As part of our Commercial Real Estate Team Series, we shared with you how not having a team is your greatest competitive disadvantage. The more obvious rationale is that you, alone, cannot service the demands of today’s clients as well as a comparable professional with a team. To further understand why teams are more important than ever and why many teams forming today are different from the “teams” of the past, it’s important to review some of the profound changes in the industry over the past two decades. Over the past years, I have focused on the development of successful teams and I have identified… Complexity of business and regulation in general, both for commercial real estate and the entire business world, are a fact of life. Contracts, research, due diligence, marketing, client correspondence, etc., all require a greater level of attention and coordination than in the past. Deals are bigger; expectations are higher; and fulfillment of the opportunity has become just as important and extensive as finding and winning the opportunity. As we will explore, in great detail, each of these essential phases—find, win, fulfill—requires a different set of talents and personalities. These are highly desirable assignments. They offer the potential for stable and high-quality revenue; however, they demand a greater focus on maintenance. To succeed here, a team must be excellent at dealing with the meetings, client reporting and, yes, client hand-holding. Finding the business eventually evolves into servicing the account. With more information, clients can be more selective of their service provider. They have higher expectations and demand a greater level of service. They expect this in all areas of the transaction process. They seek experts, specialists. Fortunately, this access to information allows the commercial real estate professional to secure an “expert” position more easily. However, individually, you can truly specialize in only one or two stages of the transaction process. We all recognize leverage when it comes to real estate financing. However, more and more individual commercial real estate professionals are realizing the leverage advantage of working with others. There is still a significant segment of commercial real estate professionals who feel they must work independently, or in silos; for the most part, though, these are seasoned veterans. As we share with our coaching clients, just because you can do something faster or better than someone else, doesn’t mean that doing it will make you wealthier. Leveraging the skills and strengths of others is your path to true success. More and more companies are implementing collaborative approaches and policies within their individual offices. The days of locking your desk so your co-worker doesn’t steal your client information still exist, but they’re fading and fading quickly. Will cooperation ever erase internal competition within an individual office of a reasonable size? No, most likely not. Competition, when structured correctly, is a healthy and productive format for profit. However, within individual teams, collaboration and cooperation are key factors in securing a dominant market position.
Changes in the world of commercial real estate have made team working vital for success, according to Rod Santomassimo, founder of real estate consultancy the Massimo Group. “Teams are now more important than ever and they need to be able to work together as a team,” he said. More multi-location client opportunities require a wider range of skills to enable finding a property to evolve into servicing an account. Santomassimo added that drawing upon the skills of others is an effective way to deal with more complex regulation, while encouraging collaboration and competition among employees is key to dominating the market. The availability of information is also growing, meaning more specific expertise is required.