Strategies to Gain a Competitive Edge

The competitive edge you create in commercial real estate sales should be specific and relevant to your property market and client base.

So, what is your competitive edge today in marketing properties for sale? It can be a profound question, and you can have a few answers that may help your cause; however, the answers should resonate with your clients.

There are always many other agents out there who will take your listings and clients given the opportunity.

What about your clients? They must see, feel, and know that your approach and ideas are the best for their property and their challenge. That is the true competitive edge that you want.

One of the best points of difference or the ‘edge’ in selling any property will usually come from the depth and volume of people in your database. Therefore, it is challenging for a property seller to ignore an agent with a relevant database aligned with their property challenge.

Keen Ideas of Buyer Attraction

What can you do then with this idea? First, you use your database in your property presentation and show the client a shortlist of qualified buyers. Of course, in doing that, you do not pass out confidential information.

Instead, provide just enough general knowledge to hook the client’s interest. In that way, you will prove your personal ‘value’ to the client in moving ahead.

Printing off a list of people from your database (suitably sanitized) is a good approach. Then, when it is printed, you can pass it to the client and let them appreciate the value you bring to their property situation.

You will want to remove names and phone numbers, but don’t remove comments specific to the person. Detailed property comments or property requirements align the list to the client and their property.

Those comments are ‘third party’ relative and valuable in conditioning the client at the right time to the realities of the property market today.

Strategies of Client Engagement

Here are some other ideas to make this competitive strategy of database use work in your next sales listing situation.

1. Start the strategy by drilling down into the client’s property, the improvements, the location, the features, and the target market. Those factors will help you set some rules or guidelines for your proposal and sales strategy.
2. From the previous point, ensure that you are very clear on the property purchasers and where they will come from. Those facts will help you define the target marketing approach with your advertising and local area coverage.
3. Every property will have design factors, improvements, or operational elements to help make the sale happen. What are those issues for that property and your listing? You can chart those things in a document to show your client as part of the listing brief and marketing discussion. That will help the client understand that you have thought about the property and what can happen.
4. Adopt a question-and-answer approach with your client. You will know what they are worried about and what targets they will have in the sale through directed questions. The answers they give you to your property questions will help you create a particular part of your proposal or presentation document to drill down into the client’s focus.

The Successful Approach

From these four points, you can use the people in your database to create a shortlist of buyers for the property and your competitive edge. It doesn’t have to be your only working list as part of the marketing of the listing. There will be other people to engage with about the property over time.

So, the main point here says that you can and should develop some strategies like this in your real estate business with all listing presentations. So, put your database firmly into your listing strategies and property presentations to build your competitive edge.