MASSIMO GROUP: Good afternoon this is Rod Santomassimo of the Massimo Group and welcome to this version of the Massimo Minute. This month we have a very, very special guest, Mr. Warren Greshes, who I am fond to say is a friend of mine. Someone that a client had introduced me to and told me, “Rod if you are in the North Carolina area, you have to reach out to Mr. Warren Greshes because he is an international phenomenon”. Of course I was curious to see who this gentleman is, so I reached out and gave him a call and several lunches later I am now proud to call him a friend. Warren is a professional speaker. If you haven’t read it, you should, he is the author of the best selling Best Damn Sales Book Ever, Sixteen Rock Solid Rules for Achieving Sales Success. Certainly Warrens a keynote speaker and speaks on issues such as customer service, sales and leadership. So Warren, welcome to the Massimo Minute and thank you very much for your time.

WARREN GRESHES: Oh, no problem. Glad to be with you Rod.

MASSIMO GROUP: It is certainly a privilege of us and our audience. The few minutes we have, Warren, it really hit home in today’s market place specifically with commercial real estate brokers. It is an extremely challenging market. This is probably true for any sales in particular. But tell me if you can, what are you seeing out there in the market place and certainly I am finding more and more people, I don’t want to say that it is a crutch while using and leveraging other tools such as social media, and certainly other platforms to try to get their message out. I surely think the social media has a place. Let me ask you, where’s this fits into the total prospecting package from the sales perspective?

WARREN GRESHES: I think, like you said, I agree with you. Social media has a place and has a definite place in today’s sales effort and today’s prospecting efforts. It is a great way to reach a lot of people in a very short period of time. It’s a great way to set yourself up as an expert. It’s a great way to find prospects. It’s a great way to focus in on specific niches in the market place.

But what I just said is not selling. See what I just said is marketing. There is a big difference between marketing and selling. I’m not an expert in social media, and I don’t use it as well as I could. I realize it is a real hot topic these days and I really see the benefit in using it; but I’m really scared that a lot of sales people are using social media as a crutch to not sell, to not have to talk to anybody one-on-one, to not have to pick up the phone, to not to have to get in front of somebody. There is a lot of pit falls in social media. Just as there are many pit falls in e-mail, which was another crutch. Sales people love e-mail, sales people love social media; because, they are lead to believe that if you use this you never actually have to go through the hard part of selling which is the picking up of the phone, or getting in front of people. In other words you never actually hear anybody say no via Linkedin Facebook, Twitter, or on e-mail.

MASSIMO GROUP: Very, very true. That is one of the reasons that most sales people utilize those platforms. But I agree too, it is certainly marketing vs. advertising something we use here in the Massimo Group. We say it is presence vs. prospecting. You know selling vs. not selling, creating that market presence. And certainly production goes nowhere just with the marketing side. You need to prospect, you absolutely need to prospect.

WARREN GRESHES Rod, you and I had this discussion and we talked about this. We talked about presence and prospecting. I really like that term you coined, presence and prospecting, I think that’s great. But remember I posed the question to you. If you had to go without one, what would be better off going without presence or prospecting?

MASSIMO GROUP: Well if you had to go without one, if I had to choose I would go without presence. Because you can’t go without prospecting.

WARREN GRESHES: Right. You cannot go without prospecting. I know people who have gotten clients on Linkedin and I know they have gotten clients through social media. But I got to tell you something, nothing takes . . . You know my father-in-law was a salesman and he is 84 years old. He doesn’t work full-time anymore, but he is still out there one day a week, maybe two days a week. And you know what; he is having a terrific year. And I don’t know how the heck he is doing it because he doesn’t have a computer, he doesn’t have a PDA, he doesn’t have a Twitter account, he doesn’t even know how to use a computer, he’s not on Linkedin, and he is not on Facebook. You know what he does? He gets in his car and he goes to see prospective clients, he goes to see clients, he on the phone with them all the time. And somehow this guy manages to do business without a Facebook account. How the heck is he doing that?

MASSIMO GROUP: How the heck is he doing it? At that age kudos to him. Hey Warren a few minutes left so I want you to give away all your 16 golden rules
I think people need to certainly take a look at what you have to say. But I want to ask you a question. If you can

WARREN GRESHES: Sure.

MASSIMO GROUP: Please give me three key ideas as far as if I want to prospect more effectively. What are some ideas you would have?

WARREN GRESHES: Okay. Well first of all know who you want to call before you call. Very simple. If you are going to be making prospecting calls via telephone or in person, your list should be set up the night before. I find a lot of sales people is what they do is that start looking. They make a call then they look up who they are going to call next, and they make a call, and then they look up who they are going to call next, and they make a call. They do this over and over again. And basically all they do is waste time.

