Best Practices for Retaining Clients

All right, welcome back to another episode of CRE – The Unspoken Truth. I’m Charlie Coppola with my father, Craig. Today we’re going to be talking about retaining clients. So give me, you know, the audience, I think a lot of people who watch these know us, or at least have seen us on a Zoom call. Give us just a minute or two, for anyone tuning in, a little bit of your background on commercial real estate. And you’ve been in the business a long time. Tell us, you know, your background here.

So in 1984, I started at Grubb & Ellis, which back then was one of the big three national firms. I was at Grubb from 84 to 1991, leasing office space, and then in 1991 we started Lee & Associates Arizona, and I’ve been at Lee & Associates Arizona since 1991. So now the career’s spanning almost 40-plus years, and Lee & Associates 34 years. So it’s funny, because the other day we moved, and it was the first time in 30-plus years that our company moved. So I have a new home now at Lee & Associates. But it’s been a long time.

Yeah. So, and it was all office leasing, and now you’re doing a little bit of other stuff. Give me that background.

Yeah. So for the first 35 years we were primarily office tenants. We’d run into another deal every now and then. But, you know, once COVID hit, the office market kind of went down. Everybody would work from home, and post-COVID they haven’t come back. So we have a big team and we’ve got diversification, and certainly at Lee & Associates we have the flexibility to chase other product types. So our team does about 150 transactions a year. Last year 30 of them were non-office. So 120 office, 130 non-office, but we’re doing a deal every two days. Every two days. So the volume’s very high.

We’re talking about retaining clients. Have you ever had, or have you had a client that you’ve had since your Grubb & Ellis days?

Ah, good question. Yes, I have. Since Grubb & Ellis days.

Wow. Okay.

I have multiple 30-year clients, and it’s really hard because, you know, we do a five or seven or a 10-year lease and you got to go back. So if you say, “Hey, you’ve had that client 30 years,” you might have only done three transactions with them. And that’s one of the hardest things about our business. And I’ll have to think about if I have a client that I can say. I did talk to Bruce Feder the other day. Feder and Feder Laws, it used to be Bruce and his brother, brother’s retired. I talked to Bruce, and I’ve been working with Bruce since Grubb’s days. So that is somebody, I literally talked to him yesterday.

Yeah. Yeah. So I guess the other question would be, like, early Lee & Associates days, when you guys started the Arizona office in 1991, you’re still early in your career. So were you partnering up with other people early? I think Jim Watkins is one that you mentioned on a podcast before, you would do deals with him.

Yeah. Bill Blake, Jim Watkins. I had a small team back then. Even in 1991 I had an assistant and had a runner. But now we are, you know, we’re 11 full-time people. But that ability, when we started the company, we were owners of the company. It changes the dynamic a little bit, because we’re now wanting everybody to make money. Where before, if you’re an independent contractor at a big firm, you don’t really care if the guy behind you is making a ton of money, because you’re not getting any of it. In our case, because we do own it, and all the ownership, the majority of the ownership, is in Arizona, the money stays here.

Yeah. Yeah. So give us, we’re talking about again retaining clients. Give us some best practices over your 40-year career that you’ve picked up and are implementing and using for retaining clients.

Okay. I’m going to give you four things. So the first thing is give first. So when you network or develop a relationship or have a client, and my coach says it best: always make your performance bigger than the applause. And it’s always make, in my case, always make the relationship a plus with them, that you do more for them than they do for you. So I would say that 90% or more, maybe 95% of the relationships I’ve built, I’ve done more for them than they’ve done for me. And it’s just giving first, and being the one who gives more pays off over a long period of time. You know, and Chelsea comes to me and goes, “You do so much for other people and you never ask anybody.” And I go, “I know, but that’s secret sauce. That’s really unspoken. If you do more, you’ll get benefits in ways you never know.”

I have a question on this one, and I want to get to the other three that you have too. How do you not get bogged down when it doesn’t come back around? How do you continue to give first when the last nine people have just taken, taken, taken, and left and never said thank you, or whatever it is, right?

Yeah. I don’t think that, I think the odds aren’t that way. I think if you’re a pessimist, you might say that, but I’m an optimist. And I think I saw something, I think it was Charlie Munger who said, you know, I take the positive approach because seven out of 10 times that person’s going to give me back a smile. If I smile and say, hey, how are you? They’re going to do the same thing. And I think that’s the same with all of this. There are times where I give a lot to a relationship, and I might call them down the road and ask for something, and they don’t step up, and it’s pretty disappointing. But the majority of time people do. They’ll respond. They’ll know that I did a good job.

