Strategies for Building Commissions in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage

If you have chosen commercial real estate as your preferred career, you have likely done so for a reason.  Perhaps someone has introduced you to the profession, or you have seen what some agents do and achieve in their career and you want to get similar results.

 

Many ‘Roads’ to Take in Commercial Property

 

Certainly there are many ‘roads’ of focus and activity to take in commercial real estate brokerage; all of those ‘roads’ are specialized in some way for both property type and location.   All of those ‘roads’ involve client contact, personal performance, commissions, and listings.

 

You have to be a person that will focus personal effort into all of those things, and that is certainly the case if you want to get more or improved results from your industry and from your efforts over time. 

 

You need a plan as an agent or broker, and that plan when started can be refined over time.  The commissions come to those that work with professional skills that are improved over time.  Are you that person?

 

Get More Real Estate Traction and Focus

 

Here are some ideas to help you get more traction in your career as an agent or broker, and attract better levels of commissions:

 

1. Specialist skills – choose the property types that you understand and can match your professional skills into. Boost your skills through practice.  There is no point specializing in something that sells or leases in low volume.  Look at the end result of what could happen in your property specialization.  Improve your skills through deliberate effort.
2. Local area – choose the local area that shows the best possibilities for your efforts over time. Review the streets and precincts.  Look at the buildings and investment properties in the chosen location.
3. Owners, Tenants and Business owners – you can work for clients in all 3 of these categories, but in saying that, each category requires understanding and unique qualities of service. Given your location, how much business could you extract from the segments?  You could be an agent for landlords, tenants, buyers, or sellers; match your services into the segments that you prefer and then prospect the segments comprehensively in an ongoing way.
4. Referrals – when you know a customer or client with reasonable familiarity, the referral process gets a lot easier. Encourage your clients to tell you about other people that they know who may be interested in property investment.
5. Repeat business – some clients will transact commercial property in a number of different ways over time. That is especially so if they own multiple properties or a portfolio.  Review your clients on that basis.
6. Quality properties – work with the better quality properties as they will attract more inquiry and that will lead to a better churn of listings and properties. As you work with more listings piggy back your listings and inquiries so you can move an inquiry from one property to another and eventually find the right solution for the buyer or tenant.
7. A quality database – review the database software that you use an understand its potential for you in finding the right people to transact real estate in some way. Spreadsheets don’t offer a complete level of coverage; the larger that they get, the more difficult it is in finding the right people to match into a property listing or inquiry.

 

There are some special things that you can do here with a listings and commissions focus.  If commercial real estate is your career, then the elements mentioned here will be vital to the outcomes that you seek.  Refine them and improve them over time.  Top agents are created and shaped over time; luck has nothing to do with the process.  Your career and its results are influenced by deliberate choices and refined actions.

(N.B. these ideas are also sent out to regularly to our friends in Commercial Real Estate Online Snapshot to help amplify brokerage results…. Get your access here)