Proven Strategies to Improve Brokerage Services

The commercial real estate industry is highly competitive, and it is important that you are ahead of the ‘game’.  Be of ‘relevance’ to your client base.   Think about your services and match them into your clients and their needs.  There is no point in being ‘ordinary’ in commercial real estate brokerage.

So, what does ‘relevance’ mean?  It’s not just about providing sales, leasing, and property management services; it’s all about going ‘deeper’ with those specialist services.  The difference between an ‘ordinary’ brokerage offering and that provided by a top agency is usually in the knowledge of the people, the ongoing engagement with the client, and the quality and timeliness of services rendered.  Investors need top quality agents; that’s the fact.

How Direct Contact and Services Really Matter

Even though we exist in an ‘online world’, the traditional elements of client service in commercial real estate remain very much ‘face to face’.  Market yourself accordingly.  Align your services through personal contact with your clients.

Here is a list of ‘specialist brokerage services’ that you could put into your activities, your properties, and client base:

1. Planning on property selections, portfolio growth, or sales – many property owners look to expanding and changing property investments at different times.   That is where planning has an advantage.  You can be on the lookout for other properties, or investment situations.  It can take some considerable time to find or exchange an asset for another.
2. Working on lease renewals early – don’t let leases come to an end without working on renewal negotiations and opportunities.  Some tenants are important to the stability of an asset and the income stream; work with those tenants well in advance.  Split your tenants into ‘priorities’ or ‘grades’ where you can place them or negotiate new leases with them early.
3. Finding tenants of a particular business stream – knowing the properties that you work on, some tenant types will be better than others for placement in any vacancy and or property.  Choose business types and business streams to boost occupancy in targeted buildings.
4. Improving a tenant mix – from the previous point, you can introduce tenants into the tenant mix that would be a good balance for the other occupants and property design.
5. Implementing a tenant retention plan – from the idea of segmenting your tenants into groups, you can focus on retaining your better tenants for the long term.  Negotiate leases early.  Charge a fee for that ‘advanced leasing service’.
6. Optimizing the income stream for a property – this can be part of business planning the asset.  The income stream can improve through some control systems and lease negotiations.  So, there is rent, expenditure, and operational costs such as rates and taxes to consider.  All of them can be ‘tuned’ to the local property market, and the tenants in occupancy.

Helping a client with renovation strategies and tenant placement – older properties need special attention when it comes to property change and movement of tenants.  Put some strategies into the idea and deliberately service the better properties and clients.