Roles and Opportunities in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
In commercial real estate brokerage it is easy to forget or overlook the key reasons for your actions in the market. You can lose focus, and in doing so miss the commissions, clients, and listings that are there to be taken.
The message here is that a top agent has lots of focus, and that then helps them with pulling in new business. Whilst the concept is easy to understand, it is also easy to overlook. The pressures of the day for an average agent then take over and before you know it, you are looking at an average market share and slower deals.
So the time is now to have a serious look at these ‘focus’ based questions:
- Why are you working today in the real estate industry? You will have a few answers, some of them from a personal angle and others from a client’s perspective. It is the answers from the client’s angle that are really important. Can you say that you are there to provide a top quality specialised property service? If your answer is ‘yes’, then move on to the next question.
- Why should people use your services? It is not sufficient to say that you are ‘the best agent’ or something similarly generic; the fact is that you really must stand out as an industry expert in your market segment and territory. You must stand out as the best choice for the property and the challenge the client faces. Your experience, database, knowledge of the property type, and results must speak volumes to support your clients decision and pull new business towards you. Market yourself strongly as the ‘industry expert’ in the segments you are working in.
- What are you doing that is of real value and relevance to the clients that you serve? Can you market a property differently and more comprehensively? Can you take every quality listing and build on the story or message that will attract better levels of enquiry? These are not easy questions to answer; some agents are very ‘general’ in marketing and listing. Now I know that some properties deserve the ‘general’ process, but the higher quality clients and properties deserve a specialised approach to marketing, inspecting, and listing.
It is easy to see that these factors are encouraging you to be more specialised and of greater value to the clients that you serve. I am not a great fan of ‘generic’ marketing and ‘open listings’. I encourage you to be focused in your marketing and client services. That’s what top agents do.