Educate Your Commercial Real Estate Clients for Better Listings
In commercial real estate agency you really do need to educate your clients so that they understand the trends and pressures of the property market that you are seeing locally relevant to their property type and location.
In any sales pitch or presentation the ‘education’ process should be integrated into what you are saying about the property and the client’s situation. It will help you make the right recommendations to take the listing forward. Relevance is everything when it comes to winning a listing. Market ‘education’ is part of that process.
What target market does the property attract? It is an interesting question. I am sure that the client has some idea of the target market, but they expect to hear something from you on that. Many times I have seen agents give a fairly generic statement about who will be interested in the property and then continue to sell a marketing package.
Ordinary agents ‘sell and pitch’ their efforts on a standard marketing package and then they hope to get enquiries from the property advertising. If the inbound enquiry rate is low then the property will stay on the market for a very long time.
Top agents construct a special marketing package for each listing that is designed for the target market; they then throw maximum effort into getting the enquiries back during the campaign. If something works then they do more of it; if something is not working then they drop it or modify it.
Top agents also put all of their personal efforts into getting the message out to the right people in the right way; that will usually involve direct mail, database contact, cold calling, door knocking, and client contact.
So you need to educate your client about the market and what you want to do. That being said, exclusive listings get a lot more effort than open listings and rightfully so. Here are some topics and issues to discuss with your clients as part of positioning the property for marketing and promotion.
- Market trends
- Competing properties in the local area
- Prices today
- Rents today
- Enquiry rates for the property type
- Time on market factors
- Supply and demand
- Recent inspections
- Recent listings
- Best marketing systems
- Best methods of sale
- Best methods of leasing
- Negotiation strategies
- Landlord or client works required to prepare the property for sale or lease
All of these things will give the client some real clarity to move a transaction forward with confidence. That is what you are paid to help them with.
