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.
Shea Murray
Shea is the current business development manager at GC Realty & Development in the
Chicago market. Before his time at GCR&D and excelling in the world of property management
sales, he was a professional baseball player, climbing through the ranks of the Pittsburgh
Pirates organization after being selected in the 2017 MLB draft. Shea graduated from THE
Ohio State University in 2017 with a degree in international relations before pursuing
professional baseball.
Shea’s previous sales experience includes stints during his baseball offseasons selling personal
training for a Chicago based fitness center and health insurance sales in downtown Chicago
where he set an ‘open enrollment’ record with over 450 deals closed in just 3 months.
During his time with GCR&D, Shea has enjoyed getting the opportunity to learn more about real
estate investment through his day to day interactions and networking opportunities around the
city. These interactions and the influence of the industry pushed Shea to purchase his first real
estate investment property in Chicago 6 months after joining GC Realty. Shea attributes much of
his success with GC to his mentor and the owner of GCR&D, Mark Ainley. “When you have the
opportunity to work with and learn from someone as high energy and knowledgeable as Mark,
there are a lot of reasons to enjoy coming to work everyday.”
In his personal life Shea enjoys traveling, listening to podcasts and books, and spending time
with his wife and new baby boy. And, in classic salesman fashion, he insisted that if anyone is
looking to purchase an investment property in the greater Chicago area or is fed up with their
current property manager, GIVE HIM A CALL AT HIS CELL: 419-438-4995.
Stories from the trenches of selling property management today.
