How to Get Serious About Your Client List
In commercial real estate brokerage, your client list is everything for you as an agent. Understand it for the advantages that it gives you and work that list deeply.
It can support your business and market share growth over time. Build your real estate business around your client list, concept, and strategy.
If you want to grow your real estate potential, listings, and commissions, look at how you work with your client list and start improving your processes with that list. Progress in real estate is achieved when agents work to a plan and strategy that they implement every day and ‘tune’ over time.
Contact Consistency
Sadly, many real estate agents do not have many systems for the client contact process. As a result, they then lack the consistency that is so important to making things happen.
So how can and should you contact your clients and prospects? Use this list for starters.
- Drop-ins
- Telephone
- Websites and internet
- Email and autoresponders
- Social media
- Business groups and gatherings
- Associates
- Allied professionals
There are several ways to get your client list under control, but all of them start with the principle of connecting with new people.
Of course, it would help if you had a plan for using one or more of the strategies mentioned above. But, of course, at the top of the list will always be how you connect with the right real estate people. That will be with clients and prospects and the frequency.
Client Communication Plan
Let’s build a client contact process that you can use over time. Then, you can shape your unique approach to clients in your town or city around these ideas.
- Preferred Client Types – There are several real estate clients that you can serve over time, and some decisions there will help you proceed. The important thing here is to decide what the ‘A grade’ client types should be. You can also choose the types of clients in your secondary ‘B grade’ category. As a special note here, the ‘C grade’ clients are not (nor should they be) a focus in any way. All of your real estate business should be ‘A’ or ‘B’ class clients. Generally, they would be property investors and business owners. To connect with those property people, you can now develop a base plan.
- Location and Geography – Your clients and property listings should be of a specific type and come from a particular area. A complete 80% of your business should come from a specific geographic area that is practical and easy for you to service. In addition, that precise geographic location should have enough properties within it for you to create more new business over time. How many listings can you get from your area, given the properties’ types, sales and leasing services, and average commission size? As you think about that, consider the competing agents working in the exact location and determine how you will counter their initiatives. Somehow, it would be best if you stood out as the agent of choice. That strategy of ‘relevance’ then should apply to your real estate business plan for the year ahead.
- Methods and Frequency of Contact – Consistency is the most significant leverage point in commercial real estate brokerage. How can you put some consistency into your real estate day and week? It is a challenge for many agents to prioritize consistently. This is then an excellent opportunity for those agents that can do so.
- Relevance to the Client Base – Why should you be of interest and use to your client base when it comes to property services? Is it because you are a specialist for a property type? Or is it because you have considerable market coverage? Too many agents think that ‘service’ can be their point of difference. While that may seem a warm and fuzzy statement that generally applies in residential property (it is used too much), it certainly has no place in office, retail, and industrial property brokerage. The client base that we work with is business and investment-related. Just about all real estate decisions and transactions come down to the businsss skills and marketing strategies of a particular agent in tapping into the target audience for a sale or lease situation.
Strategic points of difference can be set as you take command of your client list and contact strategy. From the previous point, you can see that skills and processes at the individual agent level are critical to winning new business.
As you strive to achieve more recent real estate business in your location, consider your approach and focus on all these issues.
