Bigger is Better!
BY: TIM SHEEHAN, MANAGING DIRECTOR
There are very few parents with young children who have escaped the phenomenon which is Disney's "High School Musical". Every girl wants to be Gabriella and every boy wants to be Troy (even the straight ones). While I am well past wanting to be singing and dancing through high school, I do have to admit HSM Number 3 is currently one of my favourite movies and the tunes are very catchy. People have even told me I have an uncanny resemblance to Zac Effron. You probably have already thought the same after checking out my mug shot.
As the father of 2 young girls, it became apparent that I have seen the HSM DVDs too often when I sat down to write this article for our Silver Community Link newsletter. The theme of the newsletter is "Bigger is Better". After a couple of minutes I started humming and singing to myself the words from Sharpay Evans' song "Fabulous" - which is the favourite song of my daughter Emma. There are a couple of lines which go "bigger is better and better is bigger, a little bit is never enough. Fabulous is my simple request". As much as I like the High School Musical phenomena, I just don't agree that bigger is always better when it comes to community management. I think bigger should be better, so long as it delivers to the client a number of advantages. The types of advantages that our SSKB team endeavours to deliver include:
- "We have seen it all before"
Experience is important. It helps when dealing with a situation to be able to leverage off the lessons learnt in other similar instances. Our size means we have great breadth of experience. - "We have a team to support you and ourselves"
When you engage a community manager, you need to engage a group of committed professionals who work together and with you. When dealing with big bodies corporate you need back-up. - "We have specialists"
Nobody can know it all when it comes to dealing with all the issues that confront a body corporate – running body corporate meetings, doing accounting, paying bills, marketing, work place heath and safety issues, dealing with your resident manager, managing your utilities, etc etc. You can be a jack of all trades but master of none provided in the background there are specialists ready to advise you through the maze of complex issues. Our size enables us to employ specialists who care. - "We aren't going anywhere"
We stand behind our advice. We have been around since 1995 and we have a business plan and commitment to be here for another 100 years. - Culture
Our team has a culture compass that guides us when dealing with our clients. The points on our compass include Communication – Achievement – Remarkable – Education (C.A.R.E.) - "Who can you bring to the party?"
Our size has allowed us to do some exciting things in the field of community management. We have established a relationship with the Bendigo Bank, which brought a new financial service provider to the industry. We created “the community dividend”, ensuring each body corporate receives a benefit direct to their community for the banking business they contribute. We have a specialist utilities administrator, and also a specialist partner in the body corporate insurance broker field.
At Stewart Silver King and Burns bigger also comes with a commitment to be personal. We have realised that we must develop strong relationships with our clients and communicate in an effective manner.
For all of these reasons I do think that at SSKB bigger is definitely better, and that SSKB is very much the Disneyland of community management – which I think makes me Troy (or Mickey Mouse)!
