As someone who does corporate training for a living, I come face to face everyday with the reality that I should have considered getting into search engine optimization instead of training! (Half joking, of course.) With every workshop, or networking event, or "power" lunch that I attend, I run into people that seem to think the magic bullet to increasing sales is to bump up their company's search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. 

After all, everyone wants to know how to end up on page one of the Google listings, right? How much effort does your company spend on purchasing keywords? Has your organization spent gobs of money creating a site filled with meta and tags and things that search engines love? 

But what good is it to spend a pile of money to get people to email, call or visit your business, if the people your customers interact with stink or are unhappy?

Does this sound familiar to you? 

"Welcome to Acme Apartments. There is your desk. Here are the keys. Here is a site map. These are your floorplans. The golf carts should be placed in garage 304 in Building 16 West. Alarm code is 1520. Good luck!"

When I do training classes I always get a huge amount of laughter and nodding heads whenever I ask if the above scenario accurately describes how the attendees got started in multi-family. For most of us, our on boarding training was being given the keys, a map, some floorplans and being expected to automatically know how to lease an apartment. 

Why does it have to be this way? 

I guess I don't understand why so many companies spend so very little time and resources preparing their people to succeed. Why is it that training is often the first cut or the first rolled into someone else's job description when times get tough? Why are some people more excited about bidding on keywords, then on using the key words that will motivate, encourage, equip and prepare their people to succeed? 

Look, by all means get excited about your social media strategy! Get pumped up about the new brochures marketing designed. Get pumped when you buy keywords at a great price. Feel the excitement when your community is on page one on Google. 

But don't forget that people still matter. They always have and they always will. 

Until next time~thanks for reading!