Commercial Agents and Realtors – Sales Presentation Tips for Your Next Listing Pitch

When it comes to you the agent connecting with the client or prospect and pitching your commercial real estate services, practice and relevance will help you convert more listings in the right way and at the right time.  In a tough commercial property market, you really do need top presentation skills to match your sales pitch.

Most quality property listings today are achieved through a competitive sales pitch or presentation process.  Many other agents will be doing their variation of presentation to the same client before any agency appointment is decided and signed.  Some of those other agents will also be offering discounts and incentives to influence the clients thinking.

In many cases, the client will have already decided on a particular agent before the presentations are made from all agencies.  They will use the presentation process to satisfy their choices and make a final decision.  It is the early relationships with the client that influence the decision they make in any competitive presentation.  Top agents build relationships on a continual basis for this very reason.  You need to do the same.

Here are some tips to help your presentation strategy in today’s property market.

1. Ensure that you have complete and comprehensive local market knowledge relative to the property type.  You will need to know about prices, rentals, supply and demand, time on market, and current levels of enquiry.
2. Take the time to review the individual property and inspect it comprehensively before the presentation.  That will also include a review of the other properties adjacent to and nearby the subject property.  Look for any issues or relationships that will have impact on the subject listing.
3. Review all the other properties currently on the market in the local area.  Look for challenges relating to quality, price, method of marketing, and availability.  Your property listing may need to be adjusted around these other competing properties.

I’m not a big believer in the use of laptop computers as part of a commercial property presentation process, given that they are usually poorly handled by the relative salespeople.  If anything they can be a big distraction to the client and confuse the message or sales pitch about the property.  That being said, there is one strategy that really works with the use of a laptop computer.  It is quite simple but very effective.

Take a significant number of photographs in and around the property together with other competing properties in the immediate adjacent area.  You need probably 30 or 50 photographs for this process.  Set the photographs up on the laptop so that you can run them from one folder as a continual automatic slide show.

When you get to meet with the client for the presentation, you simply let the slide show run automatically in the background as you talk to the client.  The photographs help you in two distinct ways; they keep the attention of the client given that the photographs relate mainly to their property, and they also allow you to move in and out of points of discussion relative to any property matters in the photograph.  Do not focus too much on the laptop and allow the client to glance at the photographs as you talk.