Creating a Relationship Building Culture

The Vacation Rental Industry has an amazing foundation of relationships, which is why I was drawn to it and continue to enjoy working in it, complimenting my hospitality spirit. I watch how company owners and leaders connect and are quick to offer help to one another with advice on technology and new implementations. The real struggle I see is having the relationship building mindset flow to the internal and external customer in companies. I feel the key piece is that it takes intentional focus and time. As we navigate this fast pace world where everyone wants everything now, it becomes more challenging to slow down and work on your businesses instead of in it.

When I encounter companies, who are wanting a relationship building culture, often I hear challenges with lack of communication and direction from employees, which relates to lack of trust by the employee in turn potentially showing lack of motivation to build relationships internally or externally. Communication and direction require the most focused time from leaders in a company.
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I recommend beginning with what is necessary to build trust so all employees can see the different areas that are required. We can break it down to a simple foundation that speaks to internal and external trust building such as; frequent communication, openness, warmth, sticking with the truth and showing confidence, outlined by Ron Zemke in his book Delivering Knock Your Socks off Service. Once teams start to understand a few main concepts of trust building, I like to then bring in the conversation of values either personal or professional. Values speak to what doesn’t align for them creating potential friction in environments, taking away from relationship building. I share my values of transparency, integrity, platinum rule (treating others how they want to be treated), respect, passion and love (all actions out of love, not fear). Then we talk about their values and what emotional triggers they might have. I had an employee share that they struggle with being yelled at. She shared that she didn’t know how to handle being yelled at and would feel triggered and not know what to do. We talked about how when people are upset their IQ can reduce up to 50% and they are acting emotionally and not being their best selves and it is having nothing to do with the service provider. Often, I feel like I am part therapist in the coaching I do, yet it applies, because employees need to understand “why” they are feeling how they are before they can use the tools to transition situations. All of us have different emotional triggers. If we can first be mindful of those triggers it allows us to advance quickly to the tools in our toolboxes for working through friction that comes up.

Next is bringing in different behavioral assessments. I recommend Strengths Finder and their top five strengths. It helps to see areas where employees thrive and focus on those areas as well as sometimes looking at other departments in the company that could be a better fit. Another favorite is the DISC assessment. This creates conversations on behavior types that can be triggering for some. Both assessments allow for team building when understanding others and what they are strong at as well as what might be lacking and creating distrust in internal relationships. Once we have a solid sales team in place, I like to recommend a detailed sales IQ assessment showing sixteen areas and where they are highly developed or require development. They range with areas such as sales preparation to connecting with the head or the heart, collaborating with the buyer to how they manage themselves.

During this time of assessments, scoring is taking place with reservation sales opportunity calls or guest and owner services calls, having one on one webcam coaching sessions to grow their skills complimented with focus article or video and monthly employee wide interactive relationship building topics. I am a big fan of additional focused content on the specific goal they are working on since we know that as humans we revert to old behaviors after two weeks and that we retain only 20% of what we learn usually. I also suggest they self-score a call between coaching sessions so they can hear how they are sounding and where the opportunities are. When creating change, it is essential to have them own and drive the change instead of a supervisor telling them what to do. There are times where they will ask for guidance and I make recommendations. When they say, “just tell me what to do,” I then have the conversation about their growth mindset and their buy in to the process. I can coach skill, yet I cannot coach will as my good friend Sue Jones of HR4VR shared with me years ago.

The relationship building sales skills we cover are areas like checking in with the caller and asking if they have time to review different homes instead of assuming the caller is too busy or they want to have home links sent via email. We also cover the importance of asking a minimum of two open-ended questions to offer areas for relationship building through sharing commonalities and creating the emotional picture of how the caller will experience their time in the area. It is important we understand why the guest is visiting and not make assumptions. We don’t build relationships when we talk about how fun they will have at the home because it is next to a beach or ski mountain if they are coming for a celebration of life or on business. Focusing on hospitality and making it easy on the person we offer to call them back, so they don’t have to worry about calling us when they are living busy lives. Often I hear, “I am not comfortable offering to call them back because I don’t like call backs.” That is when we cover the platinum rule. The golden rule applies to a small percentage usually. If you ask “When are you looking to make a decision by? If I don’t hear from you before, can I call you?” Relationship building is soft and offerings, not hard pushes. Then we strive to re brand the company because of the amount of third-party marketing sites, yet also showing gratitude because everyone has options and there are many in our industry.

Having the monthly interactive company wide webcasts allow for multiple departments to experience learning about their coworkers and thinking about concepts such as empathy, relationship building through hospitality, practicing conflict transformation, creating buyers by empowering to self-care in an industry of service. When we offer duplicate presentations most of the supervisors like to attend both because they learn so much about their team members with their questions and comments. The goal is to bring all employees in for education and team building in a way where education happens and connection internally. My goal is to have them later approach each other about topics for support and or creating friendships that might not have happened otherwise. When we have a happy and fun work environment it comes out to the guest and motivates employees to want to stay at companies and growth in them.
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A relationship building culture comes from practicing within the company first by offering employees the tools and education they yearn for and sometimes don’t even realize it until they are experiencing it. It then flows to the guest and they hear and see it throughout the company during their stays, wanting to return year after year because something just feels good about their interactions, creating a sense of belonging. This requires mindfulness of the leadership team to continue the efforts, possibly mixing it up by bringing in a financial coach on how to reduce their debt and save for retirement, a dream coach on how to accomplish their dreams, having book clubs or implementing a platform where employee successes are shared and shouted out. The theme throughout is communication which is common among all points on building trust in relationships.

“Clear is Kind” -Brene Brown