Commercial Real Estate Agents – Show Me Your Sales Plan
If you haven’t got a sales plan in commercial real estate brokerage, you’re a tourist. Tourists don’t make a lot of money in the industry. The top agents have a specific sales plan to drive their market share forward. Now is a good time to consider your sales plan as the industry moves ahead through the year. It can also help you prepare for the next year of property activity, client choices, and listing strategies.
So how would you create a sales plan? Here are some ideas to get you started:
- Gather all of the ideas and the information from the property market in a Mind map. That will help you with understanding the factors of the industry that will have some impact on your activities. You will also help you with understanding of the strengths and weaknesses that will need to be dealt with. Any identified strengths are relevant to your location or property speciality should be encouraged and strengthened. Any weaknesses should be removed through personal growth or other resources. Your weaknesses are likely to be the things that can hold you back and restrict your progress with listings and commissions.
- Consider the history of the area over the last few years. What levels of opportunity have been growing, and what opportunities have reached an end? Specialise within the segments of the property market that have future opportunity and potential growth. You will need to assess the levels of brokerage competition in those segments, together with your levels of experience and knowledge. It is quite likely that you will need to grow your market awareness and skill base. Training can take care of that as appropriate.
- From the previous point, you can select the segments of the market that you prefer from a new business point of view. You can then select the quality clients and the quality properties from the location, your sales area, town, or city. Always segment your database into two groups; the quality properties and clients should be in the first group and the rest of the market should be in the second group. Differentiate your prospecting activities between the two groups.
- Every quality listing and top client will be an excuse to talk to many other people in the local area. It is very easy to talk about a quality property with its opportunity in the market today. You can approach many business owners and property investors with a quality listing package. It is interesting to note that many agents don’t market listings at a personal level. They take the generic approach hoping that the marketing process will generate enquiry. Top agents on the other hand specifically take quality properties personally to the market and the people that they know. On that basis they win the confidence and the connections with new people locally. Over time that will win more market share.
- Prioritise your key accounts by type and by commission opportunity. Your database should split your key accounts into landlords, property investors, tenants, business leaders, property professionals, and developers. Within each group, you can then segment the individuals by location, property type, and existing business. Get to know your key accounts and build the relationships and levels of trust over time. Our industry is largely based on personal contact and professional skill. Your key accounts and prospects should identify you with those two factors.
- Define two or three goals that can apply to your business currently and for the next few months. Keep the goals simple and particularly related to growth of market share, listing conversions, commissions, and time on market. To achieve the growth that you require in the segments, you will need a good prospecting model and presentational process. Keep your real estate business simple and on track through a simple sales plan.
- At the end of each week, review your activities and results. You can then adjust your levels of prospecting, market focus, and listing promotion. When you have spent a lot of time in winning a client or a quality listing, it is the beginning of the next stage where you can tap into the opportunities of the market.
- Be prepared to dump the low quality clients and low quality properties within your listing base. Focus on quality and every opportunity. You can waste a lot of time in promoting and marketing low quality properties.
- Leverage the growth of your market share by devoting 30% of your day to prospecting new people. That percentage of activity should occur regardless of any time requirements with clients, market share, and listings. Don’t lose focus on the fact of converting new business and the need to find it.
A good sales plan will be a significant resource for you in tracking and measuring your activities. It will also help you remain on task when it comes to the critical elements of your commercial real estate business.