5 Ways to Take Control of Your Commercial Real Estate Career
Don’t wait for the property market to come to you. Go out and find it. Top agents in commercial real estate tend to set fixed rules and principles for their business momentum and their future. Those principles they set are likely to make or break their business growth over time, so important choices should be made. What do you think they should focus on? If you were in their situation, what would you focus on?
The choices made by top agents are really important to them, and you can learn a lot from that. You can take valuable guidance from what other top agents are doing locally to drive market share; learn from their strengths and their weaknesses.
Do some research into you listing zone or ‘patch’. Look at the best agents locally, and watch what they do in prospecting, client contact, and marketing. Learn from the best agents locally and replicate the good things; avoid the errors or time wasting activities. Refine and improve your own personal approach to our great industry.
Set Principles and Priorities
When you consider your experiences and relevance as a local agent or broker, your principles and priorities should be unique to you, but they should be biased towards the results you seek. Your current industry experiences will dictate how your set your business principles and on what priorities.
Consider the following factors and what you are doing now with them:
- Client contact – Who are your best clients and how do you connect with them now? You could use a variety of communication strategies such as email, telephone, mail, case studies, meetings, and social events. Differentiate your VIP clients from others, so you are getting the best results from the clients that you really want to serve over time.
- Listing priorities – When you get a new listing, it has to move ahead with clear momentum and focus. In saying that, only exclusive listings should take a priority. Have a plan to move any exclusive listing through the key stages of marketing planning, advertising approval, campaign release, and inspection creation. Somewhere in those activities will be your database, and a short list of qualified people to talk to. Push your best listings ahead with focus to the right people and the best target market.
- Marketing methods – Make every marketing choice a good one. Look at the alternatives that you can apply to your listings, and then craft the advertising will skill and relevance to the client’s situation and the property market today. You can use quality photos, better promotional copy, and different media choices. Think about the variables of marketing both online and offline. Don’t forget about the traditional methods of marketing as well as the more ‘comfortable’ social media outlets that require little personal application. Most of the high value property promotions that we do today will be through the ‘direct’ approach. Put yourself into your marketing efforts in every way possible.
- Inspection strategies – Look at the listing or listings that you have now, and decide how you can move a person through those properties with a real focus on the direct features and selling points. Fix the weaknesses and visual problems in the property before any inspections are created.
- Negotiation control – When negotiations start, controls are required so that accuracy and momentum is maintained. Given that we work with valuable assets, and lots of money, the people that we negotiate with are quite likely to change their negotiation position or impression of events. Don’t get stuck in a situation of disagreement because you did not document things correctly or pass on the right information. Control things for your client; they pay your commission, remember!
Goals and targets are really important here. Through all of these things mentioned, your goals and targets should underpin your actions and decisions professionally. Be the best at what you do and what you want in commercial real estate brokerage.
(N.B. these ideas are also sent out to regularly to our friends in Commercial Real Estate Online Snapshot to help amplify brokerage results…. Get your access here)
