Commercial Property Agents – Stop Trying So Hard in Investment Property Sales – Simplify

Commercial real estate investment sales can be a very special part of our industry.  You are to be working with property investors of all types; some will be established and knowledgeable, whilst others will be just starting up with their portfolio.  Your communication and knowledge skills will be tested.

The basic rule of success as an agent in investment sales is to have a group of qualified and proven clients that will work with you in a repeating way.  They need the good properties to bolster investments, and you can be the person to find those properties.  As an example, here is a story for you from my years in the industry.

What You Do Each Day Is Very Important

Some time ago, when I was working then for a large CBD brokerage, we knew we required a new person to take up and work the industrial property market in investment sales within the capital city.  The brokerage was already well established in office and retail property, but had no involvement in industrial property in any way.  It was a segment of the market that all other agents avoided.

It was the case that all of the good agents in the office really had no interest or intention of getting involved with industrial; to them the industrial market was too hard to crack into, and the commissions not as strong or as large as what they could get from office and retail.  So the hunt was on for a person to take on ‘industrial’.

Some years earlier I had worked for a rural and residential brokerage; a good friend at that time called Neil was a good property agent (albeit residentially biased).  He understood how to build the business and he was already quite successful in residential property; he was a hard worker and very intelligent.  I knew that Neil was the right person to take on the job if he was interested.

At my prompting Neil was invited to join the CBD brokerage.  He was handed the industrial property segment for the city with no resources, listings, or market share.  It was the start of a new cycle for the business for him and the brokerage.

This is a story of what Neil did from that point onwards:

  1. He researched the market to determine rental and pricing trends.
  2. Some of the competition agents around the city and suburbs were good at industrial, and some not so good.  Neil did an assessment of who the agents and brokers were and what market share they dominated.
  3. As a result of that research, he broke up the city market into segments of industrial property activity.  Then he took those areas and determined what would be his ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’ areas of focus.
  4. Within the zones, on a street by street basis, he contacted property owners and tenants to get some market intelligence and information.  Soon he had some leads for listings and clients to work with.
  5. Whilst he was doing this, he practiced his sales pitch and listing processes so he had a better chance of listing conversion.
  6. To add to the process of listing growth, he got to know the successful accountants, solicitors, and receivers in the city that had an interest or involvement in industrial property or clients that did.  Some of those professional people fed him with high value leads and opportunities for many years.
  7. Neil had a prospecting and cold calling model that was simple and yet consistent.  Every day he made plenty of cold calls.  He created conversations with new people every day.
  8. The people that he spoke to became contacts over the longer term, and Neil was talking to them at least once every 2 months or so.

At the end of 12 months in the brokerage Neil was the top agent and the industrial property specialist for the city and suburbs.  He had made more commission than the other agents selling and leasing office and retail property.  From that point onwards, Neil worked in that brokerage for some 10 years.  Every year he was improving his results above that of others in the team.  Soon he was a partner in the business.

So where is Neil today?  He left industrial real estate and now he is running a multi-million dollar business manufacturing transportable homes and moving them all over the country.  He remains a top salesperson and gifted business man.

Here is the message and moral of the story.  Neil personally took over the industrial investment sales market in a capital city with no help from others, and then he built massive results from it.  He simplified his practices and kept up the process of daily action to a plan of approach.  He had a system that he worked to.  Neil is still a good friend.

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