First Steps for Your Commercial Real Estate Brokerage Business
In commercial property brokerage today, the activities of businesses locally will provide plenty of indicators that you can focus into and drive opportunity from. Watch the trends and the changes in the local business community for your town or city, and then specialize in particular precincts.
Understand your target clients
The landlords and the investors that we serve like to work with the top agents that really understand business placement and business movement. Your database can and should be segmented so that you can cover off on all the local businesses for your precinct.
So what can you do here? You can connect with those local businesses regularly and directly to understand exactly what they are doing with property occupancy, use, and location. Regular prospecting activity combined with direct and open questions will help you find those businesses needing property assistance.
Probe the property market
Here are some questions to explore as part of contacting local business decision makers and companies or corporations:
- Do they own or occupy the property they are located in? This question should be asked early in the contact process, as it will shape and change your approach to the conversation. Many businesses shift in and out of property ownership depending on the requirements of cash flow and asset procurement. Some businesses like to sell and lease back as part of a staged relocation strategy. Look for the businesses that are moving through pressures of expansion or contraction. If you are canvassing your area regularly, you will likely see the impact of occupancy overflow or under-utilization.
- If they are leasing the property, when will the lease come to an end? This simple question will allow you to maintain contact and provide regular lease updates for the local area. Most business owners have very little understanding of market rentals, vacancy rates, and lease incentives. Through staying in regular contact, you can provide suitable information to support their information needs, and eventually their relocation requirements.
- Have they seen or heard of other business changes locally? It is very likely that the business proprietors you talk to understand more about the local area can you do when it comes to business activity. Their awareness of the local area can give you valuable information to tap into and explore with other local nearby businesses.
- What improvements do they need in property occupancy or ownership? There will also likely be a timeline to consider in most cases and with some businesses. They will have very special requirements when it comes to staffing, manufacturing, customer service, and growth.
- What do they think about the property they occupy? Every property occupied by business today will have both strengths and weaknesses to consider. Probe the issues in the categories that you believe will support or change the business and its direction. You will soon see where you can resolve some weaknesses for the business owner, as well as building on the strengths of occupancy or property ownership.
The message here is that you can and should connect with the business owners and occupiers for your location. If you do that in an efficient and a professional way, you will find plenty of leads and opportunities to work on.
Commercial real estate brokerage in both sales and leasing is centered on the activities and requirements of investors and local businesses. You need to connect with both professionally and regularly into the future. Ask the questions and create the conversations so that you can be there to help the right people at the right time.
