How to Make More Commissions and Sales in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
When agents first start their career in the commercial property industry they think that lots of listings will attract more commission. So then they go out and openly list anything and everything across the city with little regard to quality and listing type. The end result will usually be harder and fewer deals.
Here are some rules to be respected and practiced if you are an agent or broker wanting more sales:
- Quality properties that are listed create a lot more interest and leads from buyers
- Every property should be carefully listed with due regard for market prices and interest
- Every listing should be revisited every 14 days to refine and refresh price and marketing
- Vendor paid marketing funds are a necessity with any quality property and exclusive listing
- Exclusive listings are a must if you want to create better commissions and growth of personal market share
- A small number of exclusive listings (between 10 and 15) will give you a lot better results than 50 openly listed properties
- Focus your prospecting into a property type and a defined smaller area of properties and owners
- It takes about 3 or 4 contacts to the same person in a meaningful way over a period of time to attract their attention and respect; that is when your relevance as an agent improves and meetings and listings become possible
The message here is quite clear. When you control the listing stock in a comprehensive way, better results are achievable for you as the agent. Don’t list every stale and poor quality property on the market; dead listings are a waste of time unless the client can be conditioned to the realities of the property market.
If you accept that all these points are true, the next problem will be in finding the property owners and those that are motivated to list to sell. Finding the correct owner of a property can take a reasonable amount of research across the local area including talking to people, making calls, and sending letters; given everything else an agent has to do, I would go so far as to say that it will only be possible to reach a small allocation of owners per day (between 1 and 5).
To make all of this work for you, start a systemised daily process of market research, call contact, and door knocking. Set an allocation of time to each of these three disciplines. Go back to the basics and start doing the things that can help you move ahead.
The career of a commercial real estate agent or broker doesn’t need to be difficult, but it does take focus and consistency on the things that matter. That is how you will make more commissions from the clients and the properties that you serve.