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Do You Look Like a Packhorse When You Pitch in Commercial Real Estate Agency?

man carrying briefcase
Don’t carry too much marketing material to your sales pitch.

In commercial real estate agency your sales presentation or pitch should be simple and direct.  In saying that I still see so many agents front up to the client’s office for the presentation looking like a ‘pack-horse’ with every conceivable marketing tool imaginable.  What a big mistake!

Here are a few tips from our main commercial real estate training website ……

First impressions mean a lot in our industry.  As you enter the client’s office or work environment, the message you send must be simple and professional; you must look the part in every respect.  How you dress, what you say, and what you do in the first 2 minutes of the meeting will impact the remainder of the client connection.

Your sales pitch or presentation has to be simple.  The client has to grasp what you are talking about and see some clear and relevant solutions to their property challenge.  When you complicate things, you lose the clients attention.

Top commercial real estate agents know how to be relevant and real for the current property market.  They prepare the right information that connects to the current market conditions, the property, and solutions available to the client. 

The agent that wins the listing is usually the one that has fully prepared for the meeting with high level content and facts about the market.  They also offer specific strategies that go beyond the ‘generic rubbish’ that ordinary inexperienced agents provide.

Here are some ways to connect with the client in a professional sales pitch or presentation today:

  1. Ensure that you have seen the property before the meeting so you can relate to it in many different ways.
  2. Check out the other competing properties on the market nearby.  Be prepared to talk about them and how they are being marketed (successfully or unsuccessfully).
  3. The only tools you need for a presentation will be your marketing folder, and perhaps a laptop computer.
  4. In your marketing folder have listing forms, samples of marketing, maps of the area, subject property details (searched and checked), Gantt charts of sales and leasing processes, testimonials, and market research information.
  5. In your laptop (or tablet computer) have plenty of photographs of the property so you can run a slide show as part of the client connection.
  6. Have a brief marketing proposal ready with recommendations as part of taking the subject property to the right target market.
  7. Get away from long and tedious proposals for the client to read.  Use dot points, checklists, graphs, and photographs in the proposal.  That will help capture the client’s attention.
  8. Ensure that you have a few good stories to tell about some other property owners locally that have gone through the same pressures as the client you are talking to.  Stories always help the connection and will be appreciated by the client in the presentation.  Good stories will be remembered.

Simplify your strategies when it comes to meeting new potential clients. Take less information and clutter with you, but make sure that the things that you do have are of the highest and most relevant quality.  Practice your pitch beforehand.  Show the confidence that the client wants to see in the listing process.

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By John Highman

John Highman is an International Commercial Real Estate Author, Conference Speaker, and Broadcaster living in Australia, who shares property investment ideas and information to online audiences Worldwide.