The following Q&A was completed as part of our conversational Commercial Real Estate FAQ Interview Series, we hope you find it helpful.
Referrals are a great way to determine what deserves to jump to the front of the line, and what might not be the best fit. If you’re looking for particular pieces for your investors, finding ideas that have been referred by trusted sources lets you skip the step of searching through e-mails or cold researching those pieces that you’re looking for. While hidden gems can be found digging through everything, it might not always make for the best use of time.
Richard Wilson: What strategy-wise makes things stand out? I mean you showed off some of your depth on the tax side, so obviously something that is very tax efficient is going to make you lean forward more than something that’s not, but what else strategy-wise are you really looking for that gets you to kind of pick one out out of all the e-mails streaming through, you know what would get on your radar?
Dr. Forrest Bryant: Referrals is probably a big one. So if somebody comes in and they’re referred, that’s immediately going to make me pay attention versus – I mean we get so much cold e-mails and you know a lot of times it’s not that we don’t care, it’s just that we try to be more proactive than reactive. So basically what that means for us is we’ve got an investment platform for our clients and so we want to be more proactive where we’re saying you know “Hey, we don’t have this little piece, we need somebody here. So let’s go find somebody here.” versus just sifting through dozens and dozens of e-mails to try to figure out. That’s just not the best use of our time to kind of go through everything. So if we’re proactive and we’re out looking for something, or if something comes in that’s referred, that’s going to make us take a deeper look at it.
Richard: Right, right. Makes sense, yeah. It seems like the more sophisticated an investor pool or a larger investor pool you want to get to, the larger the table stakes are to even play at that table. Like just having your ducks in a row and just the very basics. But I guess you’re saying that you’re proactively seeking out your mandates versus just seeing what hits your inbox that’s great to hear.
