New initiatives and hires signal growth at CBRE | Boulos Co.
New hires, a formalized training program and new database software signal CBRE | The Boulos Co.’s adjustments of its business model to accommodate its growing client base.
In a news release, the Portland firm said that Jessica Estes, partner and vice president of operations, is transitioning to a broker position within the company. Estes has been with the firm since 2003 in a variety of brokerage and management roles.
Elyse Pomeroy was hired as the new operations manager, where she has a key role in overseeing day-to-day operations, reviewing procedures and policies, helping implement new systems and processes, ensuring regulatory compliance, overseeing the brokerage support team and maintaining and enhancing the company’s marketing presence. Pomeroy most recently held the position of customer onboarding manager/corporate payments at WEX Inc., a provider of corporate payment solutions with headquarters in South Portland.
In the release, Managing Director Drew Sigfridson explained that new talent, technologies and marketing platforms are designed to maintain and improve the company’s position as it grows.
Reached by phone, Sigfridson expanded on those ideas. The company has grown 10% to 15% a year for the past five years from the total dollar volume perspective, he said.
“In Portland, in particular, it shows we’ve really turned a corner and that there’s more volume, more companies looking to come and grow here, more development happening,” he said. “If you look at all of the hotel development, the residential development, the office development, the projects that are going on in the medical field — overall, there’s been a tremendous amount of development and commercial real estate growth.”
Hiring has proceeded apace, he said.
“We’re up by 20% in the last few years” in the increase of employee numbers, he said. Today, the Portland office includes about 24 staff and brokers and the Portsmouth, N.H., office includes four staff and brokers.
Focus on training
Three people are in the training program now, and two recently completed the program and are now associate brokers. Another broker will be hired in September.
With all of that hiring has come a more formalized approach to the company’s training program, he said.
“We’ve hired a person to work on a part-time basis over the next six months to take all of the training regimens that we’ve had for the past 30 years and put it into more of a specific training package, which is going to be consistently applied with each new hire in a more of a formal way,” he said.
The idea is to provide consistent training which, in turn, will provide consistent client service, he said.
The firm has also brought in new software specifically tailored for commercial real estate. For example, it allows all contacts within the company to be combined into a shared database.
“The idea is that the knowledge and the interaction we have with our clients will be seamless and not be duplicated,” he said. “For example, a new building becomes available. We can put it into this database and then compare it against all of the tenants we’re working with who might be looking for comparable spaces. We’ve always used a similar type of methodology, but it hasn’t been so dynamic and so powerful as to be able to have all 24 individuals contributing into one database.”
CBRE | The Boulos Co., dealing with commercial real estate property listings, was founded by Joseph Boulos in 1975. It quickly expanded into development, construction and management with Boulos Asset Management and partnered with CBRE, the world's largest commercial real estate services company.
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