One of the best writers in CRE, Mr. Duke Long, has run three posts in a row about selling CRE Tech (shortening the cycle, who makes the decision, ending with the sales pitch). They are very worth reading for anyone that is either planning to buy or sell CRE Technology in the foreseeable future. However, there are a couple of thoughts that I think are worth adding on top of his for those interested.
I deal with a lot of different CRE technologies from startups to legacy vendors. The single biggest differentiator that I come across is whether the team representing the software actually understands the requirements of a corporate user. Too often they either understand the needs of a broker or have some half baked idea of what an actual corporate user needs. If the salesperson comes in and tells me how my portfolio works and the picture they paint doesn’t even come close to matching reality, I’m going to discount their tool pretty quickly.
Corporate real estate is hard. I’ve said it a lot but it really can’t be said enough. This is a hard industry. No two companies take the same approach to real estate. It’s not even consistent which area of an organization that real estate rolls up to! A CRE team reporting to HR runs differently than one reporting to finance than one reporting to operations than one tied to technology.
It’s not easy to find good salespeople for technology. It’s even harder to find one who is good at CRE technology. It’s even harder to find someone who is great at it.