You should also focus on who you want to deal with. I have a customer profile put together and know exacting who you want to call, what kind of companies, what kind of people, who are you looking for. I mean, you know in our business, we are looking for VPs of sales. We are looking for sales executives. Why? Because most of my audiences I speak in front of are sales people. I speak at a lot of annual sales meetings, big incentive conferences, and who’s going to make the decision on that. It usually a sales executive so who’s going to make the decision on what it is you are selling on your commercial real estate business, who is going to make the decision to buy it from you. And you want to first of all figure out where those decision makers are. That’s where things like Linkedin can come in. They can help you find those decision makers. Once you find those decision makers then you got to call them and then you got to set the appointments.

Do your calls every single day. I would rather see you do a little bit a lot rather than a lot a little bit. In other words, if you are going to make 50 prospecting calls a week, I rather see you make 10 prospecting calls a day five days a week then 50 calls once a week. Because if you do 50 calls once a week, you are not developing a habit. All that is going to happen is you are going to really dread one day. It is working out. If you work out a little bit every single day you are going to get in shape. If you work out a lot once a week you are just going to say, oh god who the heck wants to do this. The night before you are going to be dreading the next day and eventually you are going to say oh the hell with it. And the only time, as well we all know, the only time you only fail is when you give up. So do a little bit a lot not a lot a little bit. You know when I first started in sales, we didn’t have cell phones, we didn’t have laptops, we didn’t have all this technology.

I know I am sounding old here: but the fact in the matter is when I was on the road, when I was going on appointments I would stop at pay phones to make calls. I always had a list with me, a hand-written list of at least ten people I could call while I was in my car. Now with cell phones and PDAs, I mean I got a blackberry here, boy I could do it while I am driving. I know you are not suppose to. I am not encouraging that, but you can do it while you are driving. There is no excuse not to make the calls. I mean the biggest part of prospecting is you have to do it every day. You know there is an old saying, you are throwing up against the wall something is going to stick. I’m a big believer in that. The single biggest reason that sales people do not do business is because they do not talk to enough people. I’m not telling you don’t do e-mail, I’m not telling you don’t do Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook but they are in addition to. They are not in lieu of.

MASSIMO GROUP: Very strong, very applicable and so, so accurate. Warren Greshes, thank you so much for your time. But one last question before I let you go. I’m sure there are many people out there saying wow how this guy got me motivated. How can we get more? So Warren, is there a website? Is there something we can look for in regards you, your books, and your keynote speeches? Where can we direct them to?

WARREN GRESHES Well, my website is www.greshes.com obviously. And my e-mail address is warren@greshes.com. And so you can either e-mail me, go to my website, contact me through my website. You can find my book on there. There is a link to my Amazon page right from my website. All the information you need about my services and me.

MASSIMO GROUP: So there you go, a man who practices what he preaches. He does utilize social media but he also prospects proactively and aggressively. So Warren Greshes thank you very, very much. And till next time this is Rod Santomassimo with the Massimo Minute. Talk with you soon.

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.

Lately I have heard more and more from brokers and real estate advisors who are creating income by “Sponsoring” or “Syndicating” Group Investments. A leading authority on group sponsorships is Gene Trowbridge of Trowbridge and Taylor. I had the pleasure of interviewing Gene earlier this week to learn more about how a commercial real estate broker can leverage their market knowledge and relationships to create opportunities in today’s challenging market.

These type of opportunities are not for everyone. However most of Gene’s clients are creating group investments which total less than $2 million. Thus, this may be more of an opportunity than you first thought.

The following is a transcript from my interview with Gene Trowbridge of Trowbridge and Taylor

ROD SANTOMASSIMO: Good Afternoon, this is, Rod Santomassimo of the Massimo Group. Welcome to our next installment of the Massimo Monthly. Each month we interview an industry leader that will impact you as a commercial real estate broker. This morning we have the privilege of having Gene Trowbridge of Trowbridge and Taylor on the line with us. Gene is without a doubt the foremost expert on commercial real estate syndications and specifically group sponsorships.

Gene, welcome to Massimo Monthly, Please, introduce yourself and welcome to the group.

GENE TROWBRIDGE: Well, thank you, Rod, it’s a pleasure to have you interview me and I’m looking forward to it.

