Commercial Real Estate Team – Sales Success Rules

When you work as an agent in commercial real estate, it pays to understand where you are going and where you have been in relation to commissions and listings.  In only that way can you tap into the better ideas and changes that will help you get more market share.

The property market is always changing, both seasonally and economically.  Planning for those seasons and changes will help you find the sections of the market that are really active (or potentially so).

Gone are the days of waiting for a call or a prospect to walk in the door of your office to seek your help.  There are far too many agents around for that to be of any benefit to you.  In this property market you must:

• Prospect every day via the telephone (this is a critical habit in our industry)
• Call into businesses in your area to introduce yourself and your services
• Reconnect with old clients that you helped with other transactions over the years
• Watch the time on market of your listings so you know when changes are required to freshen the listing
• Track the other agents listings to see if you can help those property owners when the listings expire
• Market every listing that you have personally into all the adjacent businesses and property investors

It should be said that you cannot advertise a property in the newspaper or internet and hope that a deal will be forthcoming.  The only listings that should get the ‘random’ service approach are the ‘open’ listings in your books.  Exclusive listings are to be given priority marketing.  When you control your market through ‘exclusive listings’, you control your progress and market share.

The industry is all about people and how we connect with them.  Rarely will you win commercial real estate business from people that have only just met you for the first time.  Relationships are the key and your ratios of meetings and calls will help you understand just where those ratios are improving or could improve.

So here are the key ratios to track in your team and for yourself as a property expert:

1. What is the average commission that is paid per transaction?  This information will help you understand the quality factors that apply to your existing listings.  In many cases, salespeople just need to lift their listing quality to get more commission.
2. What are your conversion rates between presentations, to listings, to converted and closed transactions?   These ratios will help you understand just how you can improve your outcomes.  You may have a weakness in presentations, or negotiations; when you find a weakness you seek to improve it through practice.
3. How many prospecting calls must you make each day to get 2 new listings per week?
4. Are you closing and completing at least 50% of your listings?  If not, then you have a problem and you should look at the client conditioning and your listing negotiation skills.
5. What is the average time on market for your listings and how does that compare to the other agents and listings in the area?
6. What is your ratio between exclusive and open listings?  You should be listing in the majority exclusively.

You may be able to add to this list, and importantly you do so to keep on top of the market trends and opportunities.  The top agents of the market understand just what is going on with local property and how to tap into it at any time.

If you want more tips for commercial real estate agents you can get them in our Newsletter.