How to Build a Good Reputation in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
When you consider your brokerage and its position in the local area, there are competitive facts to review and shape. It is a strategy to develop over time. Your business ‘brand’ is in the middle of the competitive concept and you must do something with that. Put yourself and your brokerage brand firmly into the momentum of the local property market. Each town or city will have unique pressures to consider with commercial sales, leasing, and property management. (NB – you can get fresh ideas in brokerage marketing in our ‘Snapshot’ program right here – it’s free)
The success of each agent will be impacted on the ‘brand’ profile of the brokerage business across the property types and the services offered. Strengthen the brand on a foundation of a positive reputation and quality service; that is the idea to work with and shape over time.
Build Your Profile Locally
Where do you start? There are reputational and profile issues today both online and offline, so look at both. Throughout the year, look at how your business and its real estate profile could be changing locally. Compare your business ‘image’ to that of your competitors.
So, let’s get some specifics going here. Look at your market from a client perspective and ask these questions:
- How dominant are your signboards locally on the good quality properties?
- How do you use the internet with listings and property updates?
- How can you improve the profile of your agents with the ‘ideal’ client types?
- Have you got enough services to cover the needs of your clients?
- How accurate and up to date is your database currently?
- Why are you in business locally?
- How different and professional are you and your team for your client base?
A Reputation Plan
Let’s get started here with these core ideas. Think location first and foremost. There are local area marketing issues to consider and ongoing strategies of local contact across the team to work with. A plan to build the businesses reputation in the local area is something that is required in a constant ongoing way. Here are some ideas to help with that:
- Follow up on all elements of client contact and the transaction – when clients are part of your business and the pressures of price and negotiations underway, it is easy to forget the requirement of follow up and push a transaction forward to finality for the client that you act for. When a transaction is agreed, there are many other elements of closure to get the sale or lease to finality. Don’t expect that a transaction will get to closure without a good degree of ‘pushing’ and shaping.
- Build a signage campaign – get plenty of signs on your local property listings. The ‘traditional’ signboard is still a powerful marketing tool, so get plenty of exclusive listings on your books and make sure that every exclusive listing has a signboard placed prominently on the boundary or building frontage.
- Provide industry based case studies – given that you will know plenty of facts about local property and you will see and hear of listings that are interesting, build ‘case studies’ to talk about the events in local property. Your clients and prospects like to see and hear about property changes locally. Get some graphs and statistics ready to use in that way.
- Keep every campaign flowing from beginning to end – when a property is released to the local market, be that for sale or lease, get the marketing message out to the target audience in every way possible. Local area marketing is the best way to spread the word on most listings.
- Make sure the deal is progressed to finality – a property that is under contract or lease is still something that needs to be watched. The finality of the transaction still has to be achieved, and there are likely to be elements of negotiation still to be ‘closed’. Don’t let any transaction ‘stagnate’ or stall.
When you focus on these factors of commercial real estate brokerage, the reputation that you create for yourself as a broker or agent can be so much stronger. Build your business and personal profile on a customer focused reputation of success and follow through. That is the core business message to remember for good brokerage outcomes.