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ROD: This is Rod Santomassimo with The Massimo Minute and this week our special guest is Brad Ahrens of Commercial Properties, Inc., a CORFAC affiliate and leader of the Ahrens Industrial Team in Phoenix, Arizona. Brad’s one of those “Young Guns”, not a seasoned veteran but still doing a phenomenal job in the marketplace today. Not only is Brad consistently finding opportunities but he is closing them as well. So Brad, welcome to The Massimo Minute.

BRAD: Thank you, Rod. Thanks for having me today.

ROD: Well, we’re really excited about sharing some insight with you. I know our listeners are as well. Let me get right to it. You have been a commercial real estate broker for eight years, correct?

BRAD: Correct.

ROD: I need to disclose that Brad is a client of ours at The Massimo Group, as such I know you’re having a phenomenal year. Tell us, is this your best year ever? Is this going to be as good as it gets in this challenging market? When you look back at this year, 2010, with all the challenges, what are you going to think? Are you on the upswing? Are you on the plateau? Where are you in your career?

BRAD: Rod, that’s an excellent question. Yes, this is my best year ever and more importantly I am definitely on the upswing. I believe that probably in the next year or two I will be a million dollar producer.

ROD: And you think things can get even better?

BRAD: I do. I do.

ROD: Okay. And when you say things get better, you said that mystical threshold of a million dollars. Are you saying you have created a position of being a consistent million dollar producer?

BRAD: I do. I believe the best brokers can succeed in a down market. And as the vast majority of us business began to slack off in 2008, 2009. A big key component for myself was in the end of 2009 I really began to evaluate my business, how it was performing, where I wanted to go. And although times are challenging you need to foresee or find opportunities for you and your clients. And little props for you, biggest thing I did was I turned to the 30-day Broker Challenge which was a huge awakening. The program helped me identify areas of my business that needed serious help. From there we’ve began a relationship together. The key was getting back to basics, making sure that things are being marketed, things are being announced, consistent prospecting is huge, time management, outsourcing are all key components to my success this year. And, this is just the first year of my revamp, or RAMP Up as you would say. Considering the deals we are doing now, if this continues as expected, then there’s no reason I shouldn’t be a consistent million dollar producer in two to three years.

ROD: Thank you for the kind words. We are so happy and quite frankly proud of your new found success. But Brad you mentioned somewhere in there time management. I know you, you’re a stickler for time management, you allocate times to prospect, and you allocate certain times to do other things in your day. You manage your day. And more importantly, you do it consistently—and this is the key—you consistently prospect and you are consistently building a presence in the market. I know your newly implemented market update mailing has been a phenomenal success for you. But some might say, ‘you know what, I can do similar things,’ but I also know the Phoenix market is extremely competitive and you somehow differentiated yourself. So tell me, what do you think you’re doing to differentiate yourself in the marketplace?

BRAD: Well, great question. I believe the key is a lot of brokers who have been in the business for a number of years, they’ve gone through a couple of down cycles, have become a little complacent. And most importantly I consistently reinvest in myself, and my business. I look at my personal brokerage business as an actual company. I think there are many brokers who basically work from paycheck to paycheck, or deal to deal. They may have a plan but they don’t really view their activities as a business. It is really important that, like any business, you have a marketing department, a research and development. You have to have a client retention program and client prospecting program – an active sales department. All of those things that make up most companies today need to be included in you brokerage business.

ROD: The focus is business. Brad, these are all things we have worked on over the past several months. I can attest you are investing in yourself and growing. But Brad you’re being a little shy since I know what else you do. Beyond investing in yourself, and certainly coaching is absolutely an investment in yourself there no doubt about it, but I also know you invest in your business in other ways. You have become the master of delegation and outsourcing. Give us just one example. I know you do a lot of these things, what specifically do you delegate?

BRAD: Probably the biggest thing that I delegate is, like anyone in this business you’ve got a million people you could talk to on a daily basis. It’s really one of the key things I did in 2010 was taking a look at who are the guys that I want to be working with here in the next couple of years and who are the clients that I’ve had in the past that, yeah they were clients, I made a little bit of money here and there but in a few cases, it was not the best return on my investment of time. There are contacts that need to be touched on a monthly, quarterly or an annually basis. But is that someone that my time needs to be devoted to daily, weekly or monthly? I’ve kind of stepped back and said, okay, well I can take a portion of these contacts and allocate them out to, whether it be a virtual assistant or a personal assistant. And then refocus on spending the majority of my time with the top tier clients, the big hitters, the multi asset owners, just the clientele that I want to work with.

