6 Steps to Outline a Sales Business Plan in Commercial Real Estate
In commercial real estate brokerage, the sales plan that you create will be the basis of your business growth and income creation.
Every broker and agent should have a specific sales plan that is personally focused on building opportunities over time.
The plan should also be variable as the year will bring with it changes in inquiry, leads, listings, and economic cycles.
So how can you get this sales plan started? Here are six specific steps that should work for most agents and brokers:
- Define your area – pick your area and define it within roads and physical boundaries. All of your prospecting will be within that location, so you will need to understand your location comprehensively. That will usually mean roads, enquiry, supply, and demand. When a listing comes on the market you will have to know where it is and what it is. When a property sells or leases you will have to know the resultant price or rent, and the relativity of those numbers to the current market conditions.
- Define your property type – pick the property type that has future opportunity in abundance. You must have listings and you must have commissions; there has to be sufficient churn in your local property market to find the business. Choose your property type with real consideration and care. Understand everything that you can about that property type.
- Know your market – when you look into a location you will see plenty of listings, both open and exclusive. Ideally you want to control your listing stock so always bias your focus towards exclusivity. Open listings are not a good indicator of enquiry or conversion.
- Know your competition – some of your competitors will be better than others. You can always learn from your competition. Develop your differences when you understand how you can position yourself to be more comprehensive in your property services.
- Develop your differences in marketing – the people that you serve will have to remember you for the right reasons. Be memorable and be different. There is no point in being the same as others in your location. Yes, you may market similar properties, but your processes of marketing have to be better and more accurately targeted. How does that relate to your property activities currently?
- Build your database – if you want to get anywhere in our great industry, your database will have to be the foundation for your progress. Yes, you may work for a larger firm of brokers and agents, but everything that comes to you will largely be from your personal efforts. Choose a good database software program and refine it for your location, client base, and property type. Over time you will find that the database will be the most important part of your real estate business. Don’t neglect it in any way.
So these six things can be merged into your sales plan for your location and your real estate business. You will require a good plan to attract sales, so get the plan underway as soon as possible.
