How to Aim Higher in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
One thing to remember in commercial real estate is that most of the rewards go to the agents and brokers that develop a system of business that they can work to every day. They are the agents that aim for quality results in the three essential ‘channels’ of our business. Most particularly those channels are clients, listings, and marketing money. All three factors are linked and will boost broker or agent profile and negotiation opportunity.
When you analyze things, these are the rules that repeatedly stand out as ‘foundational’ to our real estate business and commission results:
- You need plenty of clients to keep up a steady stream of listings and transactions. Some of the people you know will be selling, and others will be leasing. Grow your database daily and set meeting targets that allow you to meet new people each day, in addition to the other brokerage activities that you may have. The important thing to remember here with your listings is that you should control the listing stock through exclusivity. There is no better way to build market share. When you hold listings exclusively, everyone has to come to you for listing inspections and property discussions.
- Most of your listings should be accepted only on an exclusive basis. In that way, you can help the client with clear property facts and a summary of market conditions. An informed client is likely to cooperate with you when negotiations move to finality. Does that say that you ‘walk away’ from open listings? It depends on if you see value in having the property listed on your books; the answer could be ‘yes’ or ‘no’. If it is to be an open listing, then your time and personal involvement with the listing should be restricted; there is no point in wasting a lot of your time and money with a property listing that you cannot control.
- Marketing money collected from the client of the property will allow you to promote a property online and in other promotional channels comprehensively. Today the way to work with your marketing money is to set weekly targets, and monthly targets where you can see how the promotional dollars converted are increasing. There is a direct correlation here between better levels of enquiry and marketing money spent.
These are simple things to work with. The factors are all linked. Build your business on client contact and service, exclusivity, and marketing money. You could call this the ‘real estate equation’ of top agents.
When you keep your real estate business simple in this way, you can see how you can ‘aim higher’ with all these indicators. As your client numbers grow, your listing conversions should improve, and your vendor paid marketing funds should lift.
You cannot control the property market, but you can control how you act within it. Set your business targets with these three ‘standards’ in mind, and then look at the ways you can get improvement and growth in your numbers. Over a period of three to six months, a gradual increase in the results from each of the three categories will help you get to your commission and earning targets.
