Rethink and Adjust Your Commercial Real Estate Brokerage Plan for This Year
Things change frequently in the commercial real estate industry. On that basis it is wise to rethink your commercial real estate brokerage plan at a personal level. Once per year you can create your business plan and then each month you can check its progress and compare trends to the facts of the market.
In saying this, there are certain things to look for in the market and with your plan:
- Frequency and type of enquiry coming in to your office
- The enquiry coming from your listings marketed
- Time on market for your listings
- Best methods of sale or lease
- What people are looking for by way of property and location
- Trends as to price and rent
- Overall business sentiment
So taking all of these things you can have a serious look at your business plan at a personal level. Look for the opportunities of change.
Your plan can be built from facts and assumptions. Consider these questions:
- What constitutes a customer for you? Perhaps you are working in sales and leasing, or leasing and property management; from your speciality you can set about defining a customer type and then you can go and find them. Many agents are not specific enough in this process and then they cannot prospect for new business effectively.
- What will be your problem solving behaviour? It is an interesting question to consider but it does make you drill down on the specialist skills you want to provide. You cannot be an expert in everything in our industry; it takes many years to reach that expert status. To get traction and market share, focus on what you are very good at, and market yourself strongly in those services. Improve your ‘problem solving behaviour’. Offer real value to the clients that you serve.
- What are the purchase or rental decisions that your clients make? In other words, what will they look for in choosing you or your brokerage to help them with property problems? These facts balance well with the previous points. If you are a sales specialist then your sales solutions should be superior to your competition. The same can be said for rental and fixing a vacancy problem. Strive to be better in many ways as you offer your real estate services; the generic approach in our industry doesn’t work well anymore.
- What are the growth elements of your market? To answer that question, look at what has been happening in sales and leasing over the last 2 years locally, then consider the market demographics. Are there some growth opportunities there to be had? When you can see that growth, then you have the basis of working your plan and prospecting processes.
Take these things and shape them into your real estate business plan. That can be done before the start of a financial year. On a monthly basis thereafter you can review progress, plan changes, and adjust your momentum. That’s how you move ahead in commercial real estate brokerage.
