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Cover all Your Bases in a Sales Plan for 2014

Most agents and brokers in commercial real estate would love to have a few sales underway most of the time.  The commissions are better in sales than in brokerage leasing (on average by deal value), and a quality property for sale will usually create interest in inspections and negotiations.  It stands to reason that if you have a few sales running at any point in time, your commissions will be strengthened for the year.

So we are about to start the year 2014.  It’s a really good time to consider your sales plan and territory strategy.

Here is a very troubling and all too common fact for this time of year.  Most agents are entering what they think is a ‘slower’ period of the year for sales and leasing activity.  That misguided thought can impact momentum in marketing and prospecting at the start of 2014.

If you want listing and enquiry ‘churn’ during January and into February and March, you have to work with real focus through December and right up to the week of Christmas.  Find those people now that are putting property on their agenda for early in the year.  Those people are out there now thinking about the coming year.

To help you with this, here are some of my tips to help establish your ‘Sales Territory Plan’ for the coming year.  This is stage 1 or the ‘information gathering stage’.

  • Get some history and trends for sales and enquiry for this last twelve months.  You can get those numbers from historic internet hits on listings, as well as the numbers of enquiries coming to you each week from marketing and listings.  Get the sales reports for the region from industry portals.
  • Understand the numbers of current listings on the market both in your office and with your competitors.  Look at the time on market in each case.  The competitor’s listings on the internet, signboards, and newspaper advertising should be segmented and ranked.  Where are you positioned in each marketing segment?
  • At the next sales team meeting for your office discuss what tenants and buyers are looking for in the property zones and segments.
  • Review the numbers of new property developments underway or being considered.  You can get those numbers from the planning approvals office or building authority for your region.
  • Understand vacancy factors that may have an impact on property leasing and property sales.
  • Given all of these facts, what percentage of commissions and deals did you achieve as a broker or agent?

From all of these things you have some valuable data to work with.  You can now work out your sales plan.  So we can now move to the stage 2 of the process.

  1. Split your area of sales and listing activity up into ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ zones.  The ‘primary’ zone is where you could or should be achieving 80% of your business.  That will be the core area of focus for most of your marketing and listing activity for the next 12 months.
  2. Look at the market share you have in that area now.  Can you improve that market share?  What marketing will you need to do to shift and improve that market share?  Questions like these make you think about the effectiveness of your marketing to date and the modifications that should occur for next year.
  3. Review the potential of growth that could apply from that area with your business activities.  When you look at growth there are differences between quality listings and low grade stock.  Start the year with a focus on quality listings; define exactly what a quality listing should be in location, property type and size.
  4. Given the 3 previous points, what marketing can you do to improve your personal profile locally in the targeted segments?

These 3 simple facts are the foundation of setting up a new sales plan and profile for yourself and your business.  Start working on the things that really matter in growing your business in the coming year.  Make this next 12 months a better experience in quality listings and better clients.

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