Listing Recovery Secrets – Commercial Real Estate Brokerage

Sometimes you will have had a listing promoted on the property market with little or no interest.  There will usually be reasons for that including poor promotion, lack of target market activity, overpriced property, poor quality property, or unrealistic client.  Know the reasons then act for resolve.

So, you have a choice here as a broker or agent; you can continue with the listing as part of a ‘fix strategy’, or you can move away from it.  A lot depends on the nature of the ‘problem factors’ and the realism of the property in the current market.  If the client is ‘adjustable’ and the listing is attractive to the target market, then it is sensible to continue the property promotion in some form or another.

Your Listing Recovery Plan

Let’s say you want to resurrect the listing and put a ‘recovery plan’ in place to continue to work on the marketing and conversion of the property for the client.   There are a few different ways of doing that, and all the choices involve ‘exclusivity’ first and foremost.  Don’t work on a listing that you cannot control and or service.  Don’t work on a listing where the client is not ‘cooperating’ with market realism and your recommendations.

As a special note, don’t work on too many exclusive listings unless you have the backup staff and resources to help you remain in control.

Here are some strategies that can take you forward with listing recovery and conversion:

1. Remove the listing from the market for at least 4 weeks. During that time, you can prepare for a new approach and a new campaign.  You can understand how to reposition the property with the target market in the location given the prevailing economic circumstances.
2. Refresh the photographs of the property and the advertising copy. The visual image of the property can be enhanced with fresh photographs taken in different ways and at different times of day.  Professional photographs are important to attract the attention and interest of the target market.
3. Take fresh photographs and reposition the campaign. Photographic technology today offers us many different visual strategies and opportunities.  Talk to your photographic specialist to ensure that the new photographs are suitably different and visually interesting.
4. Revisit all existing and recent property enquiries for comments. Look back through your database and the property enquiries generated to date.  Review all those people that may have come to you as part of the original campaign.  Talk to the people again to see if they are still potentially interested to continue in another offer or property inspection.
5. Look at the target markets and adjust your approach to reach them. Look for alternative targeted groups of people, or investors.   Sometimes there may be another way of looking at an asset and the way of promoting it.  Creativity can make a ‘generic’ property stand out with more ‘factors of attraction’.
6. Create a new and more ‘direct’ approach to property marketing. Directly approaching property buyers will always be the best approach to gauge interest and opportunity.   Direct marketing involves telephone calls, meetings, and inspections.  How can you create more of those things?
7. Look at your mix of online and offline promotional strategies. Add some social media initiatives to the promotional mix.  Redefine your advertising copy.  Create a story from the property history.  There are many ways to reposition the property ‘story’ for greater interest and engagement.

From all of these things, you can tell the client how things should change and how you will do that.  The promotion of a property is a simple process, and a campaign approach will help you penetrate your targeted segments of buyers and investors.  If the property is of good quality and the client is committed to a positive outcome in the prevailing market conditions, then the strategy of listing recovery generally works.  Give it a go.