Meeting Michelle Dickens from TPN Registered Credit Bureau

What do they call it when similar themes and subjects cross your  path? Synchronicity? Recently there has been a number of meaningful co-incidences within the real estate industry - one such connection was meeting Michelle Dickens, Managing Director and brainchild behind Tenant Profile Network (TPN) Registered Credit Bureau.

TPN is the largest credit bureau in Africa specialising in vetting tenants for rental properties. Michelle came up with the idea for TPN while working as a rental agent during the late '90s and became extremely frustrated when evicted tenants would rent properties in the same complex from other agents.

The two key messages that I took from our meeting, is the importance of having the right team in place and also not to dismiss partnerships.

Michelle shares her experiences and lessons learnt when it comes to building a successful business.

What are the most important business lessons that you have learnt since starting your own company?

Your PEOPLE - Surround yourself with an excellent team, and let them do their work. When Michelle started, she was doing everything herself from her garage and had to learn to let go and get extra hands on board to help her. With that said, Michelle did say that you need to be careful who you 'let go' to. If you do see that someone is not working for the business, it's necessary to learn how to cut ties (in a nice way of course!). These free loaders negatively affect the performance of the whole team, so they need to be managed as quickly and effectively as possible.

Another important business lesson is to invest in QUALITY instead of quantity; do things properly instead of just mass producing things for the sake of it.

With 9000 clients and over a million tenants on their database, what does Michelle do to keep herself motivated?

Michelle draws her energy and inspiration from people, and absolutely loves hosting client events. At these functions Michelle engages with her clients and gets feedback how her business' services can continuously be improved and how value can be added to make their lives easier.

Exercise is also important and outside of work, Michelle annually plans that she and her team participates in at least one big event e.g. Iron Man, comrades, Cape Town Cycle Tour (Argus)! etc. saying that it helps to focus the mind outside of work.

Strategic partners are important, Michelle invests in these partnerships based on having a clear understanding of what their clients need, and what will benefit them in the long run. "One of our deals took five years to put together, it was important to know exactly what we wanted to achieve with the deal and not to sell ourselves short, because if we did that we would sell our members short as well."

When it comes to marketing,  Michelle has also learnt a couple of lessons that she is happy to share. Michelle knew that she wanted to become a household brand name within the industry, and would only be able to achieve this if she knew who her core market was and had a very specific marketing plan in place, e.g. being seen in property magazines as well as hosting free seminars. These seminars are still being hosted monthly in Cape Town and Johannesburg where TPN members are invited and kept up to date with the latest trends. These sessions are also used as an opportunity to sell their other products to their clients.

An important marketing lesson, is to have a marketing plan in place and to stick to it, and learn to say 'no' to different advertising opportunities.  Only consider it if, it adds value, but more often than not it is very expensive with little return on investment. Stick to what you know. 

Integrity means honestly, which is especially important in the database management industry that Michelle operates in. It is important that the data is solely used for the purpose it was intended for. "We recently paid for information that we could easily have drawn from our own database, but our integrity would  have been compromised."

When it comes to communication unnecessary communication is a huge frustration. Long laborious e-mails are unnecessary, rather keep it short and to the point and specifically what action is required from it. 

There are pros and cons in all scenarios - being her own boss and being able to make decisions on the fly and not being prevented by unnecessary red tape is what Michelle loves most about running her own business, as well as the freedom it brings with it. However, with that said, the responsibility of running your own business, even though you have freedom, you need to be available 24/7, your work goes on holiday with you.

What I found quite interesting is that Michelle has specific sales people on the team who don't get involved in the admin or operations of the business, which is definitely something to consider as not everyone is a sales person especially if you enjoy getting your hands dirty operationally. 

Where to from here? Michelle has some exciting plans to expand the business and grow the database. One of the exciting new areas is creating an employment database, which employers can tap into to confirm previous work history and salaries. Unfortunately you won't be able to get a reference on the candidate. One day when one can get past the legalities of it, I'll chat to Michelle on how to register a 'references matters' site, where you can give an honest reference on employees and clients, helping other businesses make more informed decisions.

For more information on TPN visit www.tpn.co.za