Tag: Commercial Real Estate Coaching

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Tips for Credibility in Your Commercial Real Estate Sales Pitch

business people meeting
Build your credibility so you can convert more listings’

There are lots of commercial real estate salespeople and agents around the local property market.  Some of them are less professional than others, and the best top agents will be few and far between.  When it comes to a sales pitch for listing presentation, you have to connect with the client and convey your credibility and experience in an effective way.  You will be up against some top agents.

Here are some tips from our Newsletter.

The good thing is that most agents take a generic approach to the sales pitch process.  That means your presentation can be more successful if you choose to make specific steps in building your credibility and showing it in your sales pitch or presentation.

What Does the Client Want?

When it comes to selling and leasing commercial or retail property, the one thing that really matters to the client will center on the success of the process.  They need to see that you have the experience, tools, and strategy to make the sale or leasing process as fast and as painless as possible.  They want the right agent with the dominance in the market and the credibility to make the process work.

Ultimately they want the best price or rental, but they also need a reasonably short time on market.  They understand that the longer the property remains on the market, the more difficult it will be in attracting new and fresh inquiry.

To lift your credibility as a specialist commercial agent in your sales pitches the following factors will be of great assistance.

  1. Show the client similar properties that you have successfully transacted in recent time.  Give them details of the time on market, the starting price or rental, and the end result.  Emphasize the strategies necessary to complete the transaction quickly and effectively.
  2. Show the client some comparable properties in the local area that are just not selling or leasing.  These properties will be with the other agents in the local area and on that basis should be suitably explained.  Tell the client why you believe these listings are not moving and how those other agents have got the wrong processes underway.
  3. Explain to the client the recent levels of enquiry that you have had from buyers and tenants for similar properties.  You should be able to provide specific case studies of the requirements of some of these parties.  Show them the size of your database.
  4. Pricing and rentals should be broken down to a unit level; in this way you can compare properties of different sizes in the same general location.  That analysis will be per square foot or per square metre as the case may be.  You can then also relate to the cost of replacement of the improvements on various properties; split the properties into levels of relevance.
  5. Take digital photographs around the client’s property and then compile a slide show of photographs that can run on your laptop whilst you are making your presentation.  Make sure that the slides running automatically are only photographs.  Do not attempt to put any words into the slides process; just use the photographs as trigger points for discussion and let them roll through continually during your presentation.  For a typical commercial property, a selection of 30 or 40 photographs will be adequate.
  6. Show the client how you will be inspecting the property with potential tenants or buyers as the case may be.  Give details of the features of the property that will be emphasized in your inspections and in the marketing process.
  7. Give samples of relevant advertising that can apply to the client’s property when you take it to market.  Itemize the trigger points and focus points that should be featured in the advertising.
  8. Provide a timeline to show the client exactly how you will be preparing the property for marketing and how you will then be taking it to the market as part of a dedicated and specially designed campaign.

All of these things help you build credibility as a specialist commercial agent.  Show that you are fully prepared to take on the subject property with all its challenges and attributes.  Confidence and strategy will underpin your market knowledge and allow the client to see that you are really the agent of choice when it comes to the property solution that they require.

Need more help?  Join our Newsletter here.

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Commercial Real Estate Job Specifications Work Well

  If you work in commercial real estate sales and leasing, get a good job specification and stick to it.  Here are some ideas as to why this works in a sales career.

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Building Market Opportuntity for Your Commercial Real Estate Agency Team

Commercial real estate in city
Commercial Property Market opportunity can be optimised by Agents

We all know that the commercial real estate market is quite competitive today.  Whilst the number of agents in each area will vary, the factors of territory domination become really important in attracting the right levels of enquiry and target market for each listing.  Essentially your agency team needs to build market opportunity continually and constantly in and around the other agents with whom you compete.  Monitoring your market share will become part of the process.   Here are some tips from our Newsletter.

