Do the hard and right things
Editor’s note: This article is reproduced from the WeChat public account Yuan Guobao (ID: yuanguobao1982), author:, reprinted with authorization.
Zuo Hui, who has believed in “doing the hard and right things” all his life, left the world forever on the afternoon of May 20, 2021.
“Today is extremely sad. Zuo Hui, the founder and chairman of Shell, left us due to illness. Shell has lost a founder who established our career and mission, and the housing industry has lost a leader who is always exploring and innovating. .”
In Shell’s obituary, there is respect, grief, and reluctance. From the opening of the first Lianjia store in Beijing in 2001 to now, it took Zuo Hui 20 years to turn shells into a huge company with a market value of nearly 380 billion.
Twenty years are fleeting, and Zuo Hui, who is only 50 years old, has no chance to complete endless commercial exploration.
Regrets are endless. But problems are coming one after another-with Zuo Hui’s death, the problem is left to the shells, to the industry, and to the whole society:
First, after Zuo Hui’s death, how did he treat the extremely opposed public opinion evaluations?
Secondly, without Zuo Hui’s shell, who will be at the helm in the future?
The third is, will the industry undergo a reshuffle due to this major turmoil?
Fourthly, anti-monopoly is in the ascendant. After losing the shell of the helmsman, can the adjustment be completed as soon as possible?
First, divided public opinion, please give the deceased the last dignity
A healthy society should not have only one voice. However, Zuo Hui’s death showed an exaggerated split in online public opinion.
The praisers regard Zuo Hui as a disruptor in China’s real estate agency industry-real housing, real estate broker professionalization, and ACN network (broker cooperation network) and other models have become Zuo Hui’s healthy development of the entire industry , The greatest contribution made.
From the afternoon of May 20, 2021 until now, many media have made various interpretations of Zuo Hui’s life deeds:
“Of all the intermediaries, Lianjia is undoubtedly the one that is the closest to the complete elimination of’fake listings’; Shell’s real estate dictionary, in a sense, has become a database comparable to MLS in the United States, and MLS is The American intermediary made it through the strength of the industry; Shell recruited a large number of undergraduate graduates, and real estate agents finally began to professionalize.” This is a corner of the views of the praisers.
However, mourning and remembrance all ended up: In an industry that uses information gaps to make money, the shells led by Zuo Hui gradually realized information equality, created fairness for consumers, strengthened themselves, and reshaped them. Industry.
However, the news of Zuo Hui’s death has also been cited on some platforms.People criticized and even cursed.
For example, after the news of Zuo Hui’s death on the “Sina Finance” Weibo, in more than 10,000 comments, some people accused Lianjia and Shell of monopolizing the listings, making renters and buyers have to pay higher costs. The young wallets and hearts of the young people who have just entered the society have all made a stab at it.
The more exaggerated situation appears in Zhihu. In an article mourning Zuo Hui, some extreme comments emerged: Have a drink to celebrate, and arrange a street light for you…
How to treat such a split in public opinion? How should people view Zuo Hui?
“There is one thing I am certain: wealth is not the only evaluation criterion.” This is Yoyo Luming’s point of view. Similarly, the author believes that ethics is not the only criterion when judging business, and when looking at business, emotions cannot be greater than everything.
To a certain extent, today’s public opinion context has fallen into a “black and white” binary differentiation. Especially in recent years, people have become far more likely than entrepreneurs who rely on the Internet to accumulate huge wealth. Past disgust and criticism.
However, there may be some deviations in evaluating business from the perspective of social ethics. Because of this, with Zuo Hui’s departure, perhaps, people should leave some last respect to the deceased.
Second, Zuo Hui is gone, who should carry the banner of shells?
The dead are gone, and the living should keep improving.
From October 2002, Lianjia launched the second-hand commercial housing re-mortgage business. By 2019, it has 8,000 offline stores, covering 28 cities across the country, with 130,000 employees, and annual real estate transactions exceeding 1 trillion yuan.
At this time, the most direct question for this huge team and this huge company is: Who will be Zuo Hui’s successor?
This is a cruel conjecture and a challenge that the current shell has to face.
