This week, our Office Spotlight focuses on Sperry Van Ness | Rich Investment Real Estate Partners based out of Los Angeles, CA.
1. What has been your strategy for growing your firm and also your market share?
Like any brokerage company, recruiting is the key to both organizational and market share growth and I spend most of my time doing that. There are three types of agents I target:
- New-to-the-business. The new-to-the-business advisors are easiest to hire, but require sufficient training and mentoring and, in general, are “lower-probability” producers. I source leads for these types of agents through newspaper ads, local campus recruiting, and intern programs. While they’re typically more challenging to manage, they tend to more easily adapt and adhere to our work standards and the SVN culture.
- Seasoned (or senior level). Mid-level and senior lever producers have been far more challenging to recruit, but often begin producing within a their first few months with the company. I try to target agents that will complement our existing advisors. Thus far, I have agents that specialize in 5 of the major asset categories so we’re aggressively searching for a hospitality specialist who can round out the team. I also try to choose agents that are a fit to both our franchise’s and Sperry Van Ness’ culture.
- Satellite. Hiring satellite agents has enabled us to penetrate into territories where there is insufficient transaction volume to support a brick and mortar office. I often find little to no competition from national brokerage companies in these areas. And given that these locations are in outlying secondary and tertiary areas to our primary market, we are able to access higher yielding investment opportunities without having to go out of state.
2. What are some of the unique activities you do to motivate your team?
I provide the training, resources and support while setting challenging performance expectations then try to take a hands-off approach and let agents find their own system that works for them in accomplishing their goals. So I’m there when they need me but not there when they don’t need me. I conduct quarterly and annual business plan meetings and try and connect on daily basis with the agents in the office and on a bi-weekly basis with my satellite advisors.
3. What’s been the biggest challenge on how you run your business over the last few years?
Fortunately, we’re past most of the branding issues we struggled with initially and are now gaining traction in our market once again. Recently, our challenges have been mostly market related: seller’s hesitant to sell for lack of viable uplegs, cap rates approaching sub-5 levels, and political and economic uncertainties on the horizon
4. How many Advisors/Staff did you have when you joined SVN? How many (in total) do you have now?
When I started the office in May 2010 we had 4. Today we have 37 and growing!
Sperry Van Ness | Rich Investment Real Estate Partners
Managing Director
Sperry Van Ness | Rich Investment Real Estate Partners
Los Angeles, CA