthand
what her five full-time employees and 55 independent contractors are experiencing, which
helps her make educated choices for her $152 million company and maintain a bond with
her employees.
Smart Business spoke with
Derr about how she motivates
her staff and rewards accomplishment.
Consider your guest list. Don’t
hire anybody that you wouldn’t
want to have dinner with. When
you’re new and trying to recruit,
you take almost anybody you
can get; it’s a necessary evil, but
it’s just not pleasurable.
It’s not fair to hire the person
if you’re not really compelled
to spend time with them.
That’s not fair to the salesperson and your customers, and
it’s not fair to you, either,
because you have to spend a
lot of time with the people that
you hire.
As we started to grow and
become successful, we started
to spend more time with the
people who are the key to our
organization. I said, ‘Wow, this
is what it’s all about. It should
never be any way but this way.
All of us are enjoying our business and each other.’
It just evolved after finally
getting it right. We’re a diverse
group of people, but you can
have synergy in a group without everyone being the same.
Jump into the trenches. I’m out
there every day, shoulder-to-shoulder with my employees.
For a midsized company, the
competition is so fierce that you
have to be out there every day.
You can’t arrive as the owner
of a company and assume that
what your sales force is up
against is the same thing you
were up against a year ago,
sometimes even six months
ago. If you’re not in front of
clients, just like your salespeople are, you could easily lose
sight of what’s going on.
Stay in focus. Being in front of
clients helps your competitive
edge. Maybe that’s how I keep
in touch with reality. I hear
firsthand what our clients like
and don’t like and what they’re
saying about our competition
and how we’re competing.
If we don’t get business, I ask
why. We’re so focused on innovation that we see it as a great
opportunity. We’re always
looking for something extra
that we can do better or do
faster.
Successful companies don’t
have time to do big market
research projects. The better
you can bring back information from clients and salespeople, the quicker you can make
a strategy based on that and
the better off you are.