A Collection of Client Contact Strategies for Commercial Brokers

In commercial real estate brokerage, your clients should be at the centre of your business model.   Adding clients to your database and your prospects to your database will be a valuable part of building your business. 

If you are lacking listings in both sales and leasing, then you are most likely lacking in your database and customer activities. Each agent or broker today must respect and’ tune’ this formula for the best results possible.

Changes are Good

As the property market changes, you can also change your focus on the types of people that you serve and concentrate on, that is from a business and value perspective.  Understand the customer categories to work with from a personal viewpoint; you have a good few to choose from such as:

• Tenants occupying buildings in your territory
• Major businesses in your location for the properties that they own or occupy
• Specific business people that you see dominating the ‘business media’ stories
• Investors owning the bigger local buildings
• Investment trusts purchasing or owning the larger properties in your city
• Franchise groups nationally
• Retailers that they may need property occupation
• Businesses that may be under pressure locally for expansion or relocation

It can be said here, that not all people are ‘valuable’ when it comes to commercial real estate in your local area or city.  Know what a client is to you and put some ‘attributes’ to the typical customer profile.  When you do that, you can refine and focus your prospecting model.  By ‘attributes’ I mean:

• Location and or value
• Property ownership type
• Personal wealth
• Business type for a Company or Corporation
• Portfolio involvement or ownership
• Company name or enterprise type
• Previous contact or record of communication
• Other involvement with you and or your brokerage

VIP Client Factors

These factors make you think about just who you should be connecting with and how that will occur.  Every person or group on the VIP list will have certain ‘triggers’ or ‘target points’ that you can use in connecting and communicating.

So here is a plan to help you with traction and action in this business focus or client growth model:

1. Criteria for value – set some rules so you know just why you should be connecting with a person or company. When you set these rules, you can take the action in a refined and specific way.
2. Know your client’s business – comprehensively know the property factors and challenges that your client or customer facts. Be ahead of their challenges before they become too pressing.  A good awareness of their business will help you do that.
3. Systemize your contact model and database – when you set up a system of contact and segment your customers, the relevance factor can build with every communication and connection. Meet with the people on your database list regularly when you know a property decision is on the ‘horizon’.
4. From every connection or meeting seek referrals – a simple conversation can be a referral chance or business opportunity. Use the relationships of other customers to lead you to new and valuable people.
5. Go deeper in your conversations — take every discussion, meeting, telephone call, as and enquiry as a chance to uncover deeper facts and information. Communication and conversations can tune to today’s property market. Learn how to converse at a more professional level with your clients.

These facts and points of focus should allow you to get a lot closer to your clients and customers.  In this year of property activity and opportunity, you can do more with what you have, and then explore more client opportunities in this way.  It can be a center point of your business plan as an agent or broker, and you can improve your core business.