Pitching your Next Real Estate Development Deal with Evan Knox – Ep. 026

About the Guest

I am excited to share this next conversation with all of you. Evan is the Founder of Caffeine Marketing and small business owner located in Atlanta, Georgia. Evan started Caffeine Marketing as a way to make profitable marketing easy for small companies. In this episode, we are diving deep into pitching your next real estate development deal from the standpoint of someone within the digital marketing space.

From Social Media, websites, and everything in between, Caffeine Marketing produces marketing that works. They’re able to price exceptionally competitively because of their efficient processes and low overhead from working remotely. Caffeine provides the following services for their clients: Social Media Marketing, Digital Marketing Campaigns, and Marketing Strategy. You can find out more about how they can help guide you on your Hero’s journey by visiting their webpage at https://caffeine.marketing/.

In this episode, we are going to discuss the one thing that he believes is most important when pitching your idea/development to potential investors, the best resources that will help you market yourself or your projects, and common myths about raising capital that he often sees and how he you bust that myth. As you’ll hear on the show, he brings loads of experience on the subject of marketing to the table. I think you will enjoy his take on pitching your next deal from the perspective of a talented marketing entrepreneur.

Main Take-Away’s From This Show

Pitching your next ground-up real estate development project or any other commercial real estate deal for that matter, requires many of the same techniques and tricks utilized by the various titans of business. Evan helps to bring this to light for me during this show. Many of the same marketing skills utilized to build a brand for, say a coffee shop, can be applied to achieve your goals in commercial real estate. The main take-aways I got from my conversation with Evan in this “unofficial” Commercial Real Estate Marketing 101 course are as follows:

Creating a website and sales funnel are useful in attracting potential investors.
You are not the Hero; you are the Guide.
There is no “one-way” to pitch your next project/deal/strategy.

As always, I will dig into each of these “take-away’s” every week on the blog. So, without further a due, here we go!

Creating a website and sales funnel are useful in attracting potential investors.

First off, we all know what creating a website entails, but what is a “Sales Funnel” and how can it help you when attracting potential investors? According to Salesforce.com “A sales funnel represents the ideal path companies hope buyers take to become customers. Most companies use the funnel concept as a method to track prospects as they move through sales stages and to align marketing and sales targets, activities, and processes. (Some may also refer to this as a purchase funnel or conversion funnel.)

The sales funnel is one of the most fundamental concepts in sales and marketing. The top of the funnel signifies the goal of every business — to generate as many leads as possible — while the narrow bottom reflects how many of those leads are converted to customers by the end of the sales process.” (https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2019/04/what-is-a-sales-funnel.html)

So how can you use this to help fund your next commercial real estate project or when pitching your next real estate development deal? Well it depends on your situation, but Evan gave a good example on the show when dealing with the hotel private equity group. The group produced a sales funnel meant to appeal to high net-worth individuals looking to diversify their portfolios and potentially earn higher returns. Refer to minute mark 17:35 in the podcast for more detail on how they created the sales funnel. I’d challenge you to find a way to incorporate this into your marketing campaign regardless of which aspect of commercial real estate you may be in.

You are not the Hero-You are the Guide.

We all want to be the Superman, the Hercules, or even the Captain America of our own story. Evan brought up a good point, however. If we want to be successful in pitching our services, projects, or skills to others, we need to think of ourselves as the “Guide” to the other’s Heroes Journey. Unfortunately, there cannot be two heroes in the story. This requires a completely different mindset when approaching the pitch.

So, who is the mysterious archetypal Guide in the story? According to http://mythologyteacher.com/, “Heroes are almost always started on their journey by a character who has mastered the laws of the outside world and come back to bestow this wisdom upon them. This supernatural character often gives them the means to complete the quest. Some of the time the gift is simply wisdom. Other times it is an object with magical powers. In every instance it is something the hero needs to succeed.” Think about this next time you are pitching your project to potential investors. You are aware of what they (the Hero) needs in order to complete their quest; be it fame, greater returns, or a legacy. Now it is up to you to impart this wisdom upon them.

There is no “one-way” to pitch your next project/deal/strategy.

This last take-away is one that I resonate quite a bit with. Essentially there are many ways that you can pitch or present a deal to perspective investors. There is not just one “right way” to do so. Obviously, this depends largely on the type and scope of commercial real estate transactions that you encounter in your career, but it is a good frame of mind to keep. Oftentimes to make a deal successful, you will need to frame it in a way that has not previously been framed. This really allows you to become creative and opens the door to exploring alternative ways of making your project become a reality.

This is extremely liberating and exciting for most as this is where the real deals are either made or not. In the book Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work, Liz Wiseman states, “When the world is changing quickly, experience can become a curse, trapping us in old ways of doing and knowing, while inexperience can be a blessing, freeing us to improvise and adapt quickly to changing circumstances.” Let this take-away be an invigorating driver in finding new ways to structure your next commercial real estate deal.

As you can see from the take-aways above, this podcast episode was full of great tips. Those looking for new ways to build their business or market their next real estate development deal will benefit greatly. As always, if you have enjoyed the content and the show, please subscribe to the show below and share with your friends! We’ll have many more great discussions on the shows to come

To Learn More About Evan Knox and Caffeine Marketing, Check out the Following Websites:

https://evanknox.com/
https://caffeine.marketing/

Resources Mentioned:

For more on funding your next Real Estate Development Deal, check out Episode 21 with Tony Holzbach to give you a perspective on funding your deal through a financial institution.

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