In a daring transfer to start out the brand new 12 months, a SERHANT. consultant pitched the brokerage’s coaching and training applications to BHS CEO Bess Freedman, though BHS already has its personal in-house applications.
New markets require new approaches and techniques. Consultants and trade leaders take the stage at Inman Join New York in January to assist navigate the market shift — and put together for the subsequent one. Meet the second and be a part of us. Register right here
Ryan Serhant is understood for making daring strikes. However this time, the dealer and CEO of SERHANT. might have overstepped his boundaries.
An unidentified salesperson at SERHANT. Ventures, the brokerage’s instructional department, despatched Brown Harris Stevens CEO Bess Freedman a pitch final week for a “tailored” coaching program for the brokerage’s brokers, which would come with a gross sales playbook, efficiency teaching, a social media boot camp and mentorship from Ryan Serhant himself, in response to emails The Actual Deal obtained.
To make certain she understood the supply accurately, Freedman reportedly requested if the deal was to pay Serhant to coach her brokerage’s brokers, and the SERHANT. Ventures rep mentioned, “It could appear unorthodox, however you’re understanding it accurately.”
Freedman apparently wasn’t going to let that stand.
“There’s a high quality line between being unorthodox and being a schmendrick,” she replied, using a Yiddish phrase which means “idiot.” “Thanks, however we’re going to go.”
The president of SERHANT. Ventures, Kyle Scott, advised The Actual Deal the supply was made in good religion.
“We don’t view the trade a lot as a sequence of opponents as we do one giant neighborhood,” Scott mentioned. “We companion with dealer/homeowners all all over the world to assist prepare their brokers.”
BHS has its personal in-house coaching, advertising and marketing and know-how applications for brokers, together with BHSOne, its digital hub for agent design, advertising and marketing, schooling and extra, and a just lately unveiled metaverse and cryptocurrency coaching program launched in partnership with the Metaverse Institute.
Freedman advised The Actual Deal she maintains “unimaginable respect” for Serhant, however that she turned down his supply since BHS has already invested “a lot cash” within the firm’s personal advertising and marketing and know-how.
She additionally felt that Serhant’s outreach was very focused to her agency particularly.
“I requested different brokerages and he hadn’t requested another companies,” Freedman advised The Actual Deal. “It looks like he reached out particularly solely to BHS to poke a bees’ nest.”
Serhant advised The Actual Deal his coaching program already consists of some BHS brokers who joined of their very own volition.
This isn’t the primary time the 2 NYC-based CEOs have butted heads.
Throughout a panel at The Actual Deal’s New York Metropolis Showcase + Discussion board in Could, Freedman, alongside Douglas Elliman CEO Scott Durkin, advocated for the previous guard in actual property, emphasizing the significance of relationships, whereas Serhant mentioned agent manufacturers and advertising and marketing had been the spine of his enterprise, and a means for brokers to maneuver into the longer term.
Serhant and Freedman then went on to debate the deserves and pitfalls of actual property actuality TV, with Freedman arguing that it cheapens the trade (and specifically, represents girls in a demeaning means), whereas Serhant mentioned the platform allowed the trade to attach with a wider viewers and grow to be extra related.
“We’re wanting in direction of the longer term and approaching our enterprise strategically — which means with tech, content material, leisure, and schooling — and we’re doing this as a result of agent manufacturers and properties must reside in a searchable, social, digital approach to succeed and promote globally,” Serhant mentioned in a press release emailed to Inman in Could.
“That is what we find out about media and tradition,” he added, “and that is what we’re making use of to our enterprise method at SERHANT.”
E mail Lillian Dickerson
