The Celebrity Status that Generates More Commercial Real Estate Listings

In commercial property today you will find many different ways to generate listing stock consistently and successfully.  You need a number of those strategies working for you constantly so that the pipeline of exclusive listings continues into the future.

You could say that it’s a bit like creating your personal ‘celebrity status’ as the ‘go to person’ in brokerage locally.  If you cannot market yourself comprehensively in the industry then income and listing conversions slow.  Are you the property ‘celebrity’ that people need?  Do they remember you for the right reasons?

(N.B. these ideas are also sent out to regularly to our friends in Commercial Real Estate Online Snapshot to help amplify brokerage results…. Get your access here)

A special rule to respect

One other rule should also be respected here.  When you control your listing stock, you control your real estate business, and personal marketing is part of that.  Quality listings can then be created.  Open listings have very little relevance to any agent or broker when it comes to commercial real estate and property brokerage opportunity today.

Pitch and present your services for exclusivity at all times; be prepared to decline a listing where exclusivity is not granted.  Your time and your resources are valuable so don’t give those resources away to open listing clients.  If you are as good as you claim, then only one method of listing should apply; that is ‘exclusivity’.

Before we are going too much further here, consider your property market today and your particular market share.  Would you be regarded as the top agent for the location? Are you the person that people call when it comes to a particular property type within the location?  Your answers are important, so take the time to review them.  Specialization and local area focus are critical issues today in building personal market share within brokerage.

The top agents of the market tend to work only with exclusive listings, understanding that their skills and resources are so important when it comes to converting new property business. 

Forget about open listings!

The open listing process simply doesn’t allow resource commitment over time, and an abundance of open listings are of little value to market share.  Exclusivity on the other hand will allow you to work with the property and the client for a fixed period of time, and in that way you can be converting the inquiry, attracting the negotiations, and closing on the deals.

So here are the most important rules that apply to generating listing stock in today’s property market:

• Exclusivity is always at the top of the list when it comes to listing generation. It is better to work with a small number of exclusive listings, perhaps 10 to 15, then it is to work with 50 open listings.  In the open listing process, you don’t have the trust or the attention of the client to work with as you attract enquiry and undertake inspections.   In that case it is very hard to negotiate on any property or transaction.
• One transaction can lead to another. When you have successfully completed a sale or leasing transaction locally, approach all of the local businesses and property investors within the region.  Tell them about the recent transaction and the results achieved; assuming of course that the matter is not confidential.
• Build an online presence yourself so that you can load editorial updates, interesting listings, and articles about the local property market. Valuable local property information will always be of interest to other people on the Internet.  Make sure that you are using the right keywords in your articles and editorials.  Those keywords will relate to the location, the property type, and recent property updates.
• The best online presence to work with is a blog format, and that blog can then be integrated into your social media activities. So many agents, as part of an online marketing process, just rely on the websites provided by their principal or brokerage to build an online platform.  That then has little consistency and relevance to personal marketing and the improvement of the profile for the agent or a broker.  The broker also has little control over the content published and interest created online.   Build your comprehensive online marketing plan and activate it.
• Integrate an online auto responder and email marketing process that picks up the people from your social media activities and blog processes. If you are the local property expert that you claim to be, you will have plenty of information to write about and lodge online.  Soon the search engines will be seeing you as someone of knowledge and relevance.  Information at a specialized level is the key to growing online marketing presence in commercial real estate today.

There are always new ways to attract prospects, clients, and inquiry.  Look at your marketing processes as they exist today, and understand how you can become more relevant and real to the local landlords, investors, business owners, and tenants.

Specialization will be part of that process and will help you build the profile that you really need for the location.  Personal marketing at this very relevant and real level will be valuable in your commercial real estate career.   Are you the commercial real estate celebrity that people are looking for?