Phil Soper (Photo: Christopher Larson)
By Tony Palermo
“One hundred years of helping you home.” Those were the words Royal LePage president and CEO Phil Soper used at last fall’s national conference to launch the start of the company’s centennial birthday celebrations. As he explains it, those seven simple words capture what Royal LePage is all about: enduring success, a client-centric culture that puts the needs of those they serve ahead of their own, and recognition of the importance of family and community.
Cross-country celebrations will be starting soon, with a whole series of events scheduled for July 2. To the best of everyone’s knowledge, that’s the date Royal LePage was born.
“We think that’s when Albert (LePage) first opened the doors. We know it was in the summer 1913 and we believe it was July 2,” says Soper. “So, on that day we’ll have a national day of celebration. And many of those will involve the communities we live and work in.”
Royal LePage is also releasing a book midway through the year that will chronicle the past 100 years. A number of past presidents of the company contributed to the book and told their stories. Soper says that while many of the stories are quite captivating, one thing in particular stood out for him as he reflected on them: how we, as people, tend to become very focussed on what’s happening now, and how we have a tendency to think things must have been much simpler in the past. But as he says, when you hear the stories from these past leaders, you realize there were some amazing challenges leaders in the company faced during the last century.
“Our founder who was a one-man operation when he started and was at the helm of the company for about 40 years,” says Soper. “He started as a young man and had a long, illustrious career. And, although it didn’t have a national presence at the time, it became quite an important regional real estate company.”
Soper says national growth occurred later on, pointing out that at one time, Royal LePage held a significant position in Coldwell Banker, now one of the world’s largest real estate companies.
It hasn’t always been smooth sailing for Royal LePage. Soper points to the 1980s and early 1990s as one of the darkest periods in the company’s history. The industry was changing but the company was trying to hang on to an antiquated, hierarchical, cookie-cutter business model. This reluctance to change almost destroyed the company.
“We went from about 8,000 Realtors down to about 4,000,” says Soper. “We were losing a tremendous amount of money and market share, and it was because there was a business model the leadership at the time believed to be tried and true.“
As an example, Soper points to the idea of the perfect office, which specified that an office should have 22 real estate agents, a manager who reported to an area manager, who, in turn, reported to a regional manager, and so on all the way up the line.
This out-of-date model caused Royal LePage to lose market share. They had to change. Once they did and introduced a more flexible model, Royal LePage started to regain market share and embarked on a period of rebuilding.
Reflecting, Soper believes one of the key takeaway lessons is about risk and the willingness to change.
“History favours the brave,” says Soper. “If you look back over time, both when the company faltered and when it surged, I’d say the periods of growth were tightly aligned with the willingness to take risk.”
Certainly, an incredible amount of growth has happened under Soper’s leadership during the past 10 years. He believes it’s been a decade of success both through organic growth and acquisitions.
“If you were to look over the last 10 years, most of the acquisitions (in the real estate industry) have been by Royal LePage, and with very good success I might add,” says Soper. “I define that success by retention. When you’re acquiring professional services firms like a real estate brokerage, the real assets of the firm are the people. The people are 100 per cent mobile and if they don’t like the acquirer, they leave. We’ve had nearly 100 per cent retention of our acquisitions over the last decade and it has certainly helped us grow.”
The real estate industry is going through a period of tremendous change. As consumers become more empowered by technology and the available data and information that was once available only to real estate professionals, Soper says it’s critically important that real estate professionals move from being information providers to providers of advice, counsel and direction. He acknowledges there are those in the industry who still believe the most important role of a Realtor is to find a house. But as he says, the research clearly shows that train has left the station.
“Consumers, and particularly young consumers, do not need help finding a house,” says Soper. “A Realtor may very well be a valuable outsourcer of that task if someone is too busy, but it’s not something consumers put a tremendous amount of value on. Yet, our research also shows that there has been no waning in the desire to use a professional adviser. But what they want is someone who is going to walk them through the complexities of a large, difficult financial transaction and provide them counsel throughout the process, just like other knowledge professionals would do. And while I think we still have a long way to go in our desire to improve professionalism in our front ranks, we intend at Royal LePage to be at the forefront of that evolving industry.”