I’ll give you an example. Yesterday, I have a friend who’s looking for a big line of credit. I used to have a bank that I did a lot of work with, and they had a line of credit for me. I no longer use them, but I have a relationship. After I left the bank, I still, I took the guy to lunch, the president of the bank. And my buddy called, said, “Can you introduce me?” And yeah, of course. So I made the introduction, but I didn’t burn that relationship. So even though I left them, there was still a relationship there. And they said, “Of course, we’ll talk to them and do this.” So it’s just, they come back to you in so many different ways. And I walk around and know, whenever I see somebody, I’m like, I’ve done a lot for them, and it’s okay. I feel good about giving first. I think on all, I’ve been rewarded way over what I’ve put out in the world. The karma, if you will, has come back.

Sure. Good. And then, okay, so number one, give first. Number two, then…

The second is real relationships. Build real relationships. One of the hardest things for the younger folks on this is they don’t know what a real relationship is. Texting is not, we’ve talked about this on previous podcasts, texting is not a real relationship. Having them as a Facebook friend is not a real relationship. Having them on Instagram or TikTok is not a real relationship. Spending time with people, giving them value, giving them stuff, giving them first, that is what will build a real relationship. And I call this a real relationship: if you have the need to call them, will they call you back? Mhm. That’s my test. So I called this bank president yesterday, called me back immediately. That’s the relationship that I want with people, and that’s when I know I have a good relationship.

Yep. Nice. So giving, building real relationships.

And there’s a GHA. My buddy Brad Lemon says GHA, greatest human ability: you can fool yourself, saying you have all these relationships. You can fool yourselves. But if you haven’t talked to somebody… I’ll give you an example. Yesterday, Wednesday, we made a big pitch, and this guy walks in. He had a big company and sold it. And I was the only guy, because I asked him, I called him, I took him to lunch, I kept a relationship. He’s on my calls. And I asked him one time over the last three or four years, I’m like, “Does anybody else call you?” He says, “It’s funny. The phone never rings anymore since we sold. You’re the only guy who continues to call me.”

And all of a sudden we’re in the big pitch, and he walks in. He’s the equity partner, he’s with the equity partner, and I’m like, “Oh my god.” So afterwards I start talking to him, and I feel good about the relationship, don’t get me wrong. It was good. But I asked him, “What are you doing here? How long have you been at this firm?” And he’s like, “I’ve been here full-time two years.” And I go, “Are you kidding me? The last time that you and I had lunch was two years ago.” And in my mind, I was like, I’ve been building the relationship, but it’d been a couple years since I’d seen him live. And so time moves really fast. And so these relationships, now he really likes me and it’s really good, but it’s like, these are hard. This is not easy to do, to stay on top of these and to build the network. And they say the network’s 500 people. That’s really hard, to keep a network of 500 people of real relationships.

Of real relationships. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Especially with that test, you know. Do you have any other tests? If I call them, will they call me back? Is there any other kind of rule of thumb for yourself on, like, judging the value, kind of where they see the relationship?

You know, it’s an internal test for me, saying, have I given them more than they gave me? Yeah. Do I feel good about that? Yeah. And then the other thing that I’ve been doing now as I get older is, have I built a relationship outside the business? Part of this pitch was with somebody I’ve known for a long time. They’re not in our business. They’re primarily in the retail business, but I’ve been building the relationship with the guy for 30 years, never done any business with him. And I’m like, hey, I finally called him after the pitch. I go, you know what? It’d be nice to work with you. I’ve known you for 30 years, but I’ve never done any business with you, and I’d like to do that. And he said, I would too. And so they know that I haven’t been pushing them. I think a lot of young folks just want to go right to “we had lunch, therefore I’m pushing you for business.” Yeah. And I was pushing more for relationships.

Yeah. I think that’s when you have pressure to get sales and make deals, right? Like, there is an innate pressure to have that perspective. And I’d say even early at OneSource, we had, like, hey, we’re burning money, we got to get people on here.

And what was my answer always? You’re either closing or building pipeline, right, with relationships.

Yep.

It’s really great. People on this who are customers of OneSource will know we have personal relationships with the brokers that are on our platform, which is unheard of in the software industry. But our team, one, we’ve been together a long time, since we started the company four years ago. We have several people that have been with us from day one and are really close. And those guys have relationships with customers, and it’s really great to see. Yeah. Yeah. And we want that, you know. So we’re different. We’re a different software company.

