Lead Development Insights From Pro Ball Player-Turned-BDM Shea Murray

Strategic PM sat down with professional baseball player-turned-BDM Shea Murray to discuss his lead development processes.

Shea Murray is a BDM at GC Realty and Development who’s doing great things in the industry. He started his professional career as a baseball player, pitching for the Pittsburgh Pirates franchise and using his off-season time to build his sales experience by selling personal training and health insurance while living in Chicago.

In 2022, Shea saw opportunity in the real estate investment world. He started listening to the Bigger Pockets podcast but soon discovered the Straight Up Chicago Investor podcast, co-hosted by the owner of GC Realty, Mark Ainley.

Shea took a chance and reached out to Ainley requesting a position in sales with GC. As fate would have it, Mark was looking to fill a BDM seat at the time, and the rest is history.

Addressing the High Lead Volume at GC

To start, it’s worth noting that GC receives a massive volume of leads. While that may seem like a good thing on the surface, it takes a ton of energy and resources to manage and follow through with all those contacts.

According to Shea, there’s more long-term opportunity with those leads than what you might traditionally see in property management. They come in from many different sources: their podcast, the GC website, eBooks, and more, and they’re often prospective real estate investors or self-managers.

They may not be looking for a property manager right now, but their contacts usually create a six-month to two-year pipeline that has a compounding interest effect over the years.

As a result, managing those leads differs immensely from managing leads looking to hire a property manager in the next couple of months.