Any advice on breaking away from being type cast as the King of Small Office?
I work with a boutique commercial real estate team. We're a full service team, any agent can handle any property type. One of our agents is a small office wizard, which is great because we can still confidently sell office product knowing this guy can get it leased easily (and we all know office is tough right now). The problem is he's so good at it, the partners just keep giving him small office product (essentially they dump what they don't want on him and say "well hey he's good at it and he needs the money" which irritates me to no end because he really does need the money so they know he can't say no), which is a time suck for very little return. He expressed to me that between all the tours he does during the normal work day and having to work two other jobs he's concerned he'll never break out of this pattern and start doing large deals like the rest of the team. I felt like I didn't have any good advice other that "hang in there" lol which is just about the least helpful thing to say. (I'm not an agent so its hard for me to really relate)

Does anyone have any advice or war stories I can pass along to help him get through this point in his career?
[{"id": "ia2a88k", "text": "How long has he been in the business? Once those small tenants look to renew he gets to grow with them. \n\nAnother option would be for him to go into property management or in house leasing for one of the major office landlords. Then he makes connections with bigger tenants and brokers, work there for a couple years then leave  to a bigger shop. \n\nBut you are right, staying there is a recipe for wash out. It takes more work to do these little no credit deals than bigger leases sometimes, and nothing is worse than busting your ass for a $2,000 check.", "replies": [{"id": "ia2fczj", "text": "He's been with us for three years so thats a great thought, someone those three year leases are going to be coming up I'll remind him to check in. He does usually do landlord rep though because the landlords are all clients of our other agents. I guess the ticket really would be - get the building or complex fully leased and get better at convincing them to sell it. Right?", "replies": [{"id": "ia2ktvb", "text": "He is doing bitch work for other people and if he doesn\u2019t have the relationships with the landlords he has nothing. His is completely disposable and needs to get out of there. Otherwise he needs to follow up with those tenants and control that relationship.", "replies": [], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "ia2bvxi", "text": "\u201cIf you get good at shoveling shit, be careful you don\u2019t get promoted to a larger shovel. \u201c", "replies": [{"id": "ia2flcz", "text": "Lol think I'll embroider that on a sweater for him :)", "replies": [], "depth": 2}, {"id": "ia2woj2", "text": "Imma use this one sometime", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "ia2mky4", "text": "Can he teach someone junior to shovel it? Then free up time to do something else. \n\nDoes he want to do something else?", "replies": [{"id": "ia2q3tb", "text": "He is the most junior member of our team - we are looking for another to help him out but its tough because no one really had the bandwidth to train a newbie so its been tough. Tbh I don't really know him well enough to say if theres anything else he wants to do but I know before this is a residential agent and before that a car sales man. So selling is what he likes and what hes good at but at the end of the day you gotta be making money.", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "ia2t7ny", "text": "he needs to prospect more and refusing these requests as he builds his own book.  Other agents aren't really a great referral source after you've been in the biz for 12 months or more.   You usually pretty much do this work to get experience because no one is going to hire an agent for their first listing.  What he figured out is generally true, it doesn't pay a living wage on its own.\n\nThe other route is to go hitup a small office owner and get hired as a leasing agent.  As an employee there is less pressure on deal size and more so on just getting things leased.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "ia4imco", "text": "Unfortunately I have seen this before and he is far too useful in that position for them to ever let him out of it. He\u2019s gonna get stuck with that and never get out unless upper management has a complete change of heart or he finds a new job. They got this guy hustling for scraps and I\u2019m more than happy to let him do it because he\u2019s useful. Unfortunately for you guys he\u2019s going to get sick of this shit real fast and be out of there once he has enough experience under his belt for someone else to hire him.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "ia6ep9a", "text": "A colleague told me when I started off \"You'll do the same work on a $1000 lease, as you will on a $10,000 lease.\" \n\nIf you're working in small spaces, you'll always be scrambling for money. They keep you way busier than large - you do way more tours on them, and the payoff at the end is a lot less, especially after your agency takes a cut. Larger spaces are less busy, and you don't need to do as many to earn a living. Tell him to move up or move out.\n\nIf he wants to stay, I'd recommend he does a sale to give himself some breathing room, and ignores all those referrals he's getting while he focuses on what he wants to be doing. Other agents will only give you stuff they don't want - it's not as a favour.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}]