Once the deal is done, how do you keep your agents, staff, clients and stakeholders engaged and eager to work for and with the new owners and/or management?
“For me, it was a matter of controlling the story,” says Cantrell. “I was confident that my people stood only to gain by this deal—which was what I had wanted from the outset. As soon as the ink was dry on our contract, we knew we wanted to lose no time in calling all our agents and key people together to meet Rick and United CEO Dan Duffy.”
The announcement began with an air of festivity, he says, and the message was very simple; that the merger was almost a non-issue because absolutely nothing was changing—“except that we would be adding invaluable resources and economies of scale from partnership with a firm whose well-respected values and culture were much the same as ours,” Cantrell says.
As in the Benchmark deal, Palmer’s Palmer House Properties was set to gain the resources of its new owner while continuing to operate under its own brand—and like Cantrell, Palmer took a hands-on approach to bringing news of the sale, and what it would mean, to his agents and staff.
“Before the public announcement, we arranged to have our top producers meet with the HomeSmart executive team,” Palmer says. “We wanted them to get a sense of how well aligned our company cultures and missions were, that there would be no name change, and that the day-to-day would remain as it was. It was clear that combining our strengths with HomeSmart’s 100% commission model and tech-forward approach would make us better equipped and more competitive.”
Like Cantrell and Palmer, Rand was excited about the similarities between his company and their new partner, and was eager to make a company-wide announcement.
But complicating the ability for all three to effectively announce was that their deals were consummated in the midst of a global pandemic.
“Hosting a big, splashy in-person event was out of the question,” Rand says. “But we were determined that it wouldn’t hold us back. We just had to find another way.”
The initial call was an enthusiastic virtual event featuring both Rand and Hanna executives, and a recap of all the ways the historic merger would be a boon for both firms, Rand reports.
At the same time as the virtual announcement was made, Rand’s management teams were decking their office halls with banners and balloons and setting out new name badges and marketing materials as well as bags of swag for agents to pick up at their leisure.
It wasn’t quite the same as a gala would have been, Rand notes. But it was effective and, as expected, the announcement and the materials were met with great enthusiasm.
“When you are bringing your agents more than they had before,” he says, “who’s going to complain about the way it got to them?”
For Cantrell, it was pretty much business as usual.
“We had been doing our company-wide monthly meetings via Zoom for some time,” he says, “with an average of 350 agents typically attending. We did the same thing on announcement day.”
The agenda moved forward as always.
“Then, as we neared the close,” Cantrell says, “I said, ‘Oh, and by the way’—and we announced the sale.”
Simultaneously, the company sent out a mass email to both the local MLS and to all agents and staff who may not have been on the Zoom call.
“There was a moment of shock,” Cantrell says. “But I knew I had the trust of my agents—that they knew I would always do the right thing on their behalf—and that’s the way it has played out. In fact, we’ve added more than 150 agents since the merger.”
For Palmer, a virtual announcement was the only way to do it in front of 2,200 people anyway, he explains.
“With HomeSmart executives at our side, we tried to create an atmosphere in which our people would feel like a welcome part of the new team,” he says. “Then we presented the many ways in which integrating our combined tools and services would make us all more competitive and efficient.”
If the pandemic years have taught us nothing else, it has shown us that announcing via simulcast can be as good a way as any to get the transition period off to an enthusiastic start.
“Creativity is good,” says Rand. “But your passion, your outlook and your belief in the future of the new partnership are what count no matter how you make that all-important announcement.”