Yeah. So you have best practices for retaining clients: give first, and build real relationships.

Relationships when they’ll call you back. The third one is touches with value. So this kind of relates to give first, but it’s not necessarily give. Touches with value means that you’re either communicating via a text with something they have… This morning I texted at least 20 people. I saw an interview that I really found fascinating, and I texted at least 20 different people the same interview, saying, “Hey, I was thinking about you. I thought you’d find this really fascinating.” You were one of them, so you got it. And so it’s touches with value. I’m not asking you for any favors. I’m just saying to you, I’m thinking about you.

And I just saw some videos, like the most, you know, they always say, hey, you say use the person’s name: Charlie, it’s great to see you again. But this “I was thinking about you” is even more valuable. And so I send stuff that I would know people to do. Yesterday, you know this because you got it, yesterday was opening day for Major League Baseball. And so I sent you that opening day poem or thing, and I sent it to, you know, I got it from somebody and I sent it to 20 people that kind of know baseball.

Yeah. So, yeah.

So touches with value. And that’s hard. You and I have had this conversation: how do you, as a young person, give value? But now you’ve been into this three or four years. Let me ask you a question, turn the tables. You’re doing it pretty naturally now, right? How long did it take?

I would say not naturally. I’d say it depends on the circumstance. In some situations, when I’m with my peers or people younger than me, and depending on the conversation, I do feel like I have clarity on the value I can offer to those people. And I feel like that was a first step, is like understanding what I do have to offer and what value I can give them, and then, like, refining that to make it a little bit better and better and better. I would say it’s still not natural all the time in business, where it’s like, hey, there’s a transactional email of just, like, hey, you know, following up, do we need to reschedule this? Or, hey, we did this onboard with you a month ago, how’s it been? You know, like little things like that. You know, everyone says don’t just follow up. And I would say we’re constantly working on that at OneSource. How do we continue to give value and follow up without just saying follow up? Like, how do we actually build a relationship and give people value?

You know, one of the things I heard yesterday from Libra, who’s one of my mentors, he said, “How can I be more interesting, or how can I be more interested than interesting today?” So how can I be more interested in you? And I think when we give touches with value, one of the easiest ways to do that is to be more interested in that person, what they’re going through, what they’re doing, what they’re trying to get done. People like telling people, this is our goals, this is our strategy, this is what we’re doing. And so I think we can do that. So that’s the third thing that I do. And then let me talk about the fourth thing.

Yep.

The fourth thing is what we call, and this is Strategic Coach, the four referability habits, right? There’s four referability habits. Say please and thank you. Do what you say you’re going to do. Show up on time. And finish what you start. Those four things. If you just did that in your entire life, you’re going to develop a ton of relationships with people who love working with you and love being with you.

And let’s just go outside the business. I plan, as you know, multi-day long-distance hiking, and I plan the trips. They come on the trips. Everybody comes. You’re coming on a trip. I plan the trips. You know why? Because I want the guys there, and they will do it. So we’re doing a bunch of hikes. We’re going to hike in Turkey this year, and I’m planning the trip, and with it we’re going to do some really fun stuff. You and I, we’re going to go to Fogo Island. It’s going to be fun. Why do you do it? It’s like, all you have to do is show up. Book the tickets and show up. It’s like, so easy. So it’s like, show up on time, do what you say. Hey, would you like to go? Then I book it, do everything. And it’s like, this is so easy. Why wouldn’t I do more of this? So just an idea.

Yep. And on that last one, it’s shocking how rare, you know, how few people have all of those. And it is surprising. You know, so easy to say, so hard to execute.

Yeah. Everybody wants that. And actually, GHA again: believes it, and they suck at it. Or they’re, you know, there’s one thing they’re good at. They say please and thank you. They’re probably pretty good at showing up. But doing what they say they’re going to do and finishing what they start, that’s hard. And so we can say it, and everybody can do it. One of the things I’ve really started to realize is, one of my secret powers is I execute. You know, I don’t know what this is, but I’ve got two blogs that have now been going for 10 years. 500-plus blogs. That’s a thousand blogs I’ve done, I’ve written. And it’s like, not many people can execute those. And this is our 20th or 30th one of these. It’s like, we can execute those. We’re getting them done.

You’re really good at execution. Not a lot of people are. It’s a superpower.

Yeah. Yeah.

Every month since July of 2022 we’ve done this.

We’ve done this. Yeah. So what is that? Two and a half years, I think. Almost three. So we’re there. And so the issue of this is, hey, do what you say you’re going to do and finish what you start. Stay the course. These are the things that separate the average from the great.

