Finding More Sellers in Commercial Real Estate Agency
In commercial real estate you can make a lot of commissions working with property sellers. This is the ‘traditional way’ of working with clients and marketing property. If you work with good clients and quality listings then it is very hard not to succeed in the industry; that being said you must firstly attract the right people (clients) and listings to you.
So the message here is quite clear. If you have the good listings, you will attract the right levels of enquiry from buyers in the market. When you have the buyers approach you, it is simply a matter of qualifying them and matching them to the right property.
If life as an agent is that simple, why is it that things are so difficult from time to time? It all comes down to your controlled listing stock and what you do with it. Ask yourself these questions:
- Do you have more exclusive listings than open listings?
- Are you a specialist in a market segment now in something that your prospects respect you for? Are you the ‘go to person’ for solving a property problem?
- Have you got high quality listings or too much hard to shift property stock?
- Are you working your clients regularly to help them position their property for sale?
- What are you doing to find more of the right buyers for your listings?
These are some quite direct questions that require specific answers if you are to lift your market share and commission conversions. In any market these issues will help you build market results.
To ‘kick start’ your commercial real estate agent career from any apparent ‘slow down’ it is wise to take steps such as those below:
- If you control the quality stock you control the growth of your real estate business. For this reason start to focus on the quality listings and clients locally. Deliberately shift your prospecting into these better targets.
- Top agents list exclusively and that should be a medium term and permanent target. When you control your stock the buyers have to come to you to inspect the property. On that basis your database of buyers will help the current deal opportunities and the future listings that you attract.
- Refine your sales pitch and presentation to make it superior to any other agents that you compete against. What can you do to stand out as the best agent for the job? Relevance and uniqueness will help you do that.
- The marketing process is a big part of what we do every day. Don’t just market the properties that you have listed; market yourself through your listings. That will help spread your name and experience through the greater market. Use articles in the local newspaper, editorials, blogs, brochures, direct mail pieces, and cold calls to do that.
Simple strategies like these can take your market share forward as well as improve your conversions. That’s what this commercial real estate business is all about.