ROD: Well perfect, absolutely perfect. Here’s my take away. You are not an individual broker who just runs around looking for deals. You are Brad Ahrens, CEO of the Ahrens Industrial Team within Commercial Properties, Inc., in Phoenix, Arizona. Brad, thank you so much for your time and your insight. And congratulations on having a great year in such a challenging market. I know you’ll be successful. I know you are going to be a consistent million dollar performer. Brad, thank you very much.

BRAD: Rod, thank you for having me. I look forward to our continued success and coaching with the Massimo Group.

ROD: Until next time, this is Rod Santomassimo with The Massimo Minute. We’ll talk to you soon. Take care.

In an earlier blog post I outlined the three key variables of top commercial real estate brokerage success. They were skill, will and thrill. You need the skill set to service your client, the willingness to do the work and ultimately possess the thrill of being a commercial real estate broker. Seems simple enough, except there is one distinct problem for many brokers who are struggling in today’s market.

Hopefully you have been told, since how knows when, that “you can be anything you want to be”. And the fact is anyone can be anything they want to be. Let’s face it; commercial real estate brokerage is not rocket science, but it can be tremendously challenging. There are brokers who have far greater skill than others in specific areas in the practice. And yes, they likely are top producers. Experience is by far one of the greatest skills to progress a listing to closing. Experience affords a broker the skill to get a deal closed.

But experience alone is not the only factor to success. There are first year brokers who have made over $1,000,000. Relationships are also an integral factor in success. Traditional approaches, coupled with today’s technology create a plethora of relationship building opportunities. Anyone can build relationships. Anyone can gain experience and yes, anyone can earn $1,000,000 or more a year.

Unfortunately the ability to do something has little correlation to accomplishment. Success requires will. Will you put in the work? Will you become a market expert? Will you invest in yourself, in your personal brokerage business? Will you?

For those that say “I can’t”.. then the obvious answer is “you won’t”. I can’t always equals you won’t.

For those of you who say “I can”, I say yes you can! But will you?

ROD SANTOMASSIMO: This is Rod Santomassimo of the Massimo Group. Welcome to our next session of the Massimo Monthly. This is where we talk to some of the best and brightest industry leaders in regards to what they are doing in today’s marketplace to be successful.

Today we have the extreme privilege of having Mark Myers of Marcus and Millichap’s Chicago office joining us. Mark, welcome.

MARK MYERS: Thank you, Rod, I appreciate it. It’s a pleasure to be here.

ROD: Mark, maybe some of the people out there don’t know you, believe it or not. Certainly, I know of you because of your level of consistency throughout your career, especially, at Marcus. I don’t want to embarrass you, but I want to list a couple of your accomplishments… you’ve had a Sales Recognition Award for seemingly forever. A National Achievement Award of Sales, again, 10 or 15 years…Chairman’s Club…Chairman’s Circle of Excellence…top 10 investment professionals… all have been Marcus and Millichap. Mark, certainly, you’ve had some great consistency throughout your tenure. Can I have a little indication of how long you’ve been doing this commercial brokerage practice, Then, how long have you been with Marcus?

MARK: I’ve been with Marcus and Millichap 17 years, approximately. I started with them after being an asset manager for a small real estate syndicator. I had my rough spots like a lot of other folks in the industry. I would just encourage people just to keep at it. I graduated from Wheaton College, a small private school in Illinois after growing up in Arizona. I met my wife there and her family is from the Chicago area. So, I stayed here. I, literally, could not find a job in 1983. A friend of mine whose sister was an accountant hired me as a bookkeeper. I started off in a small real estate vacation shop. Then, I went to a real large shop. That was just before the tax changes, TRA86, when they changed the depreciation laws. Two of the three companies I worked for went bankrupt, because of the tax laws themselves. I worked for a small real estate investor for 6 ½ years. I went to Kellogg Business School during that time and met a broker who had sold a couple of properties to us and really liked what he did for a living. Frankly, I saw the kind of money he made. It really wasn’t that big of money at the time. Compared to what I was making, it was. I decided that’s what I wanted to do with the rest of my career. I interviewed with a few brokerage companies. I picked Marcus and Millichap. I felt that they were a good fit for me. They were a very entrepreneurial company. I wanted to be an entrepreneur…in essence a company within a company…I liked that very much about Marcus and Millichap. They’ve allowed me to spread my wings and grow a team here and it’s been very profitable, very successful. I thank God for it and it has been great.

