April  2009 VOL. 2

In Good Times and Bad Times: 
How to deepen relationships during downturns

Veteran commercial real estate professionals say the business is all about relationships – building and maintaining relationships. Yet relationships often take a backseat to transactions during hot markets.

Today’s market – when leasing velocity is slow across all sectors and investment sales activity is close to nonexistent – provides the opportunity to focus on relationships, says Dave Marcum, a management and leadership consultant with FranklinCovey Co., a leading training and consulting firm based in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Marcum, who has been working with GE Real Estate’s relationship management team, says now is the time to deepen relationships with clients. "If money is tight, what else can you work on? It’s a perfect time to sharpen the saw, to use a FranklinCovey term, and to change the nature of the relationships we have," he points out. "Today you have the ability to create a level of trust, so when the market comes back, you’re in the position to behave differently and achieve different results."

Here are three tips that will help you deepen your client relationships:

1. Keep in touch.
   

When debt was cheap and cap rates were low, deal-focused professionals were burning up the phone lines, meeting for breakfast, lunch, and maybe even dinner, and relying on their Blackberries or Treos to keep them in constant contact with their clients.

There was always something to talk about – the deal. Now there are few deals, and real estate professionals think they don’t have anything to say. So they’re not calling their customers, they’re not inviting them to lunch, they’re not playing golf with them… they’re not keeping in touch. And that silence sends a loud message – you’re only around during good times.

But it’s important to continue to keep in touch even during bad times. Sometimes it doesn’t take more than a quick call or an after-work drink to keep the relationship moving forward. By keeping in touch, you’re showing that you’ve got staying power, and that earns loyalty and trust, Marcum says.

“You want to be the friend who has the guts to call when someone is going through a tough situation,” says Bernhard Klein Wassink, chief marketing officer for GE Real Estate. “We’re encouraging our relationship managers to not just be fair-weather friends. We want them out there and interacting with their customers.”

Kris Cooper, a managing director in Jones Lang LaSalle’s Capital Markets group, says a lot of his clients are not actively doing deals, but that’s not stopping him from keeping in touch. “We’ve gone out of our way to take our clients to lunch or dinner, to send them news items of interest, and to invite them to our company functions,” he notes. “Even if they’re not going to do business in 2009, we want them to know they’re important to us.”

2. Talk strategy instead of deals.
   

Until recently, most real estate professionals were focused on the deal, whether it was a new lease, an acquisition, or financing. And these transactions were just about the only thing anybody discussed. But the absence of deals today can actually be a good thing, allowing you to spend your time discussing strategy with your clients.

More often than not, commercial real estate people are interacting with customers on a transaction level, talking about specific deals and deal details, Marcum notes. But they might not understand their clients’ strategy and what their clients are trying to achieve. Now is as good a time as any to have a different conversation and move the discussion to a more strategic level.

Jones Lang LaSalle’s Cooper admits that finding something to talk about is the most challenging aspect of maintaining relationships. You can’t talk about their deals, but you need to have something of value to say, he points out.

Marcum suggests elevating the conversation by asking your clients questions such as: How has the market and economy impacted you? What are you doing differently today? What are your biggest challenges and concerns?

These types of discussions will allow you to have a greater depth of knowledge and understanding about your clients, which will allow you to serve them better in the future, Marcum says.

3. Choose to listen.
   

For several years, the most common buzz words in the business world have been “solution-oriented” or “problem-solver.” And while it’s important to be able to solve problems and to come up with innovative solutions, sometimes the best thing to do is… nothing.

"We’re addicted to solving problems and providing solutions, but we’re not very good at diagnosing needs," Marcum says. "We’re too focused on prescribing solutions, when it might not be a problem you should solve, or even one that you can solve."

The danger in being addicted to solving problems is that you may lead your client in the wrong direction simply because the solution benefits you – a bigger commission or meeting your sales quota, Marcum warns.

GE Real Estate is training its relationship managers to be comfortable just talking, says Charmin Tillman, vice president of commercial marketing. “Our training helps reinforce the idea that our managers don’t have to provide solutions all the time. It also gives them the confidence to admit when they can’t do anything to help. Sometimes listening is the best thing our managers can do for their customers.”