How to Create an Inspiring Vision in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
You must have a clear vision of where you are heading in your commercial real estate career and how things will look for you as you proceed.
Every day and week your thoughts and ideas will be challenged by your clients, your peers, and your prospects.
Stay on focus on your goals and targets. Build a solid foundation of thoughts and points of focus to underpin your real estate business at a personal level.
So, why is this ‘vision’ so important? You cannot get real momentum in brokerage without that direct ‘channelling’ of your thoughts and personal efforts; every day your ‘channelling’ of thinking and process must happen.
As you move through listing and negotiation challenges, something must keep you on track at a personal level. That then is the vision and the planning processes. Develop the systems and the focus.
Your Career is Your Responsibility
Expect that you will have strengths and weaknesses to handle in your career. Direct effort and training can resolve the weaknesses. Nothing that you can believe as a reality in your career is impossible to reach if you establish a clear vision and an approach to things.
This then is where your plan now takes shape. You could say that it is a form of a ‘business plan’, but I like to call it something more practical so that the plan is used and not ‘shelved’ for future random review.
I like to call the plan a broker or agent ‘vision box’. In that ‘box’, you put all your key issues, and you review your process by a ‘box review’ weekly.
In the practical sense, the ‘box’ is a folder in your computer where you can categorize things and make changes as required.
You can access that folder from your smartphone, your desktop computer, or your tablet computer. Over a coffee, you can look at the key issues and make changes as required.
Vision and Tactics Plan
Here are the elements of the ‘box’ process that I use:
- Know your market – define exactly where you are getting your real estate business into the future. This approach is to define a geographical area and a property type.
- Specialize – ensure that you know your property speciality and the key competitors that you are up against as you build your business. Review and reflect on things as they change during the year. It’s your business, so build it through specialization.
- Client focus – establish a clear impression of what a client looks like, and how you can then tap into a client list and prospecting process.
- Database foundation – your database will need growth, and that is a daily process. Only you can do that, so establish your planned approach to prospecting and get started.
- Specific coverage – within certain streets and across buildings you will be focusing your efforts. Get your maps out and establish a map to mount on your wall or desk. Every day look at your map and consider where you have been and what you should do next. A visual approach to your real estate business is valuable in helping you maintain momentum.
- Listing tracking – track your listings and those of others in your territory. Assess time on market in property categories and by zone. Enquiry rates will change during the year due to economic pressures and changes. See all the indicators and signals by tracking listings online and by a signboard count.
- Commission tracking – assess your income by listing, and by property type. Ideally, your commissions should increase per transaction. In other words, you work on better and larger properties as your career proceeds.
- Conversions – ensure that you are creating better conversions from your presentations. Over time your average on listing conversions should be at least 75%. That target is easier to achieve when you can show your client or prospect specialization and market coverage.
From all these things you can build a real vision in your real estate business. It is a personal process and something that will change as you move ahead. Give your real estate business a real boost as part of this process.
