Commercial Real Estate Brokerage – The Secrets of Super Team Structures

In your commercial real estate brokerage business, you will find that there is a definite advantage to be gained in pairing up some of the ‘front-line’ people within your greater sales and leasing team.  That pairing process can help them work specific locations, suburbs, and streets, with the property types, and service specialities.  I call this a ‘super team’ approach.  It puts a deeper ‘bias’ on market coverage and opportunity. (NB – you can get more tips for brokerage teams in our Snapshot program right here – its free)

Matching People

Teams of two people (or many groups of paired-up people) can usually cover all the key property market segments in any town or city more efficiently and effectively.   That strategy is then all for better prospecting penetration and listing opportunity generation.

The core focus here is to find the property owners, and through that ongoing contact process, you will find the listing opportunities.  Two sales people working together can support each other in territory coverage and ‘bolster’ the momentum and progress with client service and presentations.

Coverage and Contact

Coverage is a core element of a prospecting model for brokers and agents.  The streets and buildings in any territory or zone can be investigated by the ‘people pairing’ team approach; all the identified property owners can then be merged into a contact call prospecting model for the long term.

Remember that ‘thoroughness’ is part of the client contact and prospecting process to generate new business and new listings; that is why the ‘Super Team’ approach works quite well.

Interested in creating more new business in sales and leasing in your brokerage?  Here are some ideas to help make this ‘Super Team’ prospecting model work for you and the team in comprehensive ways:

1. Define territories – take a global look at the territory to be covered by each team of 2 people. There should be sufficient property numbers and clients inside each zone for the ‘paired’ agents to earn a good income.  Use local geographical roads and reference points so the ‘boundaries of coverage’ are set as the primary zone of coverage and research.  Anything outside the primary zone is then ‘secondary’ and may not be converted.  Choice is important here with listing conversions.
2. Define property types – the teams should focus on the property types that they know and understand from a price, rental, and supply and demand perspective. Local area knowledge is critical in pitching and presenting ‘property specific’ information to owners and converting the listings.
3. Know the competition – the competitors (agents and brokers) in the defined zones will be working their marketing and listings in specific ways. Understand their processes so you can create a competitive advantage.  There is no point in being the ‘same as everyone else’.  Your teams should create points of difference and professionalism in brokerage coverage.
4. Understand skills and experience – match up your teams of people based on the skills that they have now and will need to convert the business by property type and by zone. The key skills such as pitching, prospecting, inspecting, database, marketing, and negotiating should be high on the ‘skills assessment’ for each ‘super-team’.
5. Pair up the right people – the characters of the matched sales and leasing people should be compatible. There is no point in putting sales people together in a zone or territory if they cannot work with each other positively, and consistently.  They must show each other the respect to make things work; trust and communication will be required to set foundations to the process.
6. Create fair and reasonable commission splits – know that listing generation, commissions, and negotiation outcomes in each potential property transaction should be defined from the outset of the ‘super team’ approach. Set the commission splits for the teams across all the deal alternatives such as listing, buying, selling, renting, tenant advocacy, and project development activity.  Consider the property types to be worked on, and the types of new business that could come into the brokerage across sales, leasing, and property management.  If a team of two people are working a property zone comprehensively, then all the commissions extracted from that zone and the properties listed should be processed on some agreed ratio or formula.  Fairness is important.  Remove any doubts from the situation and operation of the ‘super-team’.  That formula should reflect the efforts of individuals in converting the business.  The ‘facilitator’ of the transaction should get most of the commission created.  Set your ratios for the process of new business generation; make the process fair and business-like.
7. Set your database rules – the client lists and prospecting activities of the teams will be captured in some database software program. Who owns the database and who maintains it?   The database of your brokerage and that of your team members is valuable.  Understand just who owns the list and why that is the case.

From these ideas, you can see how to build your ‘Super team’ structure in commercial real estate sales and leasing.  The sum of the activities of each structured team will be far greater than the efforts of individuals.  You can generate more new business in brokerage through that simple approach to marketing and market coverage.