Ready for the competition.

For a team considered one of the most formidable in the investment sales business, Ron Cohen and Richard Baxter are surprisingly self-effacing. There isn't any secret to their success, they insist--it is all in experience and perseverance.

"It's a business of long-term relationships," explains Baxter, the more out-going of the two. "You try to build a repeat client base. Some of the buildings that we represent right now we have sold several times in the past."

The truth is that the Baxter/Cohen partnership in itself might be a phenomenon in a mutli-million dollar business. The two men have been working together for 23 years, since they met in college and both got part-time jobs at Bloomigdale's. Except for a brief period in the late 1970's, they have stayed together, working first at Newmark & Company and then at Edward S. Gordon (later Insignia/ ESG), choosing to function as a unit as opposed to two lone brokers.

"Richard specializes more in institutional investors and I work on entrepreneurs, but we work together on all of our deals," notes Cohen. "It helps us to bring together the resources of two people, instead of just working by ourselves."

According to Cohen and Baxter, what separates the mega-star sales brokers from everyone else is precisely the ability to cover as many different products as possible. Most New York owners have every kind of property in their portfolio, they explain, and being able to meet their needs on every occasion is important in getting a contract.

"We are really general practitioners of the New York real estate market," says Baxter. "We cover every property segment--from office buildings to multi-family to parking lots. And that's a philosophy that most major brokers, including Darcy Stacom, have adopted--we have to be able to do everything."

Cohen and Baxter made headlines recently, when they decided to leave long-term home Insignia/ESG (now CB Richard Ellis Real Estate Services) for Cushman & Wakefield. The decision was motivated largely by the contractual conflicts resulting from the recent merger of Insignia and CB Richard Ellis.

"We've know Bruce Mosler since 1981, when we worked together at Newmark & Company, and we talked to him from time to time about coming to work for Cushman & Wakefield," Baxter says. "Now the timing was right."