David Kahane - Develop and cultivate your personal and professional connections: Relationships = $$$

Facebook, Linked-in and many of the social networks are all wonderful ways to form business and personal relationships. The friendships and relationships we make in high school, university and especially early in our work career can be priceless. Well, actually, extremely valuable! An exercise and great proposal for all of us to do is to send out an e-mail informing every single person we know of the following: 1. What we are doing. 2. Where we are going to be. (location / address, city and state) 3. Offer our knowledge of the city and state. 4. Allow us to be the recipient's point of contact. The best part of this note (email) is to explain that if the recipient "ever" finds themselves in your local area or surrounding area to let the sender know. The sender would enjoy sharing restaurants, things to do, places to go, the better "off the beat and path" hotels, and allow the sender to be the primary point of contact. After 30 years working in New York City and 27 years as a real estate professional, relationships are what service professionals depend on as a source of business. Those relationships are built upon in our teens starting from our school days and everyday forward. As a recent example / transaction: A former employer with whom a friendly relationship had been maintained contacted DAK. He asked for assistance with an owner of a commercial co-op. Fast forward 12 months of working together after developing a marketing plan and successfully selling the commercial co-op unit. We continued to work together and secure another commercial co-op for the same group to purchase. During the first transaction, DAK secured a one year lease back for the seller. This allowed the seller and DAK to research both the sales and leasing real estate the market. As it turned out there were hurdles to get over and obstacles to navigate...but the buyer of the first transaction took notice as to how both the seller's and buyer's brokers were navigating these obstacles and how they were being handled...which resulted in a multiple transaction that was recently completed. The new buyer and his brokers admired DAK's way of defusing possible problem situations that could have presented themselves, but with the correct management of conversations and proper timing of presenting ideas, resulted in a positive experience for both the buyer and seller. Several months later as the one year lease was entering its latter months the buyer's broker contacted DAK and suggested a meeting with the new owners of the property. The meeting took place and the buyer, now the owner, has retained his former brokers along with DAK to market the space for lease and possible sale. Within the first five days of the space being listed on the market for lease two offers have been received. This story has been shared because generating business is all about trusted relationships. Whether the relationship is generated in elementary school or within a previous work place, friends, family, colleges, associates, acquaintances, and on line links, all are sources of business past, present or in the future. David Kahane is the managing member at DAK Commercial Realty, New York, N.Y.