ROD: Well, fantastic, let’s get right into it. Our listeners are owners, brokers, associates, advisors, all in one way or another practicing in the commercial real estate arena. This arena, let’s face it; it’s a different one for most of them. Most of the folks have yet to see a cycle such as this during their tenure. I, unfortunately, have seen several. I’m sure you have as well. But, this I see as also one of opportunity. I know because of your expertise, you’re really taking advantage of the markets. Tell us, what opportunities are you seeing today for individuals like a commercial real estate broker in regards to your expertise?

GENE: Thanks, Rod. You mentioned the different cycles that we have. I was a real estate syndicator myself from 1972 – 1994. I have been involved in cycles like this. What a cycle like this always presents to a syndicator is an opportunity to be a buyer of properties that you couldn’t buy in more of an up cycle. That’s what I think is attracting commercial real estate brokers today…brokers and owners to the syndication business…is that there are good properties that are going to be coming for sale that normally wouldn’t be coming for sale. This is going to be our opportunity to take our investors and take our money and buy some of those properties. I think another thing that’s happen…that always happens in a downturn like this…is financing becomes an issue. The availability of financing is the issue today. Not so much the cost of financing, but, the availability of it. Rod, as I always say if the world is made up of investors who expect to buy something with 20% down, in our marketplace today the banks want 40, 50, 60% down, sometimes we have to buy property all cash…we simply have to pool our investors to come up with the increased equity necessary to buy some of these good properties that are out there.

ROD: Makes perfect sense. Gene, the word in itself, syndication, can be pretty intimidating. Syndication sounds so complex and so comprehensive. But, you think about it who is better than the commercial broker who is an expert in a particular marketplace to understand the trends of the market to identify the opportunities? How do we get beyond the bridge, beyond that challenge? Maybe the stigma of most syndication that sounds like trouble?

GENE: Rod, when was the last time you took an airplane ride?

ROD: I am seemingly always on a plane. I took one just last week.

GENE: Ok. Every time you get on an airplane ride, Rod, you’ve entered the syndication world because you have pooled your resources with a bunch of other passengers and you have hired good equipment and you have hired professional management. The purpose is to get you from one place to another while you’re on your trip. You can’t do it yourself. That’s all we’re trying to do in commercial real estate syndication. We’re trying to use the commercial real estate person as the pilot and the pieces of real estate that you can’t own yourself as the vehicle. Let’s just get a bunch of people together and let’s just go out and buy something. It’s as simple as that, Rod. Let’s just go out and buy something. It’s a security and, yes, there are IRS issues but, that’s a topic for a different day. All we’re going to do is find a good property and find a bunch of investors who don’t want to own it themselves, can’t own it themselves, need a professional commercial real estate person to do all the work. Let’s go buy something.

ROD: Ok. When I heard it, I heard opportunity. It screamed to me opportunity. Other people though may have heard, a couple of times there, let’s go do the work. It’s work. That’s a lot of work. But work generally comes with a reward. Are there potential fees you can earn or just income you can generate through being a group sponsor? Give us a quick overview of the potential, not the amount, but the potential for fees if you were to actually create the sponsorship on your own as a real estate broker.

GENE: Sure, Rod. I think we could identify up to seven to ten different ways that you can make money being a real estate syndicator. Let’s just keep it to the major ones. First of all, there is an opportunity to get real estate brokerage commissions throughout the syndication process through acquisitions, through leasing to financing to sale to property management. All the things that I call deal-making activities that you like to do anyhow as a commercial real estate person. Those are all available to you in the syndication process where you actually step-up and control the property. That’s pretty attractive from a deal-making perspective. Then, you can make money on acquisition fees. You can make money on asset management. Shares of the cash flow can come to you as you share the profits with your investors. Two major areas…number one, there is all sorts of real estate work that you can do that you can get paid for. Then, there’s all the effort that you have to put in managing the investors. There are fees. There are shares of profits that you can attract, you can keep for your own for the work you do in managing the investors. Rod, action in the syndication business is much more about managing the group of investors than it is about real estate. We can do real estate. The question is can we manage ten investors for the next five years in a deal. That’s a lot of work. You should get paid for that.

ROD: That’s fantastic, the points, Gene. Thank you very much. I have to always be transparent with our listeners. I have a series of coaching clients who have initiated their own personal group sponsorships based on either reading your book or going to one of your programs. I have heard nothing but fantastic things about these opportunities available to the brokers’ community by going to your website. Gene, you want to share that website for everyone else so they can make sure they can learn more about your programs?

GENE: Sure, Rod. My website is www.groupsponsor.com. At that website you’ll learn more about me. You’ll learn about the book. You’ll learn about the workshops we offer. Then, you’ll learn about the availability of using me as the attorney to write the documents that you need to do all this business painlessly and legal.

