Hot Candidates

Senior Leasing Professional:

Director level retail leasing professional with nearly 10 years of related industry experience. Experience includes marketing strategy; negotiating letters of intent and leases; negotiating and coordinating with brokers, prospective tenants, and related representatives. Candidate is a licensed real estate professional.

Construction Project Manager:
Construction project manager has 10 years of related industry experience with commercial and residential projects. Responsibilities include staff supervision; scheduling; project management; client contact, coordination and management.

Senior Real Estate Broker:
Senior real estate broker and leasing professional who has 20 year of related industry experience with retail, professional, commercial, and residential properties. Responsibilities include supervision of retail brokers and property managers; conducting site and market evaluations as well as competitive analysis to determine leasing feasibility; negotiation of all lease drafts and renewals; marketing; tenant management.

Sr. Property Manager/ Regional VP:
Candidate is a regional vice president/senior property manager having 20 plus years of experience with residential, commercial, and high end luxury properties. Responsibilities include preparation of operating and capital budgets; development and implementation of marketing initiatives; training and supervision of site specific staff; development of maintenance programs; rehabilitation of properties in physical and financial distress.

Portfolio Manager/ Analyst:
Portfolio manager who has four years of industry experience with commercial projects. Current responsibilities include preparation and presentation of annual portfolio reviews; client contact; due diligence; inspection of property portfolios; and analysis of annual and quarterly financial statements.

Senior Real Estate Representative:
Senior real estate representative has 12 years of industry experience with commercial real estate sales. The candidate is a licensed real estate professional. Responsibilities include client contact; contract negotiation; project management; and staff supervision.

For information about one or more of these candidates, contact John Rainone at (508) 393-4933 ext. 12.

Finding Your Inner Marketer

Contribute to your firm's marketing efforts by tapping into your personal strengths

By Anne Scarlett

Do you dread picking up the phone to introduce your firm to total strangers? When management asks for volunteers to work the trade show booth, do you sink into a chair to become invisible? If the marketing director invites you to join her at a networking dinner, do you come up with creative excuses to be unavailable?

It's true: Some people find marketing activities to be less than appealing. But in today's ultra-competitive and sophisticated business world, they're essential. Marketing is an effective way to spread your message with clarity to prospective clients. Marketing opens doors to otherwise nonexistent opportunities. Marketing and sales-along with operations, human resources, and quality services-keep your firm in business. And let's venture closer to home: Marketing can ultimately put more money in your pocket.

So now that we've acknowledged marketing's impact on your wallet, let's talk about how you can personally contribute to the marketing effort for collective benefit. For the record, I don't accept the excuse that certain personalities are not well suited to marketing. Someone out there knows that you are able to both advise and listen to others; that you are tenacious; and that you pay attention to detail. Someone thinks you are fun! These are transferable traits and skills that can be tapped to help find your inner marketer. Below I've outlined just five (of many) skills that add value to many roles and are applicable to marketing.

Communicate.
No matter your position, you are a social being that communicates with someone about something multiple times a day, every day.

How this transfers to marketing: About 99.9% of marketing success resides in good communication. Reflect upon times when you have communicated well in your life, in any context. What did you learn to do differently and what worked well? Perhaps words like frequency, reiteration, active listening, consistency, queries, confirmation, brevity, affirmation, openness, and empathy come to mind. How many times have you heard a parent reflect upon a situation with their child, in which, at long last, there was a communication breakthrough? Something worked in this situation, and it can be transferred to other areas of life.

The trick: Think back to lessons you've learned from your toughest communication experiences and use the positive ones as models to guide you in your business interactions.

Pay attention to detail.
In many fields, you must have a pointed awareness for subtle occurrences that can have an impact on your technical or business solution. You remain up-to-date on the particulars of your specialty in order to devise the best solution for your challenge.

How this transfers to marketing: Keen attention to detail benefits virtually every phase of the marketing effort, from uncovering leads buried within obscure information, to creating collateral that is accurate in its content and presentation, to picking up on hints from a prospective client during a face-to-face conversation. Attention to detail elevates a marketer from mediocre to great.