ROD: That’s fantastic and certainly you have the same hurdles, challenges, success over the last 17+ years. You’ve seen a lot of cycles to say the least. We use to say “Stay alive until 95”, then, we had 2001. Recently we thought it was going to be “heaven in 2011”. Tell me about this, you used the magic word where you said, team. A lot of brokers today are working in teams. What’s the depth? Tell us about the team you’ve built, give us a quick review of what their responsibilities are.

MARK: I know this call goes out to a broad audience. I want to encourage people if you’re just starting off in the business and you’re with a medium to large size company, you can’t afford to have your own marketing person and your own business development people, like I have. What you can do is utilize the resources of the firm. Typically, you’ll have a regional manager, a managing director, that will support you or they wouldn’t have hired you. If they don’t support you, find another firm, obviously. Ask that person to go on appointments with you, train you, teach you what a cap rate is, what a gross rent multiplier is, get you involved in the right real estate courses and use the resources of your company. When you sell to clients, make sure you’re selling your company, not your own track record because you don’t have one yet. If you’re a veteran in the industry, I would encourage you to offload everything that is not making you money to an administrative or a support person or a person that can help you lift…you know, you’re not Atlas, you’re not trying to lift the world yourself…you want a team of people around you. What people have encouraged us to do over the years is to form teams and actually, there’s an exercise that you can do where you take what you want to make or what you do make on an annual basis divided by the hours you actually work. Figure out what your hourly rate is and ask yourself this question, “Whatever I’m doing in a certain task, would I hire somebody for that amount of money to do that task”? If your calculation works out to $200 an hour, would I pay someone $200 an hour to make copies for me? Obviously not. Would I pay them $200 an hour to answer the phone? Obviously, not. So, hire somebody at whatever market rate it costs for those functionalities and then, you do the things that have to do with meeting clients, creating proposals, presenting proposals, negotiating transactions because that’s where the dollars are made that translate into $200 an hour. Otherwise, you’re underpaying yourself for tasks that you shouldn’t be doing.

ROD: Perfect, Mark. I’m a great believer in that delegating and outsourcing. I’d love to hear this is working with you. Mark. Let me ask you, how many folks are on your team? It is just yourself and it’s a flexible team or do you have a structured team in itself?

MARK: We have three people on a team here in my office. But, then, we are part of a looser team, if you will, where we do some deals together and some deals apart from one another that consists of about 20 other people in various offices around the country.
Then, as a part of a national platform we have, if you will, a team of 1,300 other real estate agents around the country in 76 offices that are part of the national Marcus and Millichap firm that are all licensed real estate agents, many of them brokers themselves. They also help us find buyers for our properties. We do the same for them. There is a good networking system. Marcus and Millichap has a corporate policy as part of their culture that you have to share information. You cannot pocket listings. You have to put them in the Marcus and Millichap system and that’s one of the big advantages of our firm for the other agents in the firm…especially, the newer people that can work on anybody’s listing and it’s also an advantage to the sellers. We always represent sellers. We are a seller’s representation firm and the seller wants the property exposed to as many potential qualified buyers as possible. That sharing of information helps. So, in effect there’s a small team here that’s part of a larger looser team where we do some deals with them, they do some deals with us. They do deals with others. They do deals themselves. We’re part of a very large team at Marcus and Millichap…the support people, too.

ROD: What type of product do you focus on? Did you focus on a product there in Chicago or more regionally?