ROD: Gene, I’ve got to tell you that there are some great opportunities out there. Thank you for making us aware of these alternative sources.

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 Massimo Group has is proud to announce a new format for our Massimo Minute Newsletter subscribers.  We call this “Massimo Market Movers”.  Each month we hope to bring you an interview with commercial real estate brokers around the country who are making a difference by implementing specific strategies in their business. 

For our inaugural session, I had the privilege of interviewing Eric Odum, owner of Net Lease Commercial Advisory, in Tampa, FL.  Eric is owns a boutique brokerage firm in a major secondary market, yet has found success competing against more established national firms.  More impressively Eric is securing several new leads each and every day, based on his applied marketing strategies.

I should disclose that Eric is a former client of ours.  He is now positioned to generate more business by leveraging not only what we worked on, but also by implementing a few strategies of his own.  A full transcript of this interview follows.

RS:       Good Afternoon, this is Rod Santomassimo of the Massimo Group. Welcome to the Massimo Minute. And this month, we have a special guest with us to discuss the Tampa, Florida marketplace, and that guest is Mr. Eric Odum of Net Lease Commercial Advisory. Eric, Welcome!

EO:      Hey Rod, how are you?

RS:       I’m doing pretty good thank you very much. In this format, Eric, just for our audience, we take a quick 5 minutes to get the download of both what’s going on in the marketplace. What are commercial brokers, specifically, doing today to not only survive, but thrive in that marketplace. I know you’re into particular things, but first off tell me about Tampa, FL. Tell me what’s going on in the Tampa, FL marketplace in your particular focus niche.

EO: Well, you know, obviously, it’s been pretty bleak here in the last couple years. We were one of the hardest hit markets in the country due primarily to the downturn in the residential construction market. Of course, I think Tampa really began to realize how closely tied it was to the construction market since (commercial) vacancies shot up through the roof. Now, I do primarily net lease. My roots are in Section 1031 exchanges.  Of course, what happened is, there are no more Section 1031 exchanges because there are no more capital gains. We are in a deflationary environment right now (in real estate), so the Section 1031 business dried up for me. It was a matter of, “Do you adapt or do you just go away and find something else to do?” Well, I decided to find something inside of the real estate business to try to diversify and survive, because I do think this is a market about the survival, so I’ve…

RS: Ok, if I might, that’s a great point. We find especially with our clients across the country, a lot of them doing more recall focused diversification because, lets face it, if your just focused on investment sales in many markets across the U.S., yeah, velocity issues, liquidity issues, and the like, you’re going to have a really hard time surviving, so I appreciate your stance as far as diversifying your offering.  Let me ask you…you say you’re diversifying your offerings. What are you doing right now that’s working? I’m sure a lot of this is a “best practices” call. What are you doing right now that’s working?

EO: Well, you know, it’s all about exposure. It’s all about getting your name and your face out there, in the local market.  I didn’t have the advantage of working the local market because my properties, my investments, were all over the state, really all over the country, so what I’ve done, what I’ve been pretty good at in my past life as a marketing person, I spent a lot of time in marketing, in getting placements on websites, and SEO work. So, my internet is generating about 7 to 8 leads a week, and a significant portion of my business is coming off of internet. I haven’t stopped investing. I’ve seen so many brokers that stopped investing in their business. I haven’t stopped investing. I continue to mail postcards out, I continue to beat the streets, I continue to go out and do advertising. I’m just spending smarter now than I was probably 3 or 4 years ago, and the internet, of course, is one of those marketing systems that works even when you’re sleeping. You get leads at 9 and 10 o’clock at night and you wake in the morning and low and behold you might have a customer. So that’s what I’ve been doing that’s working, and we’ve been dealing primarily in the office and the retail market.

RS:       Ok, so I heard a lot of great things here. First of all I heard you continue to invest in yourself and yes the all star performers like you, Eric, are always investing in themselves, investing in their Real Estate business. I also heard you say that you haven’t stopped prospecting. I think that people talk about presence, having market presence, but prospecting and presence certainly are compliments. They work with one another. So you create the system of both prospecting by creating a presence which I know is paramount. So I know someone’s going to ask, how the heck is he generating, specifically Eric, we have about a minute and a half left, so I want to leave you some Kudos here, some little things we can share, what specifically are you doing to generate 7 solid leads a week to your business, especially when you are sleeping?  What, talk exactly, is it Twitter, is it internet, is it Facebook, let us know, what are you doing?

