A Simple and Direct Marketing Plan for Brokers and Agents
In commercial real estate sales brokerage, you can and should keep your personal marketing plan simple and direct. It must be something that you do every day, so the simplicity of things is quite important. Don’t over complicate your real estate business or your efforts.
The sales and leasing parts of commercial real estate brokerage are quite basic when you break things down. These elements apply:
- Connecting with people
- Targeting properties
- Connecting with business owners
- Building a deep and comprehensive database of people and properties
- Constant contact
- Providing unique approaches to marketing listings
- Tracking your momentum
Local Property Coverage Rules
The local property market is generally quite competitive; most of the time, the leads will only go to the agents and brokers that are in constant contact with business owners and property owners in their territory. Taking that fact, the following direct marketing plan is quite effective:
- Drill down into your territory – don’t try to cover a large expanse of properties, especially so when you are starting up in the industry. Optimism is nice to have when you first take on a new area, but realism must prevail; you are only a single person with limited resources (particularly time). Big areas or large territories create problems of coverage and follow up. Keep a keen eye on your territory, the people in it, and your properties. Small is always better when you are canvassing or covering your properties and buildings.
- Local business owners – these people form the basis of local enquiry and property occupancy. From those facts, you can build a basis of connection and contact in a regular way. Check out the streets and the buildings in your location for business names; prioritise the businesses by size and location. The larger and higher quality businesses should be at the top of your contact list.
- Property owners – it takes time to find these people. There is a good degree of research in locating them. Sometimes it is necessary to talk to many others, ask questions of tenants, and speak to the neighbours of targeted properties. Simple conversations will lead to information about property owners.
- Use local property information – when you talk to local people, you have to use something of local relevance to assist in building some momentum, attention, or attraction in the conversation. Use some recent sales and leasing activity in the form of graphs and statistics. Share the information.
- Business telephone book will help you canvas 20 businesses – that can be a daily target for you to work on. Direct calls work well or leaving your business card when you are in the area or territory allocated to you will also work. Consistency is a big part of creating momentum in commercial real estate brokerage.
So, this is a very simple marketing plan for brokerage. It is not complex, but it still requires reasonable discipline to implement. If you are looking to boost your real estate business, try these things today and keep the momentum going.
