This winter, Inman is obsessing over leadership in real estate. We’re publishing profiles, Q&As, strategy guides, and an in-depth 5-part report on what the industry wants from its leaders. Then, on March 26-28, we’re going to gather those leaders in the California desert to digest all of these inputs and figure out where to go from here.
This is a collaborative process. Please engage with our posts, and send us feedback to leadership@sandbox.inman.com. And if you are a leader who wants to join us in the desert in March, or if you want to recommend a colleague, send a note to brad@sandbox.inman.com and tell us why.
David Marine is the senior vice president of brand engagement for Coldwell Banker, where he positively influences consumers on a mass scale from his management of world-class, award-winning advertising campaigns to elevating Coldwell Banker’s digital footprint each year with his creativity in regard to content and video creation, which has garnered over 60 million viewers in 2016 alone.
As team leader for Coldwell Banker’s consumer and network engagement, he is mentoring and grooming a team of digital natives who attribute their own success directly to what they have learned from David.
David has had a profound impact in the real estate industry in each of his 13 years at Coldwell Banker and somehow continues to raise an already recording setting bar of excellence to new heights with each year that passes.
We recently sat down with David to chat about the future of real estate leadership.
As a leader, what keeps you up at night?
Failure. A simple and obvious answer, but it can come in many forms, from complacency to inability to anticipate change to poor execution.
David Marine
If you could change one thing in real estate, what would it be?
How we handle our data. Given the amount of data out there being transacted every single day, it’s still amazing to me that we don’t have better data insights, reporting structures and analysis reporting than other industries.
How have your expectations of your management team changed over the past two years?
There’s a greater expectation for the whole team to be fully invested in a singular goal. Previously, each group had something they were focused on, but that focus wasn’t necessarily the same as the focus of the person next to them.
Today, we have everyone focused on the same metric for success, which not only helps build the business but strengthens the team as well.
How do you keep your team competitive?
My team has an innate competitive nature that keeps us motivated, but we also like to look at how we compare within our industry and outside it.
We’re not satisfied with just meeting the performance standard of our direct competition. As a leader of a national brand, we find inspiration and motivation from looking outside as well.
With so much disruption in real estate, what’s your best advice for managing change?
Transparency. It may sound cliché, but being transparent and open with communication and changes is the best thing that’s helped me manage through change.
Want to connect with David? You can find him on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
