Commercial Real Estate Brokers – Gaining More Time to Grow Commissions and Listings
The most important resource you have in commercial real estate brokerage will be time. How you choose to use your time personally will have a great impact on the results you achieve with listings, clients, and commissions.
As a commercial real estate broker or agent, it is very easy to be distracted or diverted. So many people will pressure your activities and your days.
It should be said that we cannot invent or create more time, but we can use our time more effectively and directly on the things that matter to our real estate business. That should be one of the golden rules for commercial real estate brokerage.
Every Agent Should Focus on Growth
Every agent within the brokerage should be personally committed to using time effectively and directly to improve income, grow the client base, service listings, and improve results. Far too many agents just talk about the process and do little to ensure it is under control.
As a general rule, at least half of your day needs to be under control so that you can gain some traction in property marketing, prospecting for new listings, servicing clients, and deal negotiations.
To grow your market share consistently as an agent or broker a regular daily focus on prospecting will be required; if you neglect that fact, you will find that commissions and listings will be very hard to attract; average income will then be the result.
It takes about three months of deliberate action and activity to get traction and results from prospecting. If you neglect the prospecting activity at any time, the remainder of the working year can be challenging.
It would help if you controlled your time as best possible given the pressures of the day, the listings you are working on, the clients that you serve, and the deals that you are negotiating. You can add to these factors the administrative tasks that will need to be done each day, and the requirements of the office or the team that you work with.
Handling Other People’s Issues
As a general rule, the priorities of other people are not your priorities and should therefore be suitably controlled so that they do not impact your business activities and results. Learn to say ‘no’ to things that others want you to do and that have no net value to your targets and processes.
Here are some tips to help you improve your time management activities and achieve better results as a commercial real estate agent:
- Plan and Act – At the end of each day set out and plan the essential processes and actions that are required to be done the next day. Focus on business building activities first and foremost. At least one third of your day should be devoted to new business prospecting, new client meetings, and presentations.
- Prospecting Time – Do your new business prospecting first thing in the morning between approximately 8 AM through to 11 AM. In that way you will achieve better results and momentum with new business. That time frame will also help you stop diversions taking over your day.
- Diary Systems – Whilst you may use a computer or ‘cloud’ based diary for convenience, develop a practice of writing things down in a daily diary as part of a work planner. You can do that at the start of the day or even the night before in preparation for getting things done and focusing on key issues. You are the person in control of your diary.
- Disruptions – Inbound calls, administrative work, other people in your business team, and clients can easily disrupt your plans and put pressures on your activities. For that reason take the time to separate yourself from people contact and inbound calls for a certain period of time each day. Only the most urgent matters should disrupt your planning processes and prospecting activities.
- Deal Priorities – Deals under negotiation tend take a top priority in your diary. They are the only things that should move your prospecting activities to other timeframes.
So the message here is quite clear when it comes to improving your commercial real estate business, listing opportunities, and commissions. You simply have to control your time in every way possible so that the most important things are done first and foremost every day. There is really no other way to get things done and grow new business opportunity consistently in commercial real estate brokerage.