The trick: It's so much easier for a detail-oriented person to find "it" if you know what "it" is! Educate yourself on your firm's marketing goals, intentions, and processes. In most firms, this information is available if you simply inquire about the big picture business goals and learn how your firm is using marketing to achieve those goals. For example, if you become aware that your firm decided to make a shift into a particular emerging market, you'll then be able to do your part in paying attention to developments within that market. With your help, things will be less likely to slip by unnoticed.

Persevere, aka practice.
When tackling a complicated problem, do you quit in frustration at some point? Or do you know, intellectually, that there is an answer and you will resolve it? Because you care enough to read this professional development article, I'm assuming that you persevere.

How this transfers to marketing: Why wouldn't you do the same for marketing-e.g., rehearse for formal presentations or even casual business development visits? Practice- with perseverance until you have reached a point of satisfaction, or better yet, excellence.

The trick: Use the many resources available to you. Someone in your firm feels comfortable in front of an audience. They are confident, natural, and fully capable of making give-and-take connections to achieve positive outcomes. At least one of these people will be more than happy to practice with you. Incidentally, many accomplished speakers attribute their success to practicing.

Analyze and Strategize.
Many jobs involve analyzing information and using logic-and strategy-to reach optimum solutions.

How this transfers to marketing: Firms that have a solid marketing strategy-often revolving around growth in profit or revenue-will greatly benefit from your analytical point of view. Your involvement, for example, is essential to strategically growing business with existing clients. You may well have the rapport, trust, and ability required to expand the client relationship. If you speak the client's language, this will help shape the messages directed at your target audience.

The trick: Through open and frequent collaboration with the marketing team, you will add significant value to analyzing, developing, and executing strategy for company growth.

Reward yourself!
Are you going to tell me that marketing is a drag just because you're not experienced with it? Believe it or not, there are some people that find marketing to be (gasp!) fun. You get to interact with interesting people. You get to experiment with innovative approaches. It just requires figuring out how to have fun beyond your comfort zone.

How this transfers to marketing: If it isn't fun, think of the reward when the project is won and you are personally recognized as a contributor. When you are requested to attend an after-hours networking function to meet potential clients, think of the rewarding evening you may have later on, relaxing at home. If you don't find marketing meetings enjoyable, think of the positive, bottom-line results you and your firm will reap from your efforts and hard work.

The trick: With the right attitude, an open mind, and an easy laugh, you may discover that marketing is fun. If not, then my personal trick is to power through by offering myself rewards upon completion of a task. You are competent in your profession, and you've got the transferable skills to make a valuable contribution to the marketing effort. Your input, cooperation, and active participation will only strengthen your firm's marketing success!

Anne Scarlett, is president of Scarlett Consulting, a firm that provides marketing expertise to construction industry professionals.

 

Reader Feedback:

We received several interesting responses to our August newsletter about Mixed-Use Development:

Value Creation in Mixed-Use
I am a partner in the development of I'On and was the project manager for the community for its first five years. I'On is a mixed-use community in Mt. Pleasant, SC., with 764 home sites on 244 acres, along with retail and office space. Yes mixed-use costs more to develop; yes it takes more thoughtful planning; yes it's more complex; yes the zoning process is a gargantuan pain; and YES, if appropriately executed, the returns make it well worthwhile. I wrote a little bit about value creation in I'On and how it compares with the rest of Mt. Pleasant over the same period.

Back to the Future
The modern day concept called "mixed-use development" is really America in 1956. This is how America worked, and so 50 years later we have made a gigantic circle back to where we once were.

It was based on a free market system and open competition. Malls are based on a closed society and restricted competition to the detriment of the customer. So let's celebrate our gradual return to America as it once was, and an America that worked so well.

Lack of Mixed-Use Created Housing Shortage
Here in California, the idea is just catching on to some extent. We have always had strip commercial zones, but very few truly mixed-use projects of work, living, and commercial.

A large problem is that the planning departments in our cities have specialists who really do not understand the benefits of the concept. People who know the true nature of how Silicon Valley developed would tell you that the cities did not want housing near their commercial areas, as they believed it would ruin their tax base and deter the possibility of another mega-campus. Consequently, Silicon Valley is an anomaly that should not have happened. The lack of housing is forcing some people to travel as long as three hours, one way, just to get to the Valley.