Let’s change our mindset. In fact, Zuo Hui, who has been in charge of the company for 20 years from Lianjia to Shell, has completed the “difficult and correct” three steps:
One, standardization. From things to people, Zuo Hui has basically completed the professionalization and service standardization of real estate agents.
Second, dataization. For more than ten years, Zuo Hui led a team to conduct a systematic inventory of housing listings in major cities across the country, and now has an exclusive database of “real housing listings”.
Three, online platform. Starting from the digitalization of data and process lines, Shell Search has now settled in many intermediary companies.
At this time, what helm is the shell most need? It’s better to ask, what is the most need for shells now?
The author believes that it is a strategic adherent who can transform the advantages accumulated in the past of Shell to the greatest extent, rather than a transformation and changer.
Since its listing, Shell has gradually run its business model through, and finallyLast year turned losses into profits. For this reason, what Shell needs at this time is a person who has not only deeply participated in the development process of Lianjia Shell, but also has a personality and style similar to Zuo Hui, who can continue to improve Shell’s performance.
He has a foresight, likes to study strategy, and at the same time he is able to pay close attention to details and pay attention to system construction-Zuo Hui has a distinct personality.
For example, in 2004, Zuo Hui proposed the red line and yellow line rules within Lianjia, prohibiting employees from eating the price difference: the red line was dismissed, and the yellow line was found to be dismissed twice. This directly led to the two groups of trading brokers at the Lianjia headquarters, leaving their posts within three months. At that time, Zuo Hui withstood the pressure of personnel changes and began to train brokers from scratch internally.
This is the embodiment of Zuo Hui’s vision and courage.
All of the above are pushing Shell CEO Peng Yongdong to the front of the stage. According to related reports, a person who has been in contact with Peng Yongdong and Zuo Hui said that Peng Yongdong has the ability to “see the essence at a glance” and follow the left. Hui has great tacit understanding and highly consistent values.
Time goes forward. In 2010, Zuo Hui invited Peng Yongdong to join Lianjia to be responsible for the Internet business. During this period, the real listings promoted by Peng Yongdong also became the moat of the chain family.
Have long-term practical experience in the operation and development of the company, and have similar values and personality to Zuo Hui. It can be said that as the “second person” in the Lianjia Group after Zuo Hui, Peng Youdong is both the trader of the shell platform business. It is also the biggest executor of Zuo Hui’s strategy.
In the next step, he may have a more important identity-according to Shell News, the board of directors will make appropriate arrangements for corporate governance and related matters, and make an announcement in due course within two weeks.
At that time, everything will come to light.
3. Shells suffered from this major turmoil, is the industry ushering in a reshuffle?
The market reaction was fierce-on the afternoon when Zuo Hui died of illness, the pre-market price of shells fell by more than 10%.
It can be said that the core of competition is to defeat the opponent. Now, from the perspective of shell competitors, Zuo Hui, the most powerful player in the industry, is gone, so a new round of competition and conflict is inevitable.
Actually, Lianjia and Shell led by Zuo Hui came along and had at least three “fierce” confrontations with their peers. In 2004, Zuo Hui recruited peers for signing a three-party contract and not paying the price difference. The “offensive”. In 2009, due to Zuo Hui’s decision to adopt the real housing model, his peers complained.
And in 2018, the rushSuddenly reached the apex. At that time, Zuo Hui went online to find a room with Shell. With the full coverage of housing information in intermediary transactions across the country, Lianjia has formed a “real estate dictionary” on its hands. This has also directly triggered the worries and panic among the peers that Lianjia tried to eat the entire market.
“Being both a referee and an athlete.” I love Xie Yong, chairman of my family group, and once commented on Shell’s behavior in finding a house to master upstream and downstream.
Nowadays, Zuo Hui’s departure has caused huge turmoil in Shell. In the face of the trillion-dollar market of real estate intermediary transactions, existing competitors and potential competitors are starting to look at them——
As the main force of the “Anti-Shell Alliance”, Anjuke’s rival, Anjuke, has submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on April 8 this year. The next step is to have capital assistance. Anjuke’s offensive against Shell is bound to Will increase day by day.
Similarly, Yao Jinbo, the founder of 58.com, has already acted frequently. Previously, after Alibaba was punished by 18.2 billion yuan, Yao Jinbo called for the supervision of antitrust investigations on Shell.
