Niche Focus on the End-user of Real Estate
As we celebrate over eight years in business, people sometimes ask me why I left the large company environment to start IAG Commercial. This is a fair question and there are days where I realize it would have been easier to remain with a large company and it's many resources and strong brand recognition. These resources and brand recognition definitely allow a person to avoid activities not directly related to revenue production.
The core of our struggle was the inherit conflicts of working for a company that primarily generated revenue from institutional clients that hire the company to manage multiple buildings in multiple cities. These clients become a primary source of recurring revenue for large commercial real estate service companies. Throughout our careers, we have experienced times when our end-user clients come in conflict with these institutional relationships. It is not comfortable within the service companies, as the leasing and managing teams are measured around their ability to "keep or recruit" these new tenants.
Adversely, our focus is to educate our clients on the market so they make an educated decision they feel good about at the end of the day. When this decision contradicts the leasing and management teams focus within your own company, it becomes a point of contention internally. While many of our clients are medium to large companies, they are small in comparison to the revenue generated by these institutional clients. Recently, I was reminded of the times we were "encouraged" to do what was best for the company vs. what was best for our clients. From our perspective, the client "always" comes first because without clients, there is no company or end-user division within a larger service company.
In creating IAG Commercial, we wanted to avoid these internal conflicts, much like the legal field manages conflicts so as not to compromise their ability to service an existing client. We knew it would be harder to pursue new business opportunities without the name recognition of our larger competitors but we felt it was the right thing to do for our clients. We believe time will prove this out even though each day we have to work hard to create awareness of our company in the marketplace. Yes, we still lose business pursuits to our larger competitors but our clients appreciate our approach as they utilize our services.
We certainly appreciate avoiding the internal conflicts between our own companies internal divisions. We remain true to our focus! Whether your company is looking for tenant/buyer representation, disposition of facilities, development services or project management, keep us in mind. We may be smaller than the industry giants, but we are knowledgeable and committed to helping your company make and deliver upon a wise commercial real estate decision.
