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Saturday, February 11, 2012 Five Questions With...
CREF: How did you get to where you are today? PR: I spent 27 years at Prudential and the latter part of my career I was responsible for all Prudential's real estate sales nationally, and then I retired. I just decided I wanted to try and do something else and I was asked to help create a national platform for investment sales for Colliers International. It was exactly the reverse of what I was doing on the principal side - instead of being a principal I was the service provider calling on the principals. I thought that could be pretty interesting so I gave it a shot and I'm in my third year now. I enjoy it because it's different and it's a challenge. It's harder than anything you could imagine. CREF: What is your current specialization? PR: I specialize in investment and commercial property investment sales of all product types, specifically institutional and large private capital deals. CREF: How have you helped unite the Colliers Institutional Network into a cohesive unit? PR: It really wasn't me who made it cohesive. In the competitive brokerage world today, you can only be competitive if you have a true national platform. The creation of the national platform is what the brokers wanted and once they saw it being formed, they rallied around it. That's really how you really unite brokers - you give them a platform that they can use to help them be more successful in their business. CREF: How has the industry changed since you got involved? PR: Huge consolidation in the business. Two things have changed since I first got involved. First of all, there are a lot fewer players on the brokerage side of the business and with fewer players comes more specialization and tougher competition. You're in a tougher league, it's hand-to-hand combat at the highest levels now. Another aspect that has changed dramatically in the past thirty years is the orientation. Everything used to be deal oriented. Now, while there's still an emphasis on deals, to be successful you have to be client oriented. You have to be looking at what the client needs first and then attend to the transactions later. If you don't do that, you're not going to win business because clients now want to know that a service provider is going to service their needs, not just do deals for them. CREF: How do you think the market looks over the next 12 months? PR: It's going to be a market where experience and patience will prevail. I think it's going to be slower - there's still going to be a market, it's not going to die. It's just that there will be fewer transactions in the next 12 months than in the previous 12 months. And the people who go back to basics and understand the fundamentals of this business - good business development skills, taking care of the client - are the ones who are going to prevail in this type of market. Filed Under: Five Questions With... E-mail this article to a friend | Printer friendly format| DIGG this| Post to del.icio.us Comments on this article
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