Hot Buyer Strategies for Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
In commercial real estate brokerage, you need to treat every buyer with selective commitment. Ask the questions first with any enquiry. You need to know what they are looking for when it comes to property, timeliness, location, improvements, and budget. (NB – you can get plenty of ideas that help with property buyer control in our Snapshot program right here – it’s free)
Don’t waste your time with people that are unable to commit or simply do not have the budget required for the property in today’s market. Ask plenty of questions and form your judgement in each case with each buyer.
Your time is a valuable resource, so focus your time on the property buyers that really can act in today’s property market. The buyers that you are working for or with should be prioritised based on their perceived level of commitment; that is a judgment that you will need to make during qualification and conversation.
When you have plenty of exclusive listings and active campaigns, the inquiry will be coming to you thick and fast. That is where your database will be essential to personal organisation and property enquiry record keeping.
Protect Your Time
Some buyers will be more active than others, and on the basis, you will need to act quickly and effectively with the right people, in the right way. Prioritise your responses with different people that you consider are ‘buyers’ for a potential listing; your time in business today is precious so work with the right people.
So, the idea here is that you will treat each buyer enquiry that is coming to you exclusively and selectively, and that approach will be based on your judgement and qualification processes. In simple terms, you need an enquiry processing strategy that relates to priority buyers and a different strategy that relates to all other buyer enquiry.
Qualify and Connect
Focus your time on the people that you talk to and those that you can act in today’s property market. Learn how to qualify all the people that you talk to and meet with. See and observe all things when a property enquiry comes to you.
The following method of approach can apply to the people that you consider are ‘hot buyers’ in today’s property market. Some of these ideas can apply to your location, your listings, and your property specialisation:
- Meet with them – get the ‘one on one’ connections underway fast. The personal approach and meeting focus should happen as quickly as possible.
- Understand the ‘critical facts’ – know what they have seen locally when it comes to property, and who they have talked to already or recently. Qualify their capabilities to act on a property purchase and check out their local area understanding. Determine their budget, timeline, property priorities, and ‘must have’ factors for the purchase.
- Get listing information out quickly – send out the selected information that is matched to the enquiry. PDF reports and case studies from the location are the best things to send out initially to get the conversation and connection with the buyers underway. Use photos, charts, and inspection tracking analysis, to show the people what is happening locally with a property and or the property market.
- Show them the trends and opportunities that you know about – get the people out into your location. Some recent transactions from your property area and perhaps your listings or completed sales and leasing activity will be valuable to get the attention and engagement you need with the people you are working with.
- Create ‘matched’ inspections but not ‘too many’ in the first instance – help the buyers understand things from a location perspective. Show them 3 or 4 listings locally to build on their awareness’s of market trends; that strategy can help you ask more direct and specific questions.
Given these things, follow-up on everything said and done. It is very easy to lose a property enquiry to a competitor, so don’t let that happen.
