Capture Customers the Right Way in Commercial Property

In commercial real estate brokerage, customers and clients are not always right when it comes to listing, pricing, selling, leasing, or property negotiation. They will fail to understand, appreciate, or accept factors relating to a transaction.

The only way you can effectively work through that problem is from a base of third-party information and locally relevant comparable sales and leasing activity.

So what can you do here?

Do some client conditioning.  Prepare in advance for the most common of property challenges that you strike locally with clients and prospects in both sales and leasing activity. Carry with you the accurate information that you have gathered relating to recent property sales and market rental establishment from negotiated leases.

A successful listing conversion or property negotiation will almost always be supported with provable and substantiated local property information. There are different ways to display that.  With the advantages of technology, we can carry this information with us on cell phones, laptops, and tablet computers.  You can use that information.

So what can you do to get things started?

Research your location comprehensively so that the information can be available to you at the right time and in the right way. Share that information with property owners and business leaders to move a transaction ahead. When you provide third-party information, your opportunity to convert the transaction escalates. The clients and the customers that you serve are more likely to believe a newspaper article, and editorial, or property case study of a recent sale or lease outcome.

 Use the technology at your fingertips

We can conveniently draw down from the ‘cloud’ the most important information at the right time and in the right way, and that is to help a sales or leasing transaction move ahead. This then says that you should keep the local information from all recent sales, case studies, leasing activity, and property developments. When you present your information as part of a listing or property transaction, don’t just talk about the information, but have some visual tools to assist the process.

Visually engage the client

Understand the value of statistics, graphs, and photographs relating to your location. You can use all of those business tools as part of your customer and client conversion processes. Don’t just talk about something; show the numbers and the statistics in a meaningful and direct way. Have a good selection of local property photographs to support the process.

Here are some ideas to help with that strategy:

• Take copies of articles and editorials from local newspapers and the Internet. Scan the information online or digitally so that you can categorize it and keep it conveniently for the right transaction or property negotiation.
• Most of the clients and the customers that we work with have an inflated view of their property and its position in today’s property market. The only way that you can prove alternative values and results will be through recent location only based information. Gather the information for property types, precincts, and market segments.
• When you undertake inspections of properties for sale or for lease, take and keep notes relating to the inspecting parties, their feedback, and negotiation intentions. Those notes are also another version of third-party feedback that you can use with your clients and customers as part of a conditioning process.
• Understand the differences and similarities that relate across other listings in your brokerage and across the team. Those other listings can be sources of fresh new property inquiry, marketing feedback, and qualified prospects. Work all of your listings comprehensively across the team so that you can build some real momentum across those listings and precincts.

So the customer or the client is not always right when it comes to commercial real estate today. Expect them to have an unrealistic view of current market conditions and or their property listing.

Make sure that you have prepared for every possible variation of listing and negotiation given your location and the prevailing property types. Research and preparation will help you convert more transactions in a timely and direct way. That’s how commercial real estate brokers and agents improve performance over time.