The Priorities in Brokerage that Can Change Everything
Each day in commercial real estate brokerage, so many things can take your focus or pressure you to reset your priorities. That is the nature of the business. Through all of that, you still have choices regarding connecting with people and choosing what you do during the day. The choices that you make are the ‘leverage points’ to drive your real estate business forward.
Remember that you are trying to set some real momentum towards the right people, the best transactions and new real estate business. Do not let any confusion and or a lack of focus take you off ‘task’ and divert you away from the things that matter to your real estate business.
What is the message here? There is a discipline for you here in real estate business to think about; it is a skill to be learned and optimized. Commercial real estate results come to those agents that strive towards resolving property challenges for local people and companies. Who do you know locally that you can help?
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What’s the Problem?
Shifting and changing priorities in brokerage can be the biggest problem holding back many agents from getting results. To be clear, it happens to all agents and brokers, so you are not alone. The best agents, and perhaps those that we call the ‘top agents’, break through the barriers on all of that, and then they create business systems in their working day that they can keep to.
Right now, and from today, it can be the start of your ‘best year yet’. All the foundations for it will be set and starting from your attention to critical tasks. They are the tasks that can help you build your real estate business. Your ability to earn more commissions and find more listings is only limited by your ability to focus on your real estate day and new business plan.
Leading Questions for Agents
Let us start with some questions. How disciplined are you in your working day and new business focus? Can you improve it? The answer to the questions is usually ‘yes’ for most agents. So, let us move forward with that.
How Can You Fix Things?
When you know where you are positioned in the property market as an agent, you can start to optimize your actions and skills to work with the best people.
Consider the competing agents around you and then ‘rank’ them for real estate effectiveness and or market share. When you see what they are doing and how that happens to them, you can do more yourself directly. Be the person of ‘attraction’ to solving property challenges and needs.
Commercial real estate success is driven from an agent’s ability to stick to a plan of action and then to refine that action over time. Everything you do today in brokerage can be improved, so start with a plan that works for you, and then upgrade things as you move forward. Consider how you can improve what you do and how you do it.
Setting Your Priorities
Ready to set some priorities in your real estate business this year? Try out these ideas:
- Building the new business – Consider the types of new business you want and where it could come from. Then look at your allocated territory for priority precincts, better buildings, and property ownership records. Set some targets to focus on the future within your assigned zones. How many ideas or targets do you need to start this? Probably twenty-five is a good number to work with; it is not too large or too small; it is a medium level challenge to research, investigate, and communicate into.
- Connecting with clients – Some clients ‘come and go’ from a commercial real estate focus and activity. Their priorities with properties and investments will change; that is why ongoing contact is a big part of commercial real estate growth. If a person does not need real estate help today, they will at some point in the future.
- Servicing listings with direct marketing – All of your listings should be directly marketed into a location. You can also do that across the targeted tenants or buyers that you have identified by segment and area. With each listing, you can set up a ‘direct marketing’ plan and then take continual action with that. Use a simple spreadsheet to monitor who you have spoken to and what they have said to you. By establishing conversations with new people, you will find new business. Lift the numbers of people you are talking to about your current listings and ask questions about what they need information about and the challenges they want help with. Every person is likely to have an opinion about commercial property use and or investment. Explore that fact as you speak to ever more people.
- Closing and or advancing deals – Some lease or sales transactions can be protracted and time intense. Keeping things moving is a real skill as well as the ‘safety net’ of documenting comments, activities, and decisions. You can develop a systematic approach to record-keeping monitoring your transactions, so they stay ‘on track’. One simple transaction can be a collection of smaller decisions and agreements. Know the focus of your clients and move towards that.
- Maintaining priority relationships – The commercial real estate business is all about looking for the next opportunity. Those opportunities will be for your clients and prospects. Know what they want and the targets that they must satisfy as part of the process. Decide who your VIP clients are (generally a small number), and then focus on communications and market updates. The VIP clients or prospects are those people that are of importance or some significance to you; maybe they own several properties or investments. Perhaps they have sales and leasing challenges that are ongoing. Either way, their property challenges are your ‘bread and butter’. We do not set the property market prices or rents, but we facilitate transactions and trends that can help our clients. Your professional skills are of value to the best property people in your location.
These five things are perhaps the most critical change factors that you can work on to build your real estate business. Pivot your working day around these five issues, and soon you will find people, properties, and situations where you can help. Be a professional solution provider in commercial real estate and build your real estate day around that concept.
