How to Improve Your Sales Skills Dramatically in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
In commercial real estate brokerage, sales skills developed over time will help improve listing conversions and deal opportunities. You never really stop learning in the industry.
That being said, it is essential that every agent and broker improve sales-related skills and negotiation strategies at an individual level. Personal practice is required.
Every stage of client interaction involves communication and sales related discussions with clients, prospects, and customers.
Essential Sales Skills
Consider the following everyday situations. They are the seven sales stages of commercial real estate today.
- making cold calls
- seeking meeting opportunities.
- pitching and presenting services
- inspecting properties
- encouraging offers
- negotiating on contracts and leases
- seeking referral business.
Improving your skills in each case will help you improve opportunities with clients and listings and, ultimately, commission results. Improvement is a personal process, and throughout your career practice is required across each of the seven sales related stages.
Treat each of the stages separately and specifically as you practice your sales skills so that you can address the challenges in your property specialty or local property market. In many cities and towns, commercial real estate property segments offer specific challenges and opportunities. Your negotiation and sales skills should be structured accordingly, taking into account the seven factors of selling.
Sales Performance Improvement Systems
So how can you implement a process of personal improvement in sales? Here are some ideas to help you:
- Sales Team Meetings: In the weekly sales meetings, have members of your team share recent challenges relating to sales, leasing, and property management. It is quite likely that the sales and negotiation issues are similar across a number of different agents.
- Check Out Other Agents: Watch other agents as they pitch and present their services to new clients. Many agents use different styles and approaches as part of the presentational process. Understand the differences between ordinary agents and top agents in your property market. Look at the differences used by all agents in each of the sales stages. You can use some of the strategies yourself given the right circumstances.
- Motivations and Preferences: Understand that many people have motivations that are not overly identifiable without a degree of conversation and discussion. A question and answer process will get you closer to the key requirements of the client or the customer. Improve the quality of the questions that you ask.
- Client Characters: Some clients and customers will have characters and communication preferences that do not match your normal approach. Some clients like to talk and ask plenty of questions; others like to limit conversation and just seek the facts and have the detail presented in a ‘results’ format. Read the preferences of the client and adjust your pitch accordingly.
- Use Top Quality Resources: Carry with you plenty of resources that you can use at any time across sales, leasing, and property management. The resources will help you adjust conversation and retain the attention of the client or customer.
- Practice and Role Play: As part of your weekly sales meeting, create role play situations where the team can discuss the variations of response in common pitch and presentation situations. You can learn from the others in your team. You can also practice your skills quite effectively as part of the sales team meeting.
If you want to get some serious traction and results from your career in commercial real estate, it is time to consider how you can improve your professional sales skills across all stages of property listing, marketing, inspecting, and negotiation. Practice your skills comprehensively at every opportunity.