Advice to Budding Brokers: Get Creative
The pandemic has highlighted the importance of working through deal structure and recognizing the nuances of a deal.
Marcus & Millchap’s Sharone Sabar has a small piece of advice for new brokers in the capital markets: get creative. While creativity has always been an essential element in shopping deals to lenders, the pandemic has highlighted the importance of working through deal structure and understanding the nuances that could help and hurt a deal.
“My main piece of advice to young professionals out there is to understand the fundamentals of business. To excel, you have to be creative, especially during challenging times like today,” Sabar, senior managing director of capital markets at Marcus & Millichap, tells GlobeSt.com. “You have to be creative by finding mitigating factors of why banks should and shouldn’t do deals.”
Understanding the deal also requires building lender relationships to know what each lender wants—and what they don’t want. Lender relationships are just as essential as client relationships. “For example, preparing comprehensive loan packages for lenders and explaining the deal thoroughly builds you trust and credibility with lenders, so when you approach them with a deal, they prioritize you because of what you prepared for them, making the lender’s job more straightforward to accept the loan,” says Sabar. “This makes it easier for them, and you can negotiate better deals for your client, and they move faster for you at the end, which is what you need in this environment. Relationships are key.”
Sabar’s colleague Michael Derk, also a senior managing director of capital markets at Marcus & Millichap, says relationships don’t end with clients and lenders. New brokers should find a mentor and learn as much as they can. “I would advise young professionals entering the debt and equity finance field to team up with a well-established professional known in the market,” says Derk. “Someone that can work through deal structuring and recognizes pitfalls down the road, to be proactive for clients instead of being reactive. Do not do it alone. Team up with a strong professional that has been in the industry for a long time to be guided.”