MARK: Yes. We sell senior’s housing properties in our group. Anything ranging from senior’s apartments all the way to sub-acute or even long-term acute care hospitals to what they refer to as LTAC. Again, when I was an asset manager before I was a broker, I had a general partner who encouraged me to specialize, specialize, and specialize. He had been a broker himself. He learned that whether you’re selling senior family homes…in which case you want to concentrate on a specific market area…a specific product type…a specific way of marketing yourself or commercial product…whether you’re in self-storage or industrial office, retail market family, you want to be a specialist. You should become such a specialist that in the first 10 minutes of meeting a client, they should be able to say to themselves, “This person knows more about my business, than I do. They know what its worth. They know how to market it, how to position it in the market. They understand my weak spots”. You really want to not just put yourself out there in words, as they say, but in deeds and have actually done it, have actually learned it. So that they have the confidence that when they give you their…you have to understand some people, at least that we work with, are giving you their life savings in their hand. It is a very serious matter. It’s not as serious as, obviously, being on an operating table with a surgeon. But, in a financial sense, it’s about the same. Someone is giving you a 5, 10 million dollar asset to sell…sometimes a 20 hundred million asset to sell or group of assets. That represents 90% of their net worth in most cases. They’re handing that to you to maximize the value of that and that’s why it’s a very important function that we serve in the economy. We are creating liquidity and we are getting people the most amount of dollars that we can. There’s a process to do that and it takes a team effort and it takes a lot of different skill-sets. The sellers have to feel confident that we possess those skill-sets and can execute them.

ROD: Fantastic, Mark. Let me ask you one final question. You touched upon being a specialist. You touched upon valuing your time and delegating and outsourcing where ever possible. You talked about utilizing your company resources and, yes, we talked about you being a consistent performer for almost 20 years now. But, here’s the question I have for you and the final question. The market has obviously changed the last several years for a lot of folks out there. Most of the brokerage community has not been through a cycle like this. You and I have, but others haven’t. Have you adapted, have you changed at all, what have you done in regard to today’s marketplace?

MARK: Initially, we did not change. I’ll admit, we didn’t change as much as we should have because I don’t believe any of us who were even senior in the industry realized how deep this dip was going to be and how many troubles we were going to have particularly, in the area of obtaining financing. I would say 6 of 10 deals we do today or 60% of the deals we do today are done all cash, believe it or not. Even 14 or 15 million dollar deals, people are stroking a check for that. They are not going out to get financing. There just is not a great deal of financing in the marketplace. Are there lenders? Of course, there are. There are specialty lenders, and senior’s housing, I’m sure there are some for self-storage and multi-family and office and so forth. There are lenders out there. Also, in the multi-family sector, in the senior’s housing sector, there is the government entity financing group, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and HUD. But, nonetheless, we didn’t adapt to that initially. What have we done since we figured out that we need to adapt even further. We’re testing motivation a great deal more. No longer should you take an engagement or a seller who seems to be motivated or they might list the property at 10 million dollars but you think they might take 8 million. You really need to know on the front end. Will they conform to the market? If you bring them four solid offers after talking to a hundred qualified buyers, and all those offers are in the 8 to 9 million range, are they going to sell the property? Can they sell the property? Make sure you understand what the debt-loan was on the property. Was the debt pre-payable? You need to understand if the property is deliverable, if the seller will conform to the market and then you need to think ahead of time what buyer is going to purchase this asset and are they going to be able to obtain financing because it pencils out, it underwrites, there’s that coverage. Or if it doesn’t pencil out, are there buyers out there that will for whatever reason want to pay cash for this property or put down a fairly hefty down payment? If you cannot answer those questions on the front end, you’re just going to end up taking a lot of engagements like we did and expired some listings because we just didn’t do a good enough job checking motivation on the front. We are doing a much better job of that now. Sellers are also conforming to the market much better. I think sellers were waiting to see if the market was going to fall further. I think buyers were waiting to see if people say don’t try to catch a falling knife like in the stock market, same in real estate. Buyers were trying to figure out how far is the market going to go? I think they finally gave up and said, “You know what, there are bargains out there, let’s go out and buy something”. So, test motivation, visit your clients, block and tackle, execute, but at the end of the day, test motivation. Don’t drive 300 miles to go see somebody until you know for sure they are a seller and they have something that’s sellable.

ROD: Wow. All those reasons are why you are one of giants in commercial real estate brokerage. Mark Myers, we thank you so much for your valuable time. We appreciate you not outsourcing this interview. Mark, any final words for our audience?

MARK: Again, I would just say keep putting yourself under the tutelage of people like Rod and his company and others who will train you how to block, how to tackle and just go out there and execute it. Use your own personality and your own skill-set and your own business history and take all of those talents together, which are God-given. Just keep at it. It’s a long process. It takes a lot of effort. If you want to be a professional athlete and can make a million dollars a year, how much effort does that take? Well, that same amount of effort it’s going to take to make a million dollars a year in any field including brokerage.