Yeah. So, you gave us the four best practices, thank you. I have one other question that I was thinking about early on. You were giving your background, and you said now we have a big team. What is a best practice you could share, when you have a big team, on retaining clients? So, you know, you don’t want to step on each other’s toes, and frankly, I could see that happening pretty easily. So if there are two or three of your partners or people on your team working with one client on a specific deal, how do you maximize, you know, the relationship there?

Ah, that’s a good question. So we’ve had to create the systems around that. The first thing is, on almost all the deals that I work now, I have somebody else on my team, because I’m always coaching. We’re always training. So the young runners and brokers, partners on my team, will work on a deal with me, and so I’m always coaching them up. And the answer to that is the communication internally is really good. It’s like, “Hey Nick, you reply to this. You got this, Nick.” I’ll send a text: “You’re all over that, right? You’re going to do that.” So we’re communicating who’s going to reply to it. “I’ll take this one. Set up a draft for me.”

But we had to create something internally, because we got big, and we’re doing deals that I don’t know who any of them are, and I’m doing deals that they don’t know anybody. So we set up what we call an angles meeting. So every Tuesday morning at 8:15, we get on the call for 15 minutes, and each of us goes through our week of who we’re meeting with. We just actually have the calendar up, what we’re doing, and we’ll say, hey, like, last night I went to a fundraiser. Like, okay, I’m going to this fundraiser, and go, hey, if you see this person, let them know that we’re working on this transaction. And so that’s how we had to do it. It’s just an outcome, because somebody would call me and go, hey, you know, you’re working on that deal, and I’d go, no. And now I know, and now they know. So, angles meeting.

Yeah, cool. That’s an easy, that’s a good hack.

It is a good one. Yeah. All these little, 30 years, 30-plus years of working on deals, you get all these little problems and you just figure them out, right? Okay. You want to, here’s the second hack on that. So at 8:15 we get on to go through our calendars, and there’s four of us now. We just cruise through it, and we’ll talk market information. At 8:00, each person’s supposed to get on and go through their LinkedIn. So they update that every Tuesday. So you’re not going all the week, because, you know, LinkedIn, we’re not on it that much. We don’t think about it, but it’s a valuable tool.

Accepting requests.

Accepting requests and replying to people, so, you know, you’re not more than a week out. Yeah. It’s another little hack we just added on to our habit.

Yeah. Yeah. I will say, you know, just one comment I’ll add here. My wife Amanda, she’s one of the most extroverted people I know, and she’s obviously on the residential side. She’s a realtor. You said build real relationships. Real relationships isn’t a Facebook friend or whatever. I’ll look, it isn’t, she’s texting every single day on her phone. You can scroll for like 12, 15 seconds. She’s texting tons of people.

Texting tons of people.

And then same with her Instagram messages. So she’s not liking. She’s commenting or sending things.

Okay. So let’s differentiate this, though. She has a bunch of friends. We’re talking about this in a business environment. So there’s an overlap.

Yeah, there’s an overlap there. No, 100%.

But, you know, if I was liking my Instagram photos of my client, that’s not what we’re trying to do here. We’re trying to show them, again, we have to think about what do they want? They want somebody that they can trust that will execute their business. And then when they have a problem, if there’s a leak, we’re plumbers, right? If there’s a leak, call us. We’re your plumber. And so we just had a client go, “Hey, we just got, it’s that time of the year, so we’re getting these reconciliation bills. I can’t believe we’re going to have this pass-through bill. Can you take a look at it?” Literally got one yesterday. Andrew is meeting with the property manager to go through this. This is the relationship we want.

So to your, yes, residential is a different game than commercial. Commercial, we’re building professional relationships, which is way harder, because liking someone’s Instagram and saying, “Oh, it was so cute to see you in that whatever,” that’s way different than, hey, let’s talk about your reconciliations and all your parking rates, and here’s a bump that’s happening in your rent, and here’s your options renews. Those are way different. And it’s, for me, better, because it’s like, okay, I could talk business. But for Amanda, yeah, she’s insane.

Yep. Good clarification. I like it. Awesome. Retaining clients. I got the four best practices, right? Give first, build real relationships, touches with value, and then the four referability habits. And then I liked your bonus add-on, angles meeting for teams. Just make sure you’re all on the same page.

All we do is give value to our customers. Call us. Call us at OneSource. Join us. Join the revolution.

Awesome. Thank you.

Thank you.