How Can Someone Start Out In Commercial Real Estate Brokerage And Stand Out And Earn The Business Of Someone Like Yourself?

The following Q&A was completed as part of our conversational Commercial Real Estate FAQ Interview Series, we hope you find it helpful.

When just starting out in the real estate brokerage space, the brand you create for yourself makes all the difference. This doesn’t just refer to great marketing, but communicating your brand as one that is credible, likable, and one that others can trust. When you put forth a brand that others want to work with, you’ll find yourself in a position of much better success. Return phone calls and e-mails, treat others with respect, have heart, and see how quickly you can climb up the ladder in this space. 

Richard Wilson: How can someone start out in commercial real estate brokerage and stand out, and kind of earn the business of someone like yourself and do better than most others in the brokerage space? 

John Manes: Create a good brand, credibility, honesty, you know, likability; we have this motto internally that we deal with people we like, trust, and respect. I think the biggest thing is there’s so much greed in the world, and it can correspond into this industry that you just can’t go in being greedy or wanting to do it just for the money. You’ve got to go into it with having a good heart, and a good soul, and dealing with people that you like and you trust and you have respect for, you know? We’ve walked away from over a billion dollars worth of equity in the last 4 and a half years and it’s because they haven’t fallen into those three categories. So creating that brand for yourself, but having the brand that has credibility and honesty and stuff behind it, I think is really the best advice I can give to somebody if you’re starting out as a brokerage from scratch. You’ve got to be somebody to rely upon, and as stupid as it is, to return somebody’s phone call or something, you know? That means a lot in today’s world, in the world of 3,000 e-mails a day, it’s nice to get a response back from somebody sometimes, right? So having that type of credibility and putting yourself out there with that good type of credibility is probably what has made us the most successful. Because people trust us. 

Richard: Right, right.