In addition, Shell’s potential competitors are also strong enough—whether it is the Tmall Haofang jointly built by Ali and E-House, or small and medium-sized players on the local battlefield, including Fang Duoduo listed on the US stock market, they are all against Shell. A kind of “encirclement” trend.
However, Shell also has its own absolute core competitiveness.
As mentioned above, the three-step strategy Zuo Hui has gone through in the 20 years since he took charge of the company: real listings, professionalization of brokers, and ACN network. Now, it has become a mountain that peers cannot bypass.
Especially in 2018, the ACN network was launched after Shell House Search was launched-all housing information sharing on the platform, brokers of different brands and different stores can share information resources, and realize commission sharing based on transaction contribution .
It can be said that the shell disintegrated many “enemies” from the inside in one fell swoop. For example, the “Anti-Shell Alliance” previously initiated by Yao Jinbo, together with Centaline Property, 21st Century Real Estate, Vanke Real Estate, etc., resisted shell search for housing. Several of its major rivals, under the “temptation” of ACN, have “turned back” one after another.
From this point of view, other players in the real estate intermediary industry want to completely replace shells in the short term, unless there is a “dimensionality reduction blow” called by Wang Xing.
On the other hand, on May 20, Shell released its 2021 Q1 report-data shows that Shell’s revenue in the first quarter was 20.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 190.7%, and net profit was 1.059 billion yuan.The adjusted net profit was 1.502 billion yuan.
It can be said that, compared to replacing shells, how not to be swallowed up by rapidly expanding shells is perhaps the biggest challenge for players at this stage.
Zuo Hui’s achievements are worthy of recognition.
Compared with the era of black real estate intermediaries, Lianjia has gradually solved the problem of the authenticity of listings in the past ten years-a national real estate resource database, which was collected by a private company in a few years It is indeed a pioneering work to organize and create huge commercial value.
As Zuo Hui said before his death: “The world will be a little different because of us.”
In an industry that relies on information gaps to make money, to reshape the chaos of the industry, and gradually bring fairness to the ground-Zuo Hui’s life has truly achieved subversive business innovation, and has also led the industry to a healthy development.
From this point of view, Zuo Hui’s departure is a huge loss to Chinese business.
But on the other hand, just like people’s comments on Zuo Hui, the explosive development of the shell system in recent years has also brought “development pains.”
More importantly, the “big stick” of antitrust is still hanging on top of the shell.
To a certain extent, shells at this stage are gradually becoming “dominant”-as of the end of 2020, shells have about 45,000 stores, 470,000 brokers, and more than 260 brokerage brands. In 2019, Shell Search’s real estate transaction GTV (total transaction value) has reached 2.1 trillion yuan, occupying 10% of the market share.
More importantly, Shell has gradually shown a tendency to use “industry superiority to seek benefits from insufficient competition”-for example, in February 2021, Shell began to “adjust commissions” in Chongqing and other regions, and will charge The buyer’s 2% service fee is adjusted to 1% for the seller and 2% for the buyer. But in fact, commissions, transaction taxes and other fees will eventually be transferred to the buyers, which is equivalent to Shells in disguising the increase in the buyer’s commission from 2% to 3%.
Antitrust is always on the road. This is a common topic. The story of “the young dragon slayer finally becomes the evil dragon” is not uncommon in this land. However, there is still much left for people to think deeply.
For society as a whole, how to treat things more objectively and correctly when a public figure passes awayThe test is not only the ability of people to think independently, but also the strength of the correct guidance of public opinion.
For the entire industry, and even more companies that are caught in the high pressure of “antitrust” at the moment, being in awe will never go out of style.
In addition, it is the thinking about “non-reform dividend”.
There was a point of view that the core of the rise of shells is to collect housing information from all over the country and complete their own information database-but this work should be done by the local government, but it has not been completed. . It’s also what people should want, but they don’t realize what they want.
The point of view continues to point out: It is precisely because of the incomplete reforms in certain areas and the inadequacy of local government work that people’s needs are not better met, which releases a series of “evil dragons” from the root. “.
Perhaps, this is also the next step of antitrust work, which is really worth thinking about.