ROD: Mr. Myers, we thank you so much for your valuable time. Until next time, this is Rod Santomassimo of the Massimo Group with this version of our Massimo Monthly.

Next time, we’ll try to get someone…I don’t know if we can…who is as gigantic as Mark Myers, himself. Until then, we’ll talk to you soon. Thank you.

MARK: Thank you very much.

During a flight to my latest speaking engagement I was reading Collier’s “Knowledge” magazine. There was a great article regarding the expectations of current Generation V workers. That’s “V” as in “virtual”.

This made me think about all the potential impacts that Generation V will have on the commercial real estate brokerage industry as well as individual brokers in the years ahead. As if social marketing wasn’t enough of a paradigm shift for many seasoned veterans, we will now to need to contend the challenges of the V generation.

Truth be told, we are already in the V generation and have been for several years. Virtual assistants are no longer a revolutionary concept. Perhaps you hired a part time assistant who worked from their house? This the first step towards “V integration”. You know, I should trademark that one.. “Vintegration”.

Our company is already virtually integrated. I home-office in North Carolina yet have a marketing team in Florida. Our cold calling team is in Minnesota and our research team is in India. Not Indiana. India. Our coaching clients are located throughout North America, but we have only physically met a fraction of them. However we see them all each time we speak, via web camera and other standard software packages.

But what impact will Generation V have on commercial real estate brokerage. Today information is everywhere and each day another market exchange is launched on the internet. Is a broker’s “market knowledge” so commoditized that it is irrelevant? Brick and mortar offices with receptionists, assistants and internal marketing teams are no longer viable business solutions. Personal private offices are more the product of legacy and ego constraints than they are of necessity. Will the broker’s role evolve to more of a transaction manager, and if so are project management skills more important than deal skills?

Perhaps commercial leases and sales will go the way of CarMax and Ebay. Either here is the price, or here is the product/need, go ahead and bid on it. If so, where does the broker fit?

The bottom line is brokerage has historically been a belly to belly business. But IT WILL become an exchange of an owner/user sitting in a coffee shop having a webcam conversation with his real estate advisor/project manager, who is located across the country (or world) on an iPad/Android like device. Either way, like social marketing you can either adapt or die. For now enjoy your plush office space.. just don’t get too comfortable.

The first quarter of 2010 has now come and gone and many brokers are finding small changes from the prior calendar year.  Others are finding velocity, at least in terms of inquiries, if not transactions, have risen dramatically.  The difference is not a matter of market or sector of focus, but on performance.  The greatest increase in client inquiries and interest  are being generated by brokers who also have the highest failure rate.  These are the commercial brokers who will be the leading income producers both this year and next.  To them failure is an option, why – well you will need to read on.

I was recently reviewing “The Best Damn Sales Book Ever” by Warren Greshes, a national best seller.  Warren makes the point that the salesperson who gets to the most “no’s” in business is usually the top salesman in an organization.   Seems counterproductive on the surface, but it’s ironically accurate.  Top performers don’t mind getting “no’s”.  Yes, rejection is a failure in terms of not getting a listing, leasing assignment or tenant rep assignment, but it is also substantial proof that you are at least getting in front of enough decision makers to build a business.

For example, at the Massimo Group we make between 300 and 1,000 calls a month to potential clients.  Heck, I personally make between 300 and 400 myself each and every month.  Why?  Because I know that if we contact less, our business will suffer and if we contact more, our business will grow.  To me, getting a “no” is the second best possible answer, after “yes” of course.  The “maybes” and “call me in x months” are the worse replies of all.  This is not a decision, it’s just a way to keep a fish on the hook while it frantically twists to get back in the water.  Who wants that?  Not me.

So for all those who feel “failure is NOT an option”, and suggest, perhaps you are not making enough effort in your sales – it’s ok to fail, in fact it’s one of the best barometers of success!

When I was young my mom forced me to eat peas.  Even today my wife “strongly encourages” me to eat them.  I don’t like peas.  Yes they are nutritious, full of vitamins and essential stuff, but for me far from delicious.  Some peas are simply harder to swallow than others.

When it comes to commercial real estate brokerage, it is also essential that you take your peas, or in our case your “P’s”.  When you look at top performers, you quickly recognize that they implement a daily regimen of P’s.  Here are the top five P’s that every commercial real estate broker should follow if they want to grow up to be big and strong, or more applicably, become a top producer in their respecting market.

