Meeting the Press

Weeks are flying by and my quest to post three blogs a week is not too successful at the moment. It’s all about priorities and since our very successful Symposium and launch of our ground breaking initiatives in March I have spent my life on the road.

All is wonderful though…busy but wonderful.  Although I must say I am eagerly looking forward to a couple of weeks getaway, (to the USA of course) in July and spending some time with my children.

Yesterday I took the opportunity to meet the press. One of our regional business owners sent my a journalist’s column in December where the journo bagged and rubbished our industry about how poorly we treated tenants. In January he followed that up with another column of disparaging comments and opinions about our industry.

Enough was enough for me, a quick phone call and a promise that when I was next in town we would have coffee and a chat. Yesterday we had that coffee and a chat. He, Daniel is his name, came along looking somewhat nervous (and so he should be after what he wrote   ). His belief was that property managers are a bunch of dragons and evil witches.

Taking along one of our business owners, who is also head of the property management division and very active in management of clients and properties, it didn’t take Daniel long to change his opinion of our industry. He realised that we in fact don’t go to work every day to antagonise our clients and in turn have a bad (horrible) day ourselves. Daniel also realised that we indeed have a personality…a kind and caring one, good business sense and don’t have an attitude towards tenants.

Daniel also was made aware of some of the dangers we face in day to day interaction with clients whose emotions sometimes run riot and sometimes dangerously explosive putting our teams safety in jeopardy. And…I made sure that Daniel realised that if he continues to write such biased columns, then indeed our clients will already have formed an opinion that comes along with an ‘bad attitude’ towards us. They believe everything he writes and so adds fule to their fire and we have a stand off before our relationship with them is even off the ground.

Time to cut some slack and show another side to or role and the people that CHOOSE to work within the industry. Not only was he sympathetic and empathetic he was also very interested to reveal what goes on and we have a a new article being written demonstrating our roles and the importance of what we do. ‘A Day in the Life of a Property Manager’.

It seems that the minority has cast disparaging and biased opinions of our industry, and their voices have been strong. Time for us to stop sitting back and putting up with it…time to take action, meet the press and reveal who we are and how much we care and how important we are within our communities.

~ by PropertyManagementBabble on May 6, 2009.