Build Strategic Alliances in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage to Create New Business Faster

In commercial real estate brokerage you can build strategic alliances with other industry professionals to help grow your market share and lead generation processes. In saying that, other industry professionals will generally take time to trust you as an industry expert and a person that they would expose or introduce to their clients.

You could say that property specialisation and location relevance will help you build your profile a lot faster with these other industry professionals. From time to time they and their clients will need help with property disposal, leasing, acquisition, tenancy mix, and investment performance. When you apply those disciplines across sales, leasing, and property management, there are plenty of things for you to be involved with. There are also specific activities that can apply within industrial, office, and retail property. The combinations of services that you can provide are many.

Key Services and Questions for Agents

Consider the following questions:

• If you were to nominate a segment of the local property market that is real and relevant to your skill base, what would that segment be?
• How many competing agents service the same industry segment?
• How can you stand out as the agent of choice to help your clients and customers?
• On what basis can you be seen and promoted locally as a top agent?
• Why would you be the best choice of agent to market a particular property?
• How can you solve the property challenges today for your clients?

When you start to specialise within the commercial property industry, your knowledge becomes a valuable commodity helping you convert more listings and transactions. The value and depth of skilll that you provide to your clients and customers will influence their thinking when it comes to resolving property challenges and issues. You can then become the agent of choice.

Some of the best strategic alliances in commercial real estate brokerage come from the relationships that you can strike with the following groups of people:

• solicitors or property attorneys
• architects
• builders and property developers
• engineers
• maintenance contractors
• fund managers
• franchise groups
• politicians
• corporate groups (regional and national)

Within these groups of people you will find the relationships and the client introductions to take you closer to new people and new business opportunities. Some of the people will require more sensitivity and discretion than others (i.e. politicians)

The listings and the commissions created in commercial real estate brokerage usually come from the client relationships established at a personal level over time. To start this contact process, create a particular segment within your database where you can record and collate the contacts that you make with these specialist groups of people. They can become your VIP’s for special treatment and frequency of contact.

Over time you can then strengthen the professional relationships by providing local property information and feedback including rents and prices. The knowledge that you gather across sales, leasing, and property management in your local area will provide services and solutions that these other industry professionals will need in a number of different ways.