EO:      Well, first and foremost, I think we are of the mindset that everybody knows what we do, our friends and family know, but they really don’t, so…This is where Twitter and Facebook would come in, but make sure – you don’t want to overwhelm them all the time with discussions of business – but you do want to drop a hint every 3 or 4 posts that yeah, I am in the business and if anybody is looking, send them my way.  So, I have gotten some referrals from my friends and family, and those are the most solid ones. The other way is your website, and your web presence. Build a website and make it specialized to whatever your niche is. You’d be surprised. If you work office space in, let’s say, the Westshore submarket, start a blog that talks about everything that’s happening in the Westshore sub market, and you will be surprised at how much traffic that will actually lead to.  And if you’re functioning in the Westshore sub market in Tampa, you really don’t care about what’s happening in Orlando, or don’t really care necessarily about what’s happening in Lakeland or Plant City.  Then don’t write about those things.  Only write about what’s happening, become and expert in your niche, and it will generate leads, your rankings will increase, it’s all about being consistent and persistent in posting and writing. As it happens, Google really likes current content. As long as you have current content specific to your niche, you’ll get higher rankings.

RS:       Ok, Eric. Let me ask you one last question, because I know a lot of people listening in here, they may think, I have not heard of Net Lease Commercial Advisory. So first, quickly give me your website sot hey can take a look at what you’re doing.

EO:      Sure, it’s www.floridatriplenet.com.

RS:       Ok great, and the last thing I gotta ask you, because fair to say, you’re a boutique firm, and you’re in a major market, a secondary market, but still in a major market like Tampa Bay, Pinellas County, Hillsborough, Pasco and Polk.  How are you competing against big boys? CBRE is there. Cushman is there. Everyone’s there I’m aware of in Tampa Bay. So, how are you competing as a boutique firm?

EO:      It’s tough Rod. I’m not going to lie. Obviously the larger firms, the Grubb’s and the CBRE’s, they have access to National tenants.  I’m not ever going to get access to, but frankly in my niche, which is triple net properties,  I don’t kneed to have that big flag outside my front door. I’m capable of doing Net Lease on my own. Where it becomes a challenge is in the rental market, the tenant representation market locally. But what makes a great equalizer is my marketing efforts. I believe that I set up superior systems in order to cast the net out there and I have not had any issues in dealing with those local tenants in the local markets. Where I miss on is probably in the national tenant that might be relocating, but actually there’s not been a lot of that going on in Tampa right now. I’ve strung together several good months, I feel like I’ve finally found the light switch (on the tenant rep market).

RS:       Eric, we really appreciate your time. It’s Eric Odum with Net Lease Commercial Advisory, and again that website was www.floridatriplenet.com.  Eric, I appreciate your time. Until next time, this is Rod Santomassimo with the Massimo Minute.  Talk to you soon.

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!

In our last newsletter we offered the five P’s to commercial real estate success.  Planning, Prospecting Performing, Persistence and Presence – which all leads to Production.  We received several suggested additions, such as Patience and Practice, but more so we received strong opinions on the value of prospecting versus presence.  Which is more important, having a strong prospecting plan or a solid market presence?

It seems the “old school” traditionalist feel that prospecting is the ultimate tenet to CRE success.  Cold calling, letter campaigns and email campaigns are the core direct prospecting tools used by most.  Prospecting, for our purposes, are the activities associated with directly communicating with a targeted audience that can benefit from your services.  While others felt that presence ultimately defines one’s level of success and market position.  Let’s face it, with the deluge of promotional and marketing outlets that exist both today (both physical and digital), those who establish and maintain a market presence have the advantage of being “top of mind” with prospective clients.

The fact is prospecting and presence are complementary.  They are synergistic.  When prospecting, would you rather have your audiences say “who are you” or “oh yes, I heard of you”?  A strong market presence makes your prospecting efforts easier and more effective.  Likewise having a market presence is great, but you must have a targeted and proactive prospecting plan behind it.  Certainly a strong presence will generate more direct leads and inquires, but most brokers can’t rely strictly on potential clients calling them because of their presence.  That’s simply unrealistic for the majority.

Last month I called on a prospect to inquire if they were open to me visiting with their brokerage team while I was in the area – for a fee of course.  The prospect, a regional manager of a national brokerage firm agreed to both my visit and my price.  This was the first time I had called on the prospect, so I was curious as to why he agreed to have me come in.  It turns out, the company’s chairman had earlier read and subsequently distributed a white paper I had authored and placed on several commercial real estate portals.  Both the chairman and the regional manager were impressed with what I wrote.  This had helped establish a presence.  However the regional manager did not call me – our meeting was set because I called him.  For me, Prospecting is #1, Presence is 1A.  Then again, I am old school, with an appreciation for the new marketing methods.

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.