Joyce Fidell may have never given a client the shirt off her back, but she has given at least one client her coat.
It happened this way: Fidell, director of relocation for Kahn Realty Companies Inc., was taking an out-of-town couple who was relocating to Chicago around the city on a rather miserable spring day. The woman, wearing a linen suit, had a suitably damp attitude about the prospect of seeing the sites in her future hometown in the drizzle, so she requested the excursion be limited to indoor points of interest.
That`s when Fidell offered up her overcoat. The woman accepted, and instead of staying undercover all day, the group was able to wander the city freely. When the day was over, Fidell sent the woman home in the coat.
”It looked better on her than it did on me,” says Fidell with a laugh. As Kahn`s relocation director, Fidell not only keeps extra coats on hand, but she also wears many hats-from tour guide to travel agent to counselor-in an effort to provide transferees with the range of services and information they need to make a move to or from the Chicago area.
”(Relocation) goes beyond just finding (them) someplace to live, or just helping people move,” says Fidell. ”It goes into how we can best match where they lived, how we can make it easier for them to come here and be happy with where they are.”
Going the extra mile
That sometimes means picking up clients at the airport, or helping them with hotel accommodations. Other times it can mean helping transferees deal with the ”sticker shock” of Chicago`s cost of living, or helping them cope with the fact that their old home may not be selling as quickly as it could.
”It`s a many-pronged attack, but basically it`s designed to help people do what they need to do, go where they need to go and come here and settle in quickly,” she says.
Fidell, an eight-year employee of the firm, also trains Kahn`s salespeople who work with transferring employees so they`re aware of the problems that need to be met. Occasionally, says may not be selling as quickly as it could.
”It`s a many-pronged attack, but basically it`s designed to help people do what they need to do, go where they need to go and come here and settle in quickly,” she says.
Fidell, an eight-year employee of the firm, also trains Kahn`s salespeople who work with transferring employees so they`re aware of the problems that need to be met. Occasionally, says Fidell, salespeople have the misconception that working with transferees doesn`t require extra effort.
Transferees have needs that are different from those of ordinary buyers or sellers, she says. Salespeople must realize that ”it`s difficult for people to move. It`s difficult to uproot lives,” Fidell says.
Meeting everyone`s needs
”The tough economic times dictate that there`s more anxiety now than ever, so we need to be able to be counselors,” she says. ”And we need to have assistance programs in helping transferring spouses find employment or help the children be set up in their destination area along with any special interests they might have, whether they play soccer or are on the swim team or whatever their interests might be.”
While relocation professionals work extensively with the transferees, they are actually hired, in most cases, by the corporation transferring the employee.
Relocation referrals come from three sources, according to Fidell. First, Kahn belongs to a national network of real estate brokers that provide services for transferring families or individuals, and refer clients to one another. A second source of business comes from ”third party” companies that work with corporations and hire companies such as Kahn to handle the buying and selling of properties. Third, Kahn and other real estate companies work directly with local corporations.
No matter what the source, Fidell says, today`s corporate clients expect a high level of service at the lowest possible cost. ”The standards of quality have been established and are constantly under review, but obviously, the need for today is making all those things happen for much less money,”
she says.
Selling the city
One of the tools Fidell uses in the relocation process is a book called
”Your Guide to City Living in Chicago.” Transferees receive the guide and its suburban companion guide as part of the initial contact with Kahn`s relocation department. Though you won`t find it on any best-seller lists, it`s helped changed more than a few lives, Fidell`s included.
Fidell wrote the guide book for Kahn Realty about five years ago, and it includes information on the city`s neighborhoods and other aspects of life in Chicago, including transportation, education, shopping, utilities and, of course, real estate.
In researching the guide, Fidell says she discovered that an important part of her job is selling the city as a whole. She also says she fell in love with the city-so much so that she decided to make a relocation of her own from the north suburbs to the downtown area. Call it a personal relationship creeping into business life.
”You have to fall in love with the city, and I was able to do that myself when I wrote (the) relocation guide and worked with associates who lived in the neighborhoods and showed me the city as they knew it. That`s really how to look at the city; it`s a city of neighborhoods,” she says.
”If you get a chance to look at an area through the eyes of someone who lives there and apppreciates it, you can fall in love,” she says, adding,
”and I did.”
