Working commercial accounts through your BOMA, IREM or IFMA chapter

Every trade has an association. So does the other side of this table. Commercial property managers, asset managers and facility directors belong to theirs, and the local chapters meet in the same city you work in. If you want commercial accounts, that is where the two sides are already in one room.

The three that matter, and who is in each

• —BOMA, the Building Owners and Managers Association: office, mixed-use and commercial buildings. Property managers and building engineers.
• —IREM, the Institute of Real Estate Management: property managers across office, retail and multifamily, with a strong certification culture (CPM, ARM, ACoM).
• —IFMA, the International Facility Management Association: in-house facility managers at hospitals, campuses, corporate estates and plants. The chair that owns downtime.

Which one you join follows the buildings you want, not the trade you are in. Roofing and HVAC work that lives in capital plans points at BOMA and IREM. Emergency response and after-hours access at a campus or a plant points at IFMA.

Start with the chapter, not the national body

The national organizations run conferences. The chapters run the local calendar, and the local calendar is what puts you in front of somebody who can hire you in your own metro. Find your chapter's own page, read its events list, and find out whether it has an associate or allied membership category for service providers, what it costs, and whether non-members can attend an event first. Chapters set their own terms, so ask the chapter rather than trusting anything you read second-hand, including this page.

Go once as a guest before you pay for anything

One breakfast or lunch meeting tells you whether the room holds the people you want. Count the property managers. Ask two of them what kinds of buildings they hold. If the room is mostly other vendors selling to the same three managers, that chapter is not worth dues to you this year, and you have learned it for the price of one morning.

The mistake vendors make in that room

They sell. A property manager at a chapter event has been handed a card by a roofer, a restorer, a paving company and a fire-alarm firm before the food arrives, and they have stopped listening. The people who get work out of these rooms are the ones who become useful to the chapter rather than visible in it: serving on a committee, helping run an event, answering a technical question in a session without turning it into a pitch. It is slower, and it is the part that works.

What to say when someone asks what you do

Two sentences: your trade, the building types you have actually worked in, and your real after-hours answer time. Then a question about their portfolio. That is the whole introduction. If they want more they will ask, and if they do not, you have not cost them anything, which is why they will talk to you again next month.

What this route costs you

• —Dues, which vary by chapter and by membership category. Confirm with the chapter.
• —Event fees, usually per meeting, sometimes waived for a first visit.
• —A morning or an evening a month, for a year, before it reliably produces anything.
• —The discipline not to sell in the room, which is the hardest of the four.

How this compares to what we sell

A chapter membership is a year of showing up, and it builds something we cannot sell you: standing among the people who hire. It is worth doing. What it does not give you is a named person with a time on your calendar this month. That is the one thing GoFlo does — $249 for one confirmed 20 minute meeting with a commercial decision-maker in your metro, with nothing monthly. The two are not in competition, and if you only have room for one this quarter, take whichever you will actually follow through on.