Let's face it, in the commercial real estate due diligence world, there is no shortage of contacts in a given deal. For every deal, we have a buyer, seller, lender, insurer, attorney(s), property manager, and many others. How does your firm capture and track this information? What value does this information have (or what are you missing out on if you don't collect and track it)? After the world changed in 2007/2008, many of our long term clients have found new opportunities with new firms. If your firm does 20 transactions a month and you capture 10 contacts per deal, that equates to 2,400 contacts in one year! It takes dedicated staff time to collect this information and a robust Client Relationship Management (CRM) software tool such as Salesforce or share ware like Sugar CRM. As you populate your CRM, you can use it to do email campaigns, keep notes on specific client hot buttons, and see who else they may introduce your firm's services to. One other incredible tool is LinkedIn for user groups of interest, updating your client contacts, recruiting, and recognizing who may have worked with whom. LinkedIn communicates with other software CRM tools to update records for those individuals who use LinkedIn and is a great way to keep your data set up to date. LinkedIn Personal Plus is also a fabulous way to find qualified candidates in any geographic region and learn who they may have worked with through their connections.

I have read marketing statistics which indicate the regular use of a CRM (collection, verification, and emailing) can grow revenue by 5% to 10% or more, but remember, "Garbage In. Garbage Out (GIGO)"! Good luck with building and maintaining your CRM!

Wow! Where did that year go? I haven't blogged in almost a year, but I have an excuse! 2010 was the busiest year in our firm's 10-year history with more diversity of clients and more reasons for performing environmental and engineering due diligence and asset management. I'd like to highlight a few trends we are seeing from 2010 and building on in 2011:

• Preforclosure and forclosure environmental site assessment
• Preforclosure and forclosure capital needs assessment
• Surging requests for tax credit development and rehabilitation projects involving environmental and engineering services.Google is in on this now too!
• Building Energy Performance Standard (BEPA) opportunites as part of due diligence (both acquistion and disposition) AND driven by Asset Management objectives for the new ASTM2797 standard
• Development coming back slowly (along with environmental remediation and management opportunities during construction)
• Transaction volumes rising (players are blinking finally!) and that is good for all of us
• Purchase of distressed assets involves limited access and short due diligence timeframes 
• Senior Housing is a growing opportunity
• Keeping revenue in-house (Zweig White article) to focus on quality
• Strong Fannie, Freddie and HUD markets (HUD set to decline)
• Hiring great new staff is a bit easier than it was in 2009 but becoming more difficult in 2011.

We all sell services and expertise (not products) so the last bullet on hiring qualified and talented staff is paramount to position your firm for 2011 or as I refer to it......"dessert" after 2010. The "thaw" and the beginning of new opportunities in 2010 which were discoverd out of necessity from 2008/2009 will really make 2011 a good year for our industry. We are seeing CMBS come back with new players (JP Morgan is big right now), development and lending is beginning to thaw, our clients are more aware of maintaining the value of their asset through maintenance and addressing environmental issues before disposition, and firms in general have become more efficient in delivering their services. This is making me hungry.........What opportunities does your firm see in 2011? More on how to maximize these opportunities in my next blog entry. Happy New Year!

We are all aware of the turmoil in the CRE markets for the past two years and how that has impacted all A&E firms in some manner. I would argue that there is a tremendous amount of technical talent (and business development experts) available now whether they may be currently unemployed, underemployed, or "looking" but employed (see "hiring in a down market"). We can all recall trying to hire anyone a mere 3-4 years ago and how difficult and expensive it was. I would argue that some of those hires didn't make it through these tough times because they were overpaid or unqualified for their position.

There have been many hiring managers who feel that the people that are unemployed now are not the best candidates available, however, many firms are suffering badly and those who are unemployed may have been the victim of a poorly managed firm. For those who are still employed, but "looking", rest assured the candidate will do his or her due diligence on the hiring firm as well, which is not a bad thing at all. There may be some real dialog now between a prospective candidate and the hiring firm that would likely have been absent had the economic downturn not have happened. This dialog may bode well for finding a great fit and a long term employee and potential future owner even.

Best of luck to all in 2010, but hiring the right people in a service industry like the A & E business is absolutely the key to long term success and client satisfaction. Please share your hiring strategy for 2010 if you would by indicating if you are looking to hire, and if so, what skills are you looking for first (business development, technical, manager, etc.).

Good hiring practices and successful hires are the only way to do more with less.

In these uncertain times in Commercial Real Estate, many firms must find ways to reinvent and rebrand themselves to their existing clients and new opportunities. Many of us perform Phase I Environmental Site Assessments as well as surveys for radon, lead-based paint, and asbestos; but how do we tell our clients that our firm's way is different?

I read about many firms in our business slashing their marketing budgets or cutting the marketing personnel, but this is precisely what they should NOT be doing. Firms need these services more than ever, whether it is done in house or subcontracted out to a provider of marketing services. Your clients and colleagues need to know why you are in this business and what drives you as well as why your services are different than firm XYZ. In our experience, price was not the driver in most cases, it was the understanding of the client's needs, the responsiveness, communication, and follow up that ranked as most important.

As far as cost, there are limitless "cost-free" options available to us all on social networking sites, blogs, email blasts (low cost) and electronic newsletters, we simply must make the investment in time and producing something of value each time we communicate with our network (i.e. clients, colleagues, peers, vendors). Communicating value and why we are different from one another is a true challenge and takes some adept creativity and writing skill. I would welcome the opportunity for our group to provide some examples of how they communicate and deliver value to their organization and clients.

How many of your clients have converted their "deal" or acquisitions team players to asset managers to ride out this storm?

Many real estate equity firms and lenders do not want to lose key personnel during this downturn in the marketplace and have openings in asset management due to the inability to shed assets and/or increase in deferred maintenance on the part of owners and borrowers alike. The advantage to these firms is to retain key members of their team and to cross train them in another area of the firm's operations. The downside is that asset management is an entirely new job and new perspective on the asset/deal, and a consultant can play a key role in advising the asset manager on the maintenance and compliance (e.g. Affordable Housing compliance) of the property for disposition/sale purposes.

See Dianne Crocker's Commonground blog entry, and you can see that our clients may act as asset managers for quite some time, and now is our opportunity as consultants to cultivate that relationship from the start. You can begin the discussion by offering to provide asset management training or a brown bag for the client and introduce your firm's services and potential custom IT solutions (such as a relational database) or off the shelf asset management tools that may be helpful in their new role. The consultant may have institutional knowledge of the portfolio from working with the acquisitions people over the years and is an invaluable resource to a new asset manager.

Consultants are uniquely positioned to view the entire real estate cycle and not just the front end, and it is this experience our clients will appreciate as they assume more asset management functions.