Tips to Avoid Time Wasting in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
In commercial real estate brokerage, there are some things that you must do yourself and those things cannot typically be delegated. In simple terms, you must get involved with your property market in a complete and thorough way; you must know the people and the businesses in the location.
Don’t procrastinate, but get involved with your property market. If you employ a PA to support your business activities, don’t let the PA become a bad mistake in separating you from your clients and prospects. Stay involved with and integrated into your property market; talk to people. (NB – you can get our commercial real estate course right here)
Deeper Engagement
That deeper level of engagement will involve significant research, talking to people, meeting people, creating individual and unique marketing strategies, and growing your database. There are no shortcuts in commercial real estate brokerage today. The rewards are significant for those that build business momentum, but you do need to put in the hours and the strategies to take your career forward. An action plan will help you with getting results and leverage from people and properties.
Here are some observable facts and challenges from the industry:
- Many people will try to take some of your time and seek your professional advice for free. You need to protect your diary, your professional services, and your time. Be wary of those clients seeking out free information for little outlay. As you build your local area relevance and coverage as a top agent, your services and your knowledge should be paid for, and that is where commission and fees become important. Learn how to pitch your services and your fees accordingly.
- Don’t go too far into a client or prospect relationship without a commitment from that person to a reasonable commission or fee payment. If you are truly the local commercial real estate expert that you seek or claim to be, your information and your services will be valuable in many respects. It will be hard for a client or prospect to ignore a top agent that has the commanding share of the local area and the market. Market coverage commands a reasonable commission.
- Don’t be too eager to give out property information and listing facts without the full details of the person that you are talking to. Honesty and integrity are critical elements when it comes to taking and processing any property inquiry. Know who you are talking to in any property inquiry before you go further.
So, there are some things here for you to do when it comes to professional market coverage and property specialization. To get the traction that you need, you will need to do things as part of a strategic plan, and then you will need to track the results at you achieve across certain key performance indicators.
You need an action plan that you can stick to.
Remove any factors of procrastination that apply as you strive to grow market share and client contact. Every day is a new day in our industry and the opportunities that will evolve will be many. You simply need to know what to look for and delve into.
Select Brokerage Business
Be selective when it comes to prospecting for new business, connecting with clients, servicing properties, marketing listings, and progressing property negotiations. Within each of those four categories, you can improve your professional skills and practice your professional dialogue. Here are some ideas to help you avoid procrastination as an agent or a broker:
- Protect your time in every way possible. Only book meetings with the people that matter and most particularly your clients, prospects, and perhaps your brokerage team. In doing that, you can select the relevant times of day that are most suited to the meeting process. Don’t allow unnecessary meetings to derail your business focus and prospecting model. Far too many agents waste time. Time is your most valuable resource to be protected and to be optimized.
- Set a regular time of day that can be locked away for prospecting and client contact. That time should be nonnegotiable as a daily event. For two or three hours, and that particularly is each day, you should be connecting with new people and existing clients and customers. New people will be important to your business model, so develop a prospecting model that you can stick to and move with each working day.
- Define your territory and research every property and business within that territory. As you look deeply into a location you will find more property opportunities, people, and businesses to serve. As you define your territory, stay within certain definable boundaries such as roads or geographical barriers, and as part of that get to know all the property precincts that are a priority for investment, business occupation, and property ownership. Some regions will be more important than others from an ownership and occupancy perspective. Research the streets, businesses, and property owners. Do that in a logical way so that you can track the information identified and the conversations created. Local people know all about the local facts. They will tell you things when it comes to property change and churn. Ask the questions as you connect with new people.
Understand the precinct you are working in, the property types for the region, and the people involved in the market; you can then find the opportunities that you need in commercial real estate brokerage. Your systems should be consistently applied daily; that is a personal process that cannot be avoided.
Procrastination has no place in commercial real estate brokerage. The agents that win the business are those that strive to improve market coverage and client contact at a personal level. Get involved with your property market and the people within it. Involvement drives engagement. That is the foundation of our industry and growth of market share.