5 reasons why you should let your staff use Facebook at work

It's a fairly widely accepted notion that if you treat people in a particular way long enough, they will start to behave like it.

For example, a jealous wife who accuses her husband of being unfaithful (when he isn't). Most of us have heard of stories where, after enough years of relentless accusation, the man will say to himself "well I'm getting as much grief as if I was actually knocking someone else off, I might as well make all the grief worthwhile!".

So, how do you treat your staff? Like adults who are old enough to make decisions for themselves? Or like school children who need to be governed like wild animals?

"If I let my staff use Facebook, they wouldn't do any work!" That just isn't true. If you employ people who don't want to work, then they wont work, whether you let them use Facebook or not.

I recently sat next to 2 men at a seminar at the Institute of Directors. They ran a lighting consultancy and employed about 30 people. The subject of staff using Facebook came up and they proudly boasted that they had spent £20,000 on an IT system specifically designed not only to prevent staff using sites like Facebook, but also to track which websites they are using and how long they spend on them.

Now, if you employed 300 people I might understand, but 30? What a waste of time and money, and how demoralising for their staff. You might as well say: "You are forbidden from having any communication with members of your family or friends during working hours".

This is not the 1950's and young talented people do not want to be treated like untrustworthy school children.

If you treat people like trustworthy adults, then most of them will behave as such. People respond to how they are treated.

So, imagine what it would do to your staff's morale and also to your image if you made an announcement to them as follows:

"We know that Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with your friends and family, but we also know it can be a big distraction. We'd like you to feel free to use Facebook at your discretion, in moderation, but please watch out for it becoming a distraction. We'd suggest 5-10 mins, 2 or 3 times a day."

You will have a happy crew, who will think you're great, and for this reason alone they will want to produce better results for you.

In any case, anyone with an iPhone or a Blackberry can get on Facebook without your computers - I bet some of you didn't know that!

So, don't waste precious time and IT money blocking websites your staff want to use. Just ask them to use their judgement and not take the p*ss. They'll love you for it.

So, as promised here are 5 real reasons why you should let your staff use Facebook:

    1. It will make them very happy, and that in itself can be hard to achieve!

    2. Using Facebook actually lowers the number of personal emails, phone calls and text messages sent

    3. Your staff will become better communicators

    4. Its a waste of management time policing a no-Facebook policy

    5. Facebook now has 200 million members worldwide - you can't ignore that sort of popularity and you just look like a dinosaur if you do!

So, if you have had a no-Facebook policy, why not consider reversing it and making yourself look up to date and your staff very happy in the process.

I promise you that, on the whole, they wont abuse the privilege!

Welcome to The Academy Blog

When I've told people about the launch of the new Academy site, and how it's free for everyone to access, the two questions I'm asked are "How and Why?"  Let's deal with the "Why?" first.  

The property industry has been hit harder than any other and whilst governments around the world are bailing out banks, insurance companies, car manufacturers and other large scale employers they've done nothing for estate agents. Thousands have lost their jobs, owners have stopped drawing salaries, investment for the future has been cut to zero.  So we asked ourselves the questions "what can we do to help the industry? And the answer - provide the best training in the industry free of charge.

But how can we do this?

I recently read "What would Google do?" by Jeff Jarvis where he poses this question for several business sectors (including real estate by the way) and concluded that the ways of funding a business and making a profit have changed since the times BG (Before Google). Suitably inspired, we decided to build an inclusive training platform and invited all the very best trainers to participate - Adam Walker, Richard Rawlings, Clare Fletcher, Julian O'Dell, Mark Hayward, Peter Chapman all agreed to share their wisdom, experience. I hope you will visit each of their web sites and see how they can help your business develop further as whilst online training is very cost effective it doesn't completely replace the live workshops.

Developing the Academy has required a substantial investment and the ongoing cost of maintaining the site itself is considerable.  In what some have described as "a leap of faith", we're confident that the site will attract a large and motivated audience who in turn will wish to learn more about appropriate products and services which will improve their business performance.

In addition to the video lessons we will be frequently posting articles of interest together with surveys, analysis and comment on topical issues.  You can access all this for free and stay up to date by registering your email on the site and by following and linking to this blog.

Please give us your feedback, suggestions and ideas - all will be carefully considered - and if you would like to make a contribution, as other leading agents such as Peter Rollings, John McGrath, Julie Twist, Jon Handford, Alan Robinson and many others have then please get in touch.

My hope is that The Academy helps you and your team to get through this difficult time and then to really prosper in the future.  Thank you for your support.
 
Peter Knight

Interview with Phil Irving

Phil Irving, the Managing Director of TEAM Conveyancing and Finance Director of TEAM Association talks about his views on housing issues and how he is lobbying the Government for changes to get the market moving in this exclusive interview.

How Not to be Just Another Agent

The first in an entire series of lessons by Richard Rawlings looks at the importance of your branding, what this conveys to your customers and how you can harness it’s power to build your business to ever greater things. Click here to view the first lesson.

Never a Better Time To Buy

As property prices have fallen faster in the last 12 months than many agents have seen in their careers and interest rates are the lowest ever, how can you convince your customers that NOW really is the best time to buy?

Peter Knight demonstrates a practical and simple method for persuading customers to trade up in this short lesson.

Questions Questions...

One of the spurious upsides to a reduction in the number of applicants registering is that agents can devote more time to each and do a better job of sorting the wheat from the chaff. It is clear from research that a number of estate agency firms have carried out, that less than 10% of registered applicants actually buy. Therefore the quicker and more accurately negotiators identify the "make me money" from the "cost me money" customers, the better.

However, during the many mystery shopper exercises my company carry out, the vast majority of agents fail to even establish whether the applicant is married, has children or has specific access needs for work, schools and/or hobbies. Still fewer take the time to really understand the applicant's true underlying motivation and ability - the common approach is to fill boxes in on a screen which only really scratches the surface.

Assuming one accepts that selling properties is all about matching benefits with needs, it is clearly difficult to perform that function without knowing the second half of that equation.

Much of our sales training focuses on the essential stage of qualifying prospects through highly skilled questioning and listening. The numerous types of question (including open, closed, ted, assumptive etc etc) and listening techniques (reflective statements, summaries etc etc) are the vital tools in the salesperson's toolbox.

One company we trained last year have added two simple questions into their qualification approach which have paid off handsomely - "How many people will be living in the property?" and "How much has your Financial Adviser confirmed you can pay for a property?"

It is doubtless self-explanatory what the benefits are of the information gleaned from the aforementioned questions, and with other techniques introduced via our training, the company involved has sharpened up their act considerably in identifying the right prospects to spend time with and sales results have improved significantly.

When I attended my first training course as a junior negotiator in 1983, I remember the trainer (a genius from whom I learnt so much) telling me that one of the attributes of high-performing salespeople was nosiness. His words of wisdom are as true now as they were then

Estate agency owners might be well advised to arrange a mystery shopper exercise to find out just how "nosey" their staff really are...

Julian O'Dell,

TM training & development