Multiproyectos

The challenge

The Guatemalan builder and developer needed a professional evaluation of their residential, retail, and commercial holdings — mid-rise and high-rise condominiums, town homes and single family homes, retail shopping centers, malls, and commercial office buildings.

Multiproyectos wanted to learn how to increase profits from each of their business lines.

A portfolio like this creates a particular challenge. Every line of business has its own management, its own market, and its own explanation for its numbers — and each explanation sounds perfectly reasonable from inside that line. From the top of the company it gets very hard to see which lines are genuinely limited by their market and which have room to move.

That’s where an outside look earns its keep. We can compare practice across the lines, which nobody running one of them is positioned to do.

What we did

We looked at the assets first. Our principal consultants toured the real estate holdings and began making immediate recommendations to executive management and management team members. Touring in person matters more than reviewing figures. A shopping center’s problem is often visible in ten minutes on site and invisible in a spreadsheet.

We debriefed twice a day, every day. Alongside the management and sales training sessions, we sat down with the team morning and afternoon. That’s deliberate. A recommendation that lands months later arrives after conditions have moved and after everyone has lost the context. Same-day debriefs let the client test what we’d found, push back on it, and start acting while it was all still fresh.

We addressed the market, not just the company. On the final day of the visit, Robert addressed approximately 250 real estate brokers of the Capital City’s Board of REALTORS on behalf of Multiproyectos, in a full-day workshop.

That session is the piece most companies wouldn’t think to ask for, and it’s one of our favorites. Multiproyectos’ sales didn’t rest only on Multiproyectos’ people — they rested on the brokerage community moving property in that city. Spend a day making that whole community better at its job, as Multiproyectos’ guest, and you improve the channel and become the company that convenes it.

The result

The executive management and management teams collaborated with our principals to make changes that provided immediate improvements to the marketing and sales efforts of each of the conglomerate’s lines of business.

We delivered a comprehensive plan detailing our recommendations with how-to directions, helping the management team improve lead generation, sales, closings, and profits throughout the corporation.

Those how-to directions are what makes a plan survive contact with a real business. A recommendation tells you what should change. Instructions tell you who does what on Monday morning. Make sure whatever you’re handed includes the second part.

What you can use

• Across a mixed portfolio, compare practice between the lines. Each one can only see itself.
• Walk the assets. Some things are obvious on site and invisible in the reporting.
• Debrief in short cycles so people can test findings and act while the context is fresh.
• Look at the sales channel around you, not just your own staff. There’s often more upside out there.
• Ask for instructions, not just conclusions.

This one’s also a good example of the speaking and training work we deliver internationally.

Working across several lines of business? Call +1 303.500.3400 or send us a message.