Professional Report - 4th Quarter 2011

Greg Gunn, SIOR, and senior vice president with Coldwell Banker Commercial in Salt Lake City, summed up broker success best when he said, “relationships are the key to our individual businesses. If we don’t have good, deep relationships, we don’t have good businesses.”

as a callous attempt at manipulation, but the organic outgrowth of friendships, associations and mutual respect.

You can excel in finances, be adept at research and confident in sales, but if you don’t develop long-time, strong, tangible relationships with other professionals locally, nationally or internationally then you are working twice as hard as you should be as long-term relationships generally will repeat with new assignments, often when you least expect it.

Sometimes groups are formed simply to create a relationship network. Local banks, for example, often organize business development boards with representatives from the surrounding professional ranks.

A form of that type of organization is the networking group that Gunn helped form in Salt Lake City, consisting of 12 senior individuals from 12 different disciplines.

As a number of SIOR members point out, during the current downturn, a great percentage of business came from old clients, referrals from old clients or referrals from relationship networks.

“We meet once a month, go around the table for about an hour or an hour and a half and just talk deals and nothing else,” he explains. The group doesn’t meet at a restaurant, but in each other’s office on a revolving basis.

There are different layers and levels of relationships, and being able to leverage them should not be viewed

One senior professional was from a CPA firm and Gunn did that company’s current lease. Another member is from a commercial insurance brokerage. Gunn has been working with that firm for about a year and recently did its lease as well – with a little extra pizzazz, negotiating to have the company’s name on the building.

“When you build a group with
senior professionals, you get a double
effect,” Gunn explains. “They often give
you work, and since they trust you, they
introduce you to companies that they
are working with. You develop a rela-
tionship, and they leverage it with other
people they have relationships with.”
Travis Land, SIOR, a principal with
NAI Houston, belongs to a classic business
development board in his area. He has not
only gotten business from his associates in the
networking group (the sponsor bank recently
took back a property and didn’t even look at
other brokers, listing it with Land’s company), but
also benefited from leveraging the group’s asso-
ciations, the “I know XYZ Corp. is looking for a
building,” type of
thing.

Continued

Outside belonging to networking groups, Land has another piece of advice. When outside professionals such as lenders or auditors call, needing information or advice, in other words, making a non-revenue call, Land takes the time to help them all out.

“I use my market knowledge to create relationships,” Land explains. “Some people may not take the time to answer their questions because at that moment it is not a revenue-generating opportunity.