Commercial real estate brokerage is something you can be very passionate about. There are plenty of opportunities to work on and convert if you are an agent or broker. The property market is changing constantly, and you can use this change to convert more listings and commissions if you watch what your market indicators are doing now and how they are heading.
1. By Pranav Pandya
Franchise Development Manager
RE/MAX Mumbai Gujarat Maharashtra
Commercial Real Estate and
Its Various Aspects!
2. RE/MAX Mumbai Gujarat Maharashtra
• Reasons to be Passionate about Commercial Real
Estate Broking
• Action Steps to Client Contact in Commercial
Real Estate Agency
• Tips to Winning More Listings Than Your
Competitors in Commercial Real Estate Agency
Agenda
3. RE/MAX Mumbai Gujarat Maharashtra
Reasons to be Passionate about
Commercial Real Estate Broking
4. RE/MAX Mumbai Gujarat Maharashtra
• When sales are heading up, you can work your
database of property investors and owner occupiers
• When leasing is active, you can connect with local
tenants and business owners that occupy leased
premises
• Sales and leasing activity can lead to property
management appointments
• New property developments will lead to project sales or
project leasing, and that can mean lots of commissions.
Some Facts
Commercial real estate brokerage is something you can be very passionate about. There are plenty of opportunities to work on and convert if you are an agent or broker. The property market is changing constantly, and you can use this change to convert more listings and commissions if you watch what your market indicators are doing now and how they are heading.
In these four segments of the property market, there are things that you can work with and turn into opportunities. It is simply a matter of working the people that you know and growing your database of new prospects.
Here are 5 definite reasons you should get more active and passionate about our industry and property market:
The clients that we serve require agents that understand the local area and the property type. If you look at the top agents in the market, you will soon see that they specialize in something and are known for doing so. Usually it is in a property type. The clients are attracted to those top agents because they want to work with the best of the best. How do you rank in that assessment?
From one successful sale or lease transaction, you can always find the seeds of another opportunity. Ask the questions of the right people to find those new leads and business opportunities.
It is well known that the commissions that you can achieve from a quality property sale or lease are generous. That being said, commissions are the reward for a ‘job well done’. Improve your quality of services and property specialization; the commissions will then be easier to achieve.
Get to know all the property activity and opportunity in a defined area. Don’t spread yourself too wide in the market. Concentrate on a region where there are properties that generate sales and leasing ‘churn’.
Whilst you may have plenty of competitors locally, most of them will be a bit ‘ordinary’ when it comes to professional property services and market coverage. Seek to improve your relevance as an agent or broker locally. Show the market why you are the best agent to help with any property challenges.
You can do things here with these 5 facts of the property market today. Are you up to the challenge? Formulate a system to work to every day that can help you grow your skills as a commercial real estate agent.
In commercial real estate agency the clients that we serve are a critical part of the market share that we build. The relationships that we create with those clients should be growing within a system and strengthened with relative property market content. This is a very personal process for each and every salesperson or agent.The cycle of commercial real estate activity is relatively long. It can be some time between lease or sale requirements for the average client. This then says that a client contact cycle and system should be ongoing to a plan and a process. It could be months or years before the client is ready to make or take the next action steps in a property transaction. Over that time the relationship you have with that client or prospect needs to be nurtured and strengthened.To be a top agent your clients must understand and respect your skills; you must be the ‘go to person’ when it comes to getting a result with a sale or lease situation. When you specialize in a property type and location, this is relatively easy.Here are five action steps to structure a client contact program in your agency structure(NEXT SLIDE)
Review the clients account history, their property needs, and the potential new business potentially coming from them in the future. As part of the review, consider the variations between sales, leasing, and property management needs. You can also obtain fees from project leasing, tenant retention planning, special lease reviews, and renovation or refurbishment strategies. You will need full and complete details relative to the clients property ownership portfolio, and the lifecycle relative to property holding. Understand the pressures that apply to the portfolio including property age, tenant volatility, income potential, and lease expiry. All of these things can lead to professional service requirements and extra fees.
Given the previous point, determine the reasons for ongoing contact based on the clients requirements and the fee potential. Every contact call, meeting, and direct mail piece should be consistently focusing on the biggest need that you believe applies to the client and their portfolio. Create consistency in your contact plan by including this determined need factor.
At a minimum or basic frequency, you should be contacting all of your clients or prospects at least once every 90 days. When you know that the person is moving to some property activity the contact cycle should shorten and be much more specific. It is a known fact that the ongoing contact made to a single client in this way will build agency relevance and immediacy. After the second or third contact to the client, you are likely to get better conversions to new business activity. The organisation behind this process should involve a database with suitable flexibility.
The client contacting process or system that you create should involve dialogue practice. Call contact and meeting activity will be a daily process. You can improve your conversions in both of these situations through prospecting and dialogue practice. Determine the weaknesses that you have when it comes to dialogue and presentations, then take some steps to improve those weaknesses given the prevailing market conditions.
Gather some up to date market information relating to the local area and particular property types. Display that information in various ways including charts, market trends, photographs, and benchmarking. This information will give you substance and confidence when it comes to connecting with your clients and prospects.
A client contact strategy in commercial real estate is a very specific process. If requires planning and consistency. Over time you will find that the process will help you establish a stronger market share and generate many more quality listings.
In commercial real estate agency sales and leasing you will always have competing agents crossing into your territory and trying to take your clients and listings. The only way that you can handle the problem is to be better than the competition in the ways that really matter to your customers and market. Here are some ideas for that: (in Next slide)
Prospect for new clients each and every day. Over time you will need to fill the gaps in your database because some clients will move on for many different reasons.
Your current clients and contacts should be nurtured as part of a system of contact with relevant information. Market information can always be shared with your prospects to help them understand just what is going on with local property.
Use the telephone each day as part of a contact and prospecting process. You should generate at least 2 meetings per day from your call contact process.
Split your clients and prospects into categories of relevance and interaction. Some of your clients will be of higher long term value than others. Your benchmarks for client categorization should be set on property type, level of property requirement, and repeat business.GENERAL DISCUSSION:When you look at the actions and results of top agents, it is the quality of the listings that takes them above everyone else. Invariably top agents will have better properties listed on an exclusive basis.It is the good properties that produce the solid and real enquiry from the market. When you think the commercial property market is tough and slow, you simply do not have enough of the top quality listings. If that is the case, take a serious look at your prospecting efforts and lift them to a new level.It takes about 3 months to change your listing focus and that can only be done through new levels of prospecting. Top agents will have weekly targets that help keep them on track. They will know the numbers that they must maintain to get the local listings and the right levels of enquiry. Let’s see some typical benchmarks that a top agent will work to: (NEXT SLIDE)
Here are some typical benchmarks that a top agent will work to: (NEXT SLIDE)
Numbers of outbound calls on a daily basis to new people they have not spoken to before.
Constant contact with existing people in their database on a weekly basis.
The commercial real estate industry is not really hard or different than any other sales related industry; it just takes real focus and directed effort. When you do this the benefits soon occur and strengthen your market share.