How to Make More Commissions in Commercial Real Estate Using Strategic Goals

Some things really matter in commercial real estate and I like to categorize them as ‘strategic goals’.  They are the goals to generate and support results in your real estate business. If you achieve those goals it will have a valuable impact on where you are heading as a broker or agent.  They are the big things that can help drive your business forward.

Don’t Be Ordinary

It is common for ordinary agents and brokers to have a ‘wish list’ but little or no ‘goal focus’.  That is perhaps the largest reason why they struggle.  Those same ordinary agents have big fluctuations in listing and commission activity.  On average their commissions at the end of a financial year are typically ordinary.

Make no mistake here; there are many opportunities to be had from a career in commercial real estate brokerage.  Converting those opportunities takes directed action; that is where the strategic goals come in.

Here are some common observations to be made in broker activities:

• Every day there will be ordinary issues that will divert your focus; those things will have to be done by someone. If that is you, then devise a time each day to get that administrative work under control.
• Clients can take a lot of your time and put pressure on your results.
• Your peers and competitors will ‘infiltrate’ your day and its routine.
• It takes a good degree of effort and persistence to set new habits and break old ones.

Whilst these things are frustrating, every broker or agent has the same elements of the market to work through.  Some agents resolve their challenges; others don’t.   The top agents break through the pressures because of persistence and action.

 

Strategic Goals for Brokers

Here are some strategic goals worth considering and implementing in your career plan:

1. Listings by type – get more exclusive listings so that you are pulling away from open listings. Exclusivity is the way to build market share. When you control your listing stock, you can control the enquiry, the inspections, and the negotiations. There is no better way to build market share. Everything else is a matter of luck, and luck has nothing to do with growing a commercial real estate business.
2. Listings by volume – look at the property types and then the volume of listings that you are attracting. You need plenty of listings over time. Your pipeline of prospecting needs to support that listing process with plenty of strategies across marketing, inspections, and territory management. Convert more listings by volume and make sure those listings exclusively controlled.
3. Shorter time on market – be known as the agent that gets things done. Tell the clients and prospects of your sales results locally so that they remember you as the expert that they can use at the right time.
4. Commissions – look at the amount of commission that you are converting from each completed transaction in sales and leasing. The amount of commission will vary by property type and size. On that basis, focus your efforts into the properties that bring the better returns and attract the higher levels of interest from tenants and buyers.
5. VIP clients – segment your clients so that you know where the better clients may be located and what they may require. Set some clear factors and criteria so that you can work with the better clients for the location. Spend the majority of your prospecting time in building your VIP client list. Service that list comprehensively.
6. Database size – throughout the year there will be fluctuations in the commercial real estate market. Some clients and prospects will shift their interest when it comes to ownership and occupancy. To work through that change and churn, keep adding new people to your client and prospect list each day. Set some simple targets to build the client list with the right people each day, and do so in the right segments or property precincts of your territory.
7. Signboards – you should have plenty of signboards placed on exclusive listings in your control territory. Those signboards will always improve your market profile and presence; they will help you generate more enquiry. The agent or the broker with a dominance of signboards placed locally will usually attract better levels of local enquiry from business owners and investors. As part of your personal approach to marketing, track the number of signboards that you are placing into your location and within certain property types.
8. Meetings – create the contact systems that encourage meetings in a regular ongoing way. It can take quite some time to convert a new person to the level of prospect or client in your database. Personal contact will help you achieve more momentum, so get your meeting program established in your database activities. Set some targets for new meetings each day. Track the meetings and the results achieved in each case.

Given all of these things, you can set some strategic goals relative to your commercial real estate business and career. You can track those goals throughout the year so that you can see progress when it occurs, and you can make adjustments where necessary. That is how you can grow your commercial real estate business in the right way over time.