Blain's Farm & Fleet

Sara Smith

So much about real estate is transactional. You create a legal document telling a seller you want to buy something. Then another legal document buys it. Lots of legal documents in between that tell you everything the buyer or seller or broker may have missed, forgotten to tell you, or did not think of. But, once the wire transfer hits the bank, is the deal over? The relationship finished. Absolutely not. You may not see this buyer again, but you never know when you will cross paths with them in the future.

Coming up from facilities, we are always aware of relationships. A facilities manager must keep the store personnel happy, the equipment working, the power on, and fix broken items. We must keep the office staff happy, it is hot, it is cold, I need more space, whatever the request, we must find a way to say yes, or at least let the person walk away feeling like we dealt with their issue in a satisfactory way, even if the answer is no. This is the perfect metaphor for today’s real estate market, you must act like a facility professional, rather than a single broker for a transaction.

Owning a good relationship is just as important as owning a piece of land. Your currency is your integrity. On the owner's side, do your senior leaders believe what you say? On the buyer, side do the developers trust that you will follow through? On the broker side, does the word you give them mean something? It’s a matrix of relationships with you at the center. It has less to do with the actual land or building you are purchasing and more to do with the balancing act you are playing between competing entities. Yes, you might all have the same goal, to buy and sell a piece of land or building. 

But, as a real estate professional, you work diligently with each side to make them feel like you are really hearing them and caring about their needs. You want to help them achieve their goals.

I took a 10-year break from my professional career. Like many women, I chose my family over my career, and I have no regrets. But I stayed connected with many peers and when I chose to get back in the mix, many of them were still working in the same industry I did when I left. It has been a true joy and a bit of a shock how I run into peers from prior decades at conferences and events. If we didn’t work together, we worked with the same people or we know the same people. It gives us something to start a conversation about, then helps us move forward to today’s work. In addition, because you have worked in the field prior, they are excited for you to do well, not despite your choices, but because of them.

We all choose to manage our careers differently and that is OK. But we never truly walk away from our relationships, especially if we hope to go back at some point, many years later. Treat your interactions today like you will meet up with them again tomorrow. Do not think this deal is one and done. You have a high likelihood of meeting up with them again. Maybe not in this job but in a subsequent interaction. We can learn a lot from our facilities peers, how people matter more than things, deals and transactions. It is the relationship that matters most.