Key Client Relationships in Commercial Real Estate Agency
In commercial real estate agency, you should define your market to best meet its needs. You should also define your property specialty so that you know how you can bring benefit to your clients and your prospects. The clearer that you are in this process you will find that it will help you with your sales pitch and your presentation.
In the property market today, there is no point in being ‘generic’ in your approach to clients and properties. Top agents are quite specific when it comes to providing professional real estate services. This then helps with their relationship establishment and ongoing contact with clients.
Set the rules that you need to play to as part of providing professional commercial real estate services. Your skills may be in sales, leasing, or property management. You may have multiple skills in each. The fact of the matter is that you must specialize and help the client understand how you do that and why it is important to them. That is part of defining your relationship. Skill development and local market knowledge will help you.
Clear relationships also help the client understand how you will approach the marketing and promotional process. They will understand in advance how you will be taking them through the listing process and any negotiation. Preparation is the key to a successful negotiation and closure.
Here are some rules to apply to the relationship establishment with your client.
- Tell them how you will be approaching the target market for the property and why that will be done. Get the client to agree to the target market as you see it. A well-defined target market will help you with the packaging of the marketing proposal and the marketing alternatives.
- Use a Gantt chart as a graphical display to help the client see where you will be going in the listing and marketing process. As simple as this seems, the Gantt chart will help you greatly when it comes to explaining the difference stages of the sales or leasing transaction and the marketing process. The same rule can apply when it comes to property management, given the different stages of the managing process.
- Set some clear processes in place for communication and ongoing contact. Tell the client how you will be connecting with them and what you expect from them when it comes to the negotiation momentum.
When working with tenants and buyers for a property, it is easy to confuse the boundaries of any relationship with the client. Understand who your client is in the process, and make sure the buyer or the tenant remembers that relationship. You act for your client; you don’t necessarily act for the tenant or a buyer unless they are paying your commission.
You are the facilitator for the transaction, but you cannot have two clients in the deal. Define your client relationships in any property listing and stick to them.
