This week, Five for Friday features Diane Lawson, CCIM, Senior Advisor, Sperry Van Ness Commercial Advisory Group in Sarasota, FL
1. What is your geographic market and product specialty?
The geographic area that I cover is southwest Florida, specifically Sarasota and Manatee Counties and I work mostly in the sales and leasing of office and retail.
2. What’s your latest best practice tip that you can share?
It’s really about getting back to the basics. Stay in touch – keep in constant contact with clients. After all, if your clients don’t hear from you, they may think you’re not working their product. Stay informed – you have to be knowledgeable about your market and stay on top of recent activity, movers and shakers. Remain flexible and patient–every client has a different personality, different approach to business and different motivations. It’s important to understand those and work with them accordingly.
3. What’s been the biggest change over on how you run your business in the past decade?
You certainly can’t talk about changes in business practices over the last decade without bringing up technology. Commercial information exchanges, websites, email campaigns, etc., etc. have taken over the old school way of doing business. Planning and budgeting for me personally has also changed.I know my average transaction size, average number of transactions per year, average transaction costs and these things help me to stay on course throughout the year.
4.What business book do you like to recommend to your colleagues?
Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson is an excellent book and a quick read. In contrast to a quick read, but a must for everyone (in my opinion) is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I would also recommend The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey.
5. What’s a fun fact that not everyone knows about you?
I like to re-purpose old things; an old railroad cart for a coffee table, school desks as end tables, tractor seats as bar stools, an old ice box as a storage cabinet, etc.
*All Sperry Van Ness® offices are independently owned and operated.