Image and Branding Advantages in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
Are you the best commercial real estate broker in your town or city? Does your image or brand tell that story? These are important questions to those agents and brokers that want to dominate market share.
There are many commercial real estate agents in most towns and cities today. Some are better than others. The fact of the matter in commercial real estate is that the property type is quite special; there are factors to be understood by all parties, much more so than in any residential property.
So what should your image be? It could be that of a property specialist that commands a dominant share of certain property types. You could become or be the sales and leasing specialist in your property type. From your activity in doing so, property management leads and opportunities can follow. So the brokerage can grow from a base of image and branding.
Why does image matter as a real estate agent? Try some of these:
- You will attract more market enquiries if you are well known locally as the property expert
- Quality listings will be easier to convert as the clients and prospects in the market will want to use your services
- Credibility will support your marketing and negotiation efforts; people will listen to you
- Referrals will come back to you from happy clients and prospects
Here are some ideas to help you boost your image as a specialist property agent:
- Focus on listings in a single market segment. That could be retail, industrial, or office property. When you have chosen your property segment, specialise in everything associated with that segment across sales, leasing, property management, tenant mix, tenant advocacy, and tenant retention. Be the ‘one stop shop’ of expertise in the region. Be the problem solver that clients need and want.
- Understand the history and activity of prices and rents within your segment. Information and market evidence will help you in any property listing or negotiation. The client will not know about market evidence as you do (or should).
- Market your listings on a personal basis. The generic approach today has no relevance in commercial property. Some agents will not list ‘open listings’ for that very reason.
- Get signboards into your region on as many quality listings as possible. Preferably those listings will be ‘exclusive’ by type. A quality listing demands a high quality signboard. You can make that a vendor cost in the marketing fees.
- Use every exclusive listing as a reason to approach other local businesses and property investors. Do that on a locational basis. In other words, work the streets surrounding your listings immediately a property comes on the market. Other property owners respect effort and marketing genius. They will soon know that you are more active than other agents in the area that simply advertise a listing.
Simple things like these can help you substantially when it comes to building your brand and image as a top agent.
