How to Use a Sales Checklist to Boost Real Estate Business

In commercial real estate brokerage, as an agent, it is easy to focus on the sales part of the property market, but in saying that, it is more productive and better to use a sales checklist as part of that.

Why worry about a checklist? It ensures that you are optimising everything you can do with all your listings for your clients. That can lead to more real estate business or transactions. Sounds like a good idea?

Leveraging Today’s Property Market

This is a changing property market, and every listing or transaction opportunity should be optimised. You are sometimes dealing with changing market circumstances and shifting client requirements.

Not all clients are ready to accept the market price or rent realities. You also have property buyers who are very selective regarding a listing or negotiation and will not pay the price above the market.

Research and Negotiation

Given all these things, commercial property sales must be tuned and progressed through the negotiation phase, given local property market conditions. That is the job of the agent. Are you ready for the challenge?

Start here by gathering your facts about the property, the client, and the local market conditions; from that point forward, you can use your checklist to advance the sale opportunity.

The Main Advantages of a Sales Checklist

So, a sales checklist does several things for the agent. Every list can also be developed for the property type or real estate sales situation. Over time a sales checklist identifies or removes problems or, at the very least, helps you see the issues.

Here are some stages or leverage points of the process. You can add your stages of property investigation or negotiation to these facts.

1. Understanding Client Requirements

Every client will have targets they try to achieve from selling their property. Those targets may not align with the realities of the local property market.

It is best to go deeply into the client’s thoughts and requirements as part of the listing phase to reduce the impact of a client that is unrealistic on price and sale outcomes.

2. Researching the Real Property Facts

Most properties you come across for listing will have special elements of opportunity, change, or concern that could impact the ultimate sale or marketing. You have to work with the facts.

So, create checklists that cover details about the property, such as ownership, location, boundaries, improvements, legal occupancy, and compliance or risk issues.

Ask the client plenty of real estate questions and take notes about the answers you get. It is also wise to summarise all the listing discussions back to the client via email notes. That then removes any misunderstanding or later dispute.

3. Market Conditions and Comparisons

Look around the local area for other properties that could be comparable and determine if they conflict with the property that you want to take to sale.

Delaying a real estate sales campaign is better if there are distinct conflicts between local properties in sale cycles. Buyers will check the entire location before they offer to purchase, so investigate those competing properties before you take your listing to the target market.

4. Target Marketing Your Listing

When you review the property ‘in-depth’ you will soon determine the best channels of buyers that should be interested in inspecting and potentially purchasing. From that point, it is easier to draft advertisements of attraction for the property and the location.

5. Setting Marketing Plans and Campaigns

When you think about the timing of the sale, look at how economic pressures and real estate cycles would impact the property. That could be the change of the financial year, local holidays, particular months of selling, seasonal festivities in the location, and tourism.

6. Tracking and Measuring

When you track the progress of a listing and the promotional campaign, you are not losing control of the transaction or negotiation. You are keeping ahead of problems and situations. Most property transactions have a good selection of that.

Some transactions take weeks, if not months, to move through the property sale phase. Prepare for the ‘long haul’ of real estate listing, marketing, inspecting, and negotiating. Ensure that you have all the required supporting sales documentation and that you have removed any obvious hurdles or due diligence problems.

Solid Real Estate Foundations

So, these factors can give you the foundations of a checklist in commercial real estate sales. Add the details of the property types (office, industrial, or retail) to these items, and build your checklist or inventory to be a real estate sales tool that gives you an advantage in brokerage sales.