Use Compelling Local Property Knowledge to Win More Commercial Real Estate Listings
In commercial real estate brokerage, you simply must know the property market and all of its activities, indicators, and pressures. Clients and prospects will test your knowledge about the local area and the deals that have been done recently.
So what do they want to see? They want to see real confidence and coverage in the agent or broker that they choose to help them with a property need. How will you stand out as the best choice?
I have said it many times before, and it is worth repeating here when it comes to a listing pitch; generic statements made to a client or prospect about the property market are a total waste of time and are virtually worthless. Property marketing is not an ‘experiment’. Specifics are required to win the attention of the client.
- How specific can you be?
- What can you say that will draw the client closer to you?
- Why are you a better brokerage alternative than your competitors?
Some agents will try to win a listing on the basis of overstating price or rent; that’s a bad move. By offering an inflated price or rent they are then hoping to ‘condition the client’ through the marketing and negotiation phase; the ‘price or rent hurdle’ created by the agent will generally stifle negotiation and confuse the client at a later time.
A top agent will not ‘buy the listing’ with an inflated price or rent; their confidence and market knowledge will support the listing process. The 3 senses (sight, sound, feel) they use in any presentation or client meeting will help them win a listing.
A Focused Approach
Focus on the ‘top agent’ approach to our business and position yourself accordingly. Compel the client to listen to you because you have all the facts, the strategies, and the confidence. Here are some ideas to help:
- Prices and Rents – Give the client the right price based on market evidence. Show them ‘comparable’ and competing properties as part of that process.
- Values and Capitalization Rates – With any investment property, location, income and tenant mix will impact the capitalization rate. Analyse a few sales to get to the right cap rate for the property type in its location.
- Supply and Demand – Stay ahead of the upcoming new property developments that could impact supply and demand from tenants and businesses.
- Property types – Watch the trends in the property types. What are tenants and buyers looking for by way of improvements?
- Other listings – Unsold and un-rented properties locally will impact inquiry rates and negotiations. Understand the differences between your listings and that of the general market. Be prepared to market the listings around the others in the local area.
- Marketing strategies – The best marketing alternatives will bring the best results. To spend time on the correct levels of marketing, always sell your exclusive listing services professionally, attract and convert vendor paid marketing, and comprehensively cover online and offline marketing alternatives. Comprehensive marketing packages create better levels of inquiry.
- Research – Understand the inquiry rates, time on market, and all inquiry trends through comprehensive marketing. Test your marketing and negotiation alternatives so you can show your clients exactly what it working and why.
- Investigate – Every listing should be completely investigated before a marketing campaign is undertaken. Look for reasons and trends in all property results. Your investigations will help you with your client recommendations.
- Database – A good sized database that is matched to a property listing and client is a major point of leverage in any property promotion. Tell the client about your database and how you have short listed some potential buyers or tenants to talk to as soon as the listing is ready to quote.
Your property knowledge and services in commercial real estate brokerage should be comprehensive in all respects. You can then promote yourself as the industry specialist that the client requires.
