Help Your Commercial Real Estate Clients Make Better Property Decisions

Throughout the year the commercial real estate market will change and fluctuate with prices, rents, and levels of enquiry.  The clients that you act for may not understand the true pressures of the property market and the changes that are underway.

It is your job to help your clients make wise property decisions taking into account the key performance indicators relevant to their property listing.  Some clients will take more convincing than others.

Market evidence will be a key component of any property or listing presentation to a client or prospective client.  The active sales and leasing transactions through the region will show trends when it comes to prices, rents, incentives, time on market, rates of enquiry and marketing.  There will also be achieved and identifiable differences between high quality listings, and average or lower quality properties.  Differentiate the changes in the property market so that you can show the client where their property sits in comparison to others.

Key Performance Indicators

Here are some essential key performance indicators and factors to consider that will help you in conditioning your clients thinking and decision processes:

1. The rates of enquiry – Throughout every calendar year there will be plenty of changes occurring in the level of enquiry coming to you or into your office across sales and leasing. The buyers and the tenants that you are working with will have certain demands when it comes to property choice and location.  They will also have predetermined ideas when it comes to price and rental rates.  On that basis you can see the importance of tracking the levels of enquiry applying to each listing type and location.  Understand what the buyers and the tenants are looking for when it comes to commercial property today.
2. Higher quality listings – Some properties will be very desirable and achieve greater levels of enquiry, inspections, and negotiations or offers. Understand why one property would be more desirable than another.  The same comparison applies to precincts and locations locally.  When you list a high quality property, the enquiries will fly in to you from the very start of the campaign.  Some local property precincts will be highly desirable from a buyer or tenant perspective, and you will need to determine the differences between those precincts in both price and rent.  When you list a property that could be regarded as high quality, it is necessary that you carefully consider the marketing process and the best method of sale or lease as the case may be.  In the end result the marketing of a high quality property will always provide you with plenty of qualified leads and contacts for future opportunity.  That is where the use of your database will become a key factor of support in any property marketing campaign.
3. The best method of sale or lease – Choose the correct method of sale or lease that will attract the best levels of enquiry. Adjust your listing pitch or presentation accordingly.  The choice that you make here can also impact the marketing strategy that you structure for the campaign.  Understand the differences between specific property marketing and generic marketing; match those differences to be target market relative to the listing.  The generic marketing process only applies to open listings, and any result that you achieve with an open listing is a process of luck more than anything else.  Help the client understand the direct strategies that you will deploy when it comes to their property listed exclusively.  The marketing process for any property today is not an experiment and should not be regarded the way by the client.  Help them make the right choices when it comes to the correct method of sale or lease and the associated marketing campaign.  Always seek vendor paid marketing funds as part of the property promotion process on exclusive basis.

These items are perhaps the three most important factors of commercial property performance and marketing for your location.  With each and every listing presentation that you make to a client or a prospective client, be prepared to explain the important facts of the location and listing today relating to the current levels of enquiry.