Regional Players Shine Bright Light on Professionals

Please Tell Me About Yourself... After my Dispatch A Picture Is Worth More than a Thousand Words (Jan 3, 2002), a number of subscribers wrote in with theories about why national service providers (with the exception of CB Richard Ellis and Colliers International) don't make it easy to find their professionals online.

These theories varied from the suspicious -- "It's the fear of making it easy for competitors and headhunters to steal valuable employees" to the paranoid -- "It's just another perpetration of client fraud by large companies in their effort to market themselves and prevent employees from developing a client base that's transportable."

By contrast, several readers pointed to excellent web sites for regional firms. For example, check out Podolsky Northstar Realty Partners in Chicago (Company Information / People). Or United Properties in Minneapolis (UPnet / Employee Database). These are both substantial sites, and they provide a terrific entrée to their professionals.

My own theory is that the reluctance of large firms stems from concerns about branding and control. As a senior executive at a national brokerage told me recently, "We don't post information on our professionals because we want the freedom to choose the best team for an assignment." Translation: We don't trust clients to make judgments about our people.

Frankly, I think that this is backward thinking. But it's not out of the mainstream. Stay tuned. My prediction is that the demands for rapid information flow and transaction speed will eventually overwhelm the reluctance to provide fast, easy online access to their professionals. What do you think?

--Peter Pike