Feedback Friendly Client Service in Commercial Property
Commercial property clients need all types of help over an extended period of time. The question is, can you fully service all of those requirements? Can you match your knowledge to the client and the property requirements? Good questions like these require consideration and initiative if you are to drive a reasonable volume of market share your way as a broker or agent. Grow your market awareness at all times.
(N.B. these ideas are also sent out to regularly to our friends in Commercial Real Estate Online Snapshot to help amplify brokerage results…. Get your access here)
Versatility
Versatility is quite important when you look at brokerage services and matching those services to the factors of the client and the property. That is typically being able to talk about strategies such as:
- Where to move tenants inside the one property to optimize space.
- How to drive a better net return in the property from the existing tenant mix.
- Understanding the way to improve an asset over time in rent and investment outcomes.
- Knowing how to take a lease and improve it as part of a lease negotiation or option extension.
- Understanding how to negotiate a lease with a large anchor tenant in a property so the stability of the greater tenant mix is supported over the years.
You can never really know too much about commercial investment property. You can learn more each day as you deal with the aspects of each property type (office, industrial, and retail).
Customer Service Plan for Property Investment
Here is a list of ideas to merge into a customer service plan and initiative in brokerage:
- Show your clients what is happening from a property perspective in the region and the location. That information will involve prices, rents, business activity, current and future supply, and the facts of historic and current demand. Use graphs and statistics to illustrate trends. Carry an iPad or some similar online access device for that purpose. The visual process really works when it comes to a presentation to a client or prospect.
- Get a portal on your website with password access where your good clients and prospects can log in for special market updates and property information. The same access rules can apply to those clients that are moving a property through a marketing campaign for sale or lease. The latest market updates and campaign feedback can be placed online for those very special people that are using your services at an individual or brokerage level.
- When telling the client what you think about the property market trends currently, and how their property sits within that, make clear recommendations so the client has some choices. So many agents overlook the recommendation process and the requirement to explain things. You are the expert (or should be), so show it in what you say and do. The client really wants some help and ideas; support them with that. Show them a few alternatives to move their property towards the outcomes that they seek.
- With any and all property inspections today, get back to the client soon after the event with direct feedback. Use the comments of other people as ‘third party’ leverage to condition the client on local property activity or how that activity impacts their property.
Some of these things seem simple, and yet many brokers and agents really don’t concentrate their client communication systems with listings and marketing campaigns; they don’t go deep enough in communication with clients. Put yourself in the client’s position, and consider what they would like to hear and know about.
Work on your client plan
Spend more time on your clients that have exclusively listed with you. Open listings don’t matter too much today and they can waste a lot of your time, so understand what you have from a listing perspective and then work on it. Exclusivity is the only thing that really matters in listing.
