Educate Your Commercial Real Estate Clients
In commercial real estate agency today, you must be a ‘specialized educator and facilitator’ when it comes to working with your clients. You should not be a ‘steamroller’ or pressurized salesperson that kills the client and business relationship.
The prospects and clients in the market today are usually very informed when it comes to business processes. They may not know too much about the property market but they will know about business skills and strategies; our clients and prospects are ‘savvy’ when it comes to marketing, negotiating, and documentation. That can make our job a lot easier but it can also require a high standard of services from every agent to help the client move through a property lease or sale.
The clients that we serve like to work with top agents to get the best results from the prevailing market conditions. When it comes to selling or leasing commercial or retail property, the process is not an ‘experiment’; it is a very special process that requires good agents to help the client and move the transaction forward. Information and education about the property market are the big factors of moving a deal forward.
Top agents know how to ‘educate’ their clients and prospects so that any negotiations and decisions can be based on real facts. The property market will always give you the facts if you look deep enough. Here are some ideas to help you work with clients:
- Be patient in your sale or lease transaction. Behind the deal there are many pressures for a client or a prospect. Help them make the decision for themselves based on facts. Be patient and be available to tell them what they need to know.
- Understand the pressures on the client or prospect by asking lots of direct questions. Dig into their property requirement so you know what the ideal outcome looks like to them.
- Provide valuable information about the property and its location. The history of the area will have facts and figures that you can feed into a transaction. Invariably those agents that struggle to get a deal ‘across the line’ are the agents that have little market information and relevant facts to help the client move ahead.
- Understand the property market and help your clients do that. Use graphical displays and charts relevant to the location and property type. You will find that the visual process is much more effective in selling an idea to a client. If you have lots of figures relating to property transactions and results, put those figures into a chart that shows trends and changes.
- Provide comparable property information from other listings on the market today.
- Understand the stages that the client has to work through. This can be very relevant when it comes to corporate type property owners.
Learn how to educate your clients and prospects to the commercial property market of today. Use special tools and facts to display that information.
