FOR MANAGERS
Best Practices
Making your business mirror your market
BY ROBERT LIPARULO
A growing contingent of savvy brokers are opting to turn their offices into cultural reflections of the neighborhoods they serve. Tough work, sometimes, but those who pursue multiculturalism in their offices say the benefits range from ensuring adherence to fair housing laws to gaining new access into the burgeoning ethnic markets.
At the Brentwood, N.Y., office of Cruzsell Realty, for instance, broker-owner Carlos Cruz has assembled a team of practitioners that reads like a core sample: largely Hispanic, with a smattering of African Americans and Caucasians. And lest you think the ethnic composition of this office was merely accidental or a result of Cruz’s own personal preferences, take a look at his other office, a few miles away in Queens. There you’ll find a sales force of Haitians, African Americans, and Pakistanis—a perfect mirror image of that community.
“To make your office reflect your marketplace, you have to make a conscious decision,” says Cruz. “Then you have to follow through by adjusting the way you recruit and manage.”
The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University estimates that the minority population of the United States will jump over the next decade from a quarter to a third. Latinos will make up 40 percent of the growth, with African Americans and Asians only a step behind.
The percentage of white Americans slipped from 86 in 1980 to 82 today; of the 26 million foreign-born people here, more than 60 percent have entered the United States since 1980. So now, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstract of the United States, African Americans make up almost 13 percent of America’s population, Hispanics 11 percent, and Asians 4 percent.
Yet the Harvard report says that of the 781,000 people selling real estate in the United States, only 4.6 percent are African Americans, 5.1 percent are Hispanic, and 2 percent are Asian. In short, the ethnic makeup of the real estate profession has not kept pace with society.
“Those stats can create lots of business opportunity for companies,” says Mary Hudson, multicultural consultant and fair housing officer for the 45-office Realty One, based in Cleveland. “The more people a company has who can respond to the linguistic and cultural needs of its marketplace, the more that marketplace will come to that company.”
Such assertions are supported by studies; for example, one published in the fall 1998 issue of the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management shows that consumers dealwith people they trust and that they’re more likely to trust people similar to themselves. But the desire to work with like-minded individuals goes beyond the psychology of trust. “Practically speaking, who wouldn’t rather work with someone who understands their cultural preferences and traditions?” asks Joseph Aveni, Realty One’s CEO.
If you think that a multicultural community stops where the big city does, think again. “Ethnically, suburbs are starting to look a lot like their urban neighbors,” says William Frey, director of the University of Michigan Population Studies Center.“Different cultures are spreading everywhere. No one’s immune.”
Eyeballing your market
For many brokers, understanding the ethnic composition of the communities they serve requires simply watching who walks through the door. “When customers and clients start asking for special language services or for an associate of a certain persuasion,” says Soli Chung, “we listen and keep our eyes open for candidates with those qualities.”
Chung, operations manager at George Chung, REALTORS®, in Los Angeles, says the method has helped the company grow a team of 10 multicultural associates who serve a rainbow mix of local consumers.
But Cruz wonders whether buyers and sellers seeking special cultural assistance would be comfortable popping into an office if they didn’t know it offered such services. “It can be painfully awkward trying to explain to the average white salesperson why you’d prefer working with someone more familiar with your own culture,” he says. For that reason, Cruz makes it a point to stay in touch with the ethnicity of his market by visiting area high school sporting events and community plays; he has even followed buses to observe the types of people riding them. “Once I know who my potential customers and clients are, I can make sure my offices mirror them.”
If you’d rather not rely on an eyeball assessment of your market’s ethnic composition, try contacting a demographic research company, such as CACI IDS, 800/394-3690. Visitors to CACI’s Web site, demographics.caci.com, need only enter a ZIP code for a free breakdown of the area’s population. For example, a search of a Jamaica, N.Y., ZIP code--11435--yields a report showing an eclectic racial brew: 34.4 percent white, 35.6 percent African American, and 14.6 percent Asian.
Recruiting diversity
Such diversity encouraged Karen Eng, general sales manager at Century 21--Big M Realty, smack in the heart of Jamaica, N.Y., to pepper her sales force of 55 with people from all types of races and cultures: AfricanAmericans, Latinos, Pacific islanders, Chinese--even Americans from the Deep South. “This community can’t throw me a customer or a client whom I can’t match with an ethnically similar salesperson,” boasts Eng.
To build and maintain such a force, Eng--who is Chinese--advertises for salespeople in the publications favored by the various culture groups. “The most important step,” she says, “is letting those people know you’re open to recruiting them. So many people think that if you’re not white, you can’t go into real estate. We want them to know that’s not true.”
So what happens when there simply aren’t enough minority salespeople to go around? You cultivate more, says Cruz. “I always have my eye out for young, energetic minorities who’d make great salespeople. When I find them--at listing presentations, community events, high school Junior Achievement classes—I encourage them to take real estate classes and the exam. I promise them jobs.” He estimates that half of his 27 salespeople were recruited that way.
Similarly, Thomas M. Stevens, president of Coldwell Banker– Stevens, Vienna, Va., a suburb of Washington, D.C., suggests designing career seminars aimed at minority segments of the population. “Markets that were once predominantly white are now highly diverse,” he says. “But, still, many of the candidates who come in are white. We’ve tried to reach out to minorities by offering seminars in Hispanic, Asian, and African American communities. It’s allowed our 24 offices to closely mirror the ethnic makeup of the communities they’re in.” And pull in 1998 sales of $1.6 billion to boot, he adds.
Helping your recruitment officer value cultural diversity is crucial, says Realty One’s Hudson. “You can’t just say one day, ‘Let’s get more diversity in here!’ The people you have on the lookout for new recruits have to see people who speak multiple languages and have ethnic roots as not just ‘nice’ or ‘different’ but as true assets to the company.” One way to educate them is through multicultural sensitivity training, available at many colleges and consulting organizations, she says.
To find out about NAR’s “At Home With DiversityTM" training, or to enroll, go to One Realtor Place® and search cultural diversity program; or call 800/874-6500.
Diversity in action
Recruiting diversity is only half the challenge. Managing it can be just as tricky.
One of the biggest hurdles for brokers, says Robert L. Kinniebrew, broker-owner of Century 21-Candid Realty, Willingboro, N.J., “is valuing minorities for their abilities rather than for being minorities.”
Says Kinniebrew, an African American who is former president of the New Jersey Association of REALTORS®: “No one wants to be the token black or Hispanic or Asian in an office. No one wants to be valued just for giving the company access to a minority group.
“Yes, get people who can access and service those groups, but respect them because they’re skilled real estate people, not because they’re minority real estate people.”
Interestingly, clashes among the members of diverse sales forces don’t seem to be a problem at all. “Bias stems from ignorance,” opines Hudson. “Once salespeople get to know a fellow associate who may look different from them or come from a different culture, they realize that he or sheisn’t so different after all.”
At Realty One, Aveni and Hudson developed a 12-person Diversity Task Force, which meets quarterly to assess the effectiveness of the company’s minority recruitment program and its multicultural training initiatives. “Recruiting and servicing diversity introduce you to some great salespeople,” says Aveni. “Of course, the benefits go way beyond the financial--to fairness and morale and social responsibility--but certainly the bottom line gets a healthy boost.”