1.       Planning – need I say more?  You can’t simply “wing it to win it”.

2.       Prospecting – you cannot “tweet” your way to long term success.

3.       Presence – #2 and #3 complement one another.  They are, not opposites.  There is no greater force for securing new business and for clients to find you than the synergistic meshing of prospecting with presence.

4.       Performance – it’s great to plan (#1), but you won’t produce without performing the tactics and strategies outlined in your plan.

5.       Persistence – There is a fine line between persistence and  a pain in the butt, but very few brokers come close to ever crossing it.  Push the envelope, without becoming the pain.

Practice the 5 aforementioned P’s and you will find you will more easily acquire the most important P of all… production.

It seems contradictory for a professional coach, motivator and mentor to suggest that there is one, overwhelmingly important word a commercial real estate broker must use and use regularly.  But once you appreciate the value of this one word, you will then understand why only a small percentage of all commercial real estate brokers make a vast majority of the commercial real estate commissions.  You will better appreciate what specifically top performers do that the rest of the brokerage community does not. 

The vast majority of commercial real estate brokers get caught in the minutia of details in regards to running personal brokerage business.  We all understand that commercial brokerage requires managing a manifold of responsibilities; however, top performers both command and understand the value of their personal time.  Top performers outsource, delegate and/or delete those activities that do not generate their targeted level of income. 

Probably the best advice I received during my commercial real estate career was to create a “Not To Do List”.  Ironically, the concept was presented to me during a seminar I attended, hosted by Bob Corcoran.  Bob is a residential real estate coach, however, he was presenting to the commercial organization I was affiliated with at the time.  Since then I have had the good fortunate of befriending Bob, and he is one member of my personal board of advisors.

Earlier this week I contacted several associates, potential alliances and promising promotional sources which all had the same basic theme.  The messages were professional and respectful, but more importantly they were decisive.  For all three, the message was “no”.    However, this was very hard to do.  As entrepreneurs we all strive for the positive.  We strive to be everything and anything to our clients.  There is no room for “no”.  It’s YES I CAN!

But here is the secret.  The more you say “no”, the more you can do.  The longer your individual “not to do list” becomes, the more productive your “To Do” list gets.  Go ahead, and give it a try, just make sure you put a “thank you” at the end.

Statistics overwhelming demonstrate that coaching is one of the mostsuccessful decisions of individuals looking to maximizing results.  Athletes, Fortune 500 CEOs and top performing residential agents all have coaches.  Recently a growing trend in commercial real estate is the hiring of a coach who specialized in the industry. 

The very first question we ask anyone when they contact our company regarding our coaching services is “Why do you feel you need a coach?”  This is followed up with a more telling question “What does a successful coaching relationship look like to you?”  Time and time again the inquirer outlines the main reasons our client’s desire, select and value coaching. 

1)      A coach will work with you in defining what the most important elements to focus on based on your personal vision of success.  Your role in your organization and possibly on your team has a significant impact on what is going to maximize your and/or your teams’ production or commission income. 

2)      Coaching will create clear, and more importantly, relevant metrics to measure your progress and provide the critical feedback during the journey.  Goals and vision are great, especially if they are clear and committed to, but without a metrics, they are meaningless.   More often than not, sales meetings and pipeline meetings are focused on the result or effect and not the metrics that drive the cause.  Without metrics, success is not planned, it is simply accidental.

3)      A coach should work with you in not only monitoring and providing feedback on your behavior, but should also assist in defining the actions to reach specific goals.  The bridge between planning and production is performance.  If you are going to achieve a goal you have not reached before, you must change your behavior.  

4)      The coach will highlight both the positive progression as well as any regression made.  A coach will help identify alternatives if there is an obstacle to performance or behaviors.  Without a consistent review of the aforementioned metrics, action plans and results, the likelihood of achievement on what truly drives income depreciates exponentially. 

5)      Hiring a coach is an investment in your greatest asset – YOU.  A professional commercial real estate coach will be your partner, your motivator, your confidant and your trusted advisor. 

Coaching is certainly not for everyone.  No doubt many less seasoned and less successful commercial real estate brokers look at items such as coaching, training and education as a cost.  With this perspective, coaching would rarely be successful.  Coaching is an investment.  The dividends are real, but they are also earned.  If you are truly committed to success, than hiring a commercial real estate coach may be one of the best investments you can make.