The Benefits and Systems for Administrative Support in Commercial Real Estate Agency
In commercial real estate agency sales and leasing, you can fast track your activities through the use of well selected administrative support. It is a fact that the sales and leasing side of our business contains so many time wasting mundane activities, and yet also some critical activities that need to be done. The key issue is to get the balance correct and the right people to support you as part of listing, promoting, and closing on quality listings.
If you are going to work really hard, you will need a person or two to help you. Choose them wisely for skill and character.
So it can be said that administrative support can help you move ahead with the things that really improve your market share. Here are some ideas to consider as part of using extra staff or administrative support as a commercial real estate agent.
- Researching the market takes time and effort. You continually need to identify the right properties, the best clients, businesses, and tenants that are looking to adjust their property needs. The research takes time and requires a strategic system of support. Your administrative staff can collate the raw data from local property market research. You can then take the raw data and convert it into your prospecting model.
- Signboard numbers should be tracked each week in and around the local area. The same should be said regards the number of listings on the Internet when it comes to each salesperson, each agency, and geographic location. You simply must understand what your market share is and where it is heading. The research can be done by the administrative staff.
- Each week you should be getting listing updates relating to your property specialty and location. As part of that update process you need to know price adjustments, changes to the method of marketing, listings that have been withdrawn from the market, transactions that have been sold or leased, and listings that are being promoted by the owners locally. Within these numbers and the local market information there will be opportunity. The support staff or team cadet can help you with this research.
- Always track the activities of your competitors. That will include the numbers of listings, listing results, sales and leasing activity, and particular top salespeople. Some of your competitors will be more relevant than others when it comes to market share and market results. Determine exactly who the top agents are, and watch what they do. Replicate what they do.
- Marketing Materials for each listing can be prepared by your administrative staff so that you can then take those materials to the client for approval. Following the approval by the client, your support staff can process the marketing campaign and get it started.
- Correspondence, newsletters, emails, can all be channeled through administrative support. This works well when you have a series of standard letters or emails that can be integrated into the function of your business. You simply nominate the letter or the e-mail format to the support team, and then they send out the communication on your behalf.
Using support staff is not a process that will be removing you from the marketplace or the client. What it should be doing is allowing you to interact with the client and your prospects more effectively and in a more timely way. When done correctly, the cost of administrative support is well covered by the extra business that you create.
My apologies to sales agents that do not have any support! Eventually things will improve for you and resources can become available; work hard in the meantime.
You can get more tips for commercial real estate agents in our Newsletter.