There are some key factors in growing your market share and here are some of the main ones:

  • The signage profile in the area needs to be significant and strong.  This means that every listing should feature a suitably placed signboard wherever possible.  Most property enquiry comes from the local area.  The signboard on the property has significant leverage in attracting this enquiry; all signboards should be kept up to date and damage free from vandalism.
  • Every property enquiry can and should be captured into your database for future use and opportunity.  The accuracy and up to date nature of the database will have direct impact on the deals and enquiries that you can convert.  Salespeople should be held accountable for database entry and maintenance with all their listings.
  • The agency branding for your office should be suitably consistent across all marketing material.  This will include contacts for salespeople, office detail, and telephone contact details for the office, website, and e-mail contact.  As part of that process it is wise to make some early decisions regards the ownership of the mobile phone number associated with each and every salesperson.  We all know that salespeople do move on or leave the industry given that the industry is very volatile.  It is wise for the real estate office to own the mobile phone and the mobile phone number.  When people leave, the enquiry from existing listings and previous client based contacts can still be captured from the mobile phone by other salespeople.
  • When you list a property locally, it is very important to take the property listing detail into the local business community through direct mail, direct flyers, and personal contact.  When this is done correctly, you will gain significant market intelligence and future listing opportunity.  This local contact process will generally optimise the price or rental outcome and shorten the time on market.  Regrettably a lot of salespeople do not do this local marketing coverage process well enough.
  • From the outset of your agency establishment and operation, it pays for your agency and its individual salespeople to specialise within certain property types.  Specialisation always provides better levels of enquiry and helps with your branding.  By a specialisation, we mean Industrial Property, Retail Property, and Office Property.  Certain members of the agency team can specialise in each segment and also the process of Sales, Leasing, or Property Management.  As experts you can then attract more enquiry to your business.

It can be said that a large agency team presents special challenges in managing these factors above.  The greater the number of salespeople, the more complex the management system required to optimise territory promotion and penetration.  Nevertheless these four factors have to be optimised wherever possible.  They can become part of your weekly office meeting agenda and strategies.

Track these numbers below with each member of the sales team:

  • New signboards placed on listings and in the territory
  • New listings for the week
  • Controlled listings for the week
  • Open listings for the week
  • Auctions coming up
  • Time on market per listing
  • Enhanced or exclusive listings on the Internet portals

To track the results that you set and obtain, it is wise to compare and monitor the number of advertisements, signboards placed on other properties, and Internet listings for each competitive agency.  A good commercial real estate agency is one that completely understands their market and their current position within it.

You can more tips like these in our Newsletter.

Our main portal for Commercial Real Estate Agency Tips and Ideas is at http://www.commercial-realestate-training.com/

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Commercial Real Estate Agents – Finding New Business Opportunity Today

Commercial Office Buildings
Listing opportunity exists with commercial property today.

When it comes to leasing and selling commercial property today, the market is really quite a challenge.  Only the best property agents do really well and that is because they have a specific process of prospecting and networking that they maintain.  They prospect every day at the same time and nothing, not even the boss, can derail the process.  Here are some thoughts from our Newsletter.

Prospecting and networking is such a simple and basic fact of the business.  You would think that most salespeople would accept and optimise the process.  That being said, there is a massive opportunity out there for the salespeople that really get their prospecting organised and do it every day.

Now some salespeople will say that it is a lot of work to find the owners of property and then chase them down to make a contact call.  I would agree, however I would say that these property owners are not the only people that you should be making contact with.

The easiest way to build your contacts in commercial property sales and leasing is through talking to all the business proprietors in your local area.  The simple fact of the matter is that these people either own the property that they are located in or they rent it.  Either way you want to know the facts relating to their property holding or occupancy so you can help them.

The other issue here to remember is that they will likely tell you who the landlord for the property is.  On that basis they have saved you a lot of time.   Put the information gained into the database.  Your database is the most important tool in your office.   Make the database a personal process so you can build a group of loyal followers in your local market.

The best agents in this market are those that know the local area and everyone that has property issues on the agenda now or in the future.  That can be as landlords, tenants, business proprietors or developers.  Just how many of these do you know?

Here are the rules for prospecting for new business today.

  1. Research 40 businesses to call.  You can do that easily from the telephone books in your area.  The research is best done in the evening in preparation for the next day.
  2. Create a standard form to use in the call process so you are simply capturing the conversation onto paper and then putting it into the database each evening.
  3. Contact people in your database each 90 days to keep up the personal profile that is so important in business.
  4. Get to know the local area and property trends so you can provide interesting conversation with property owners and tenants when you talk to them.

I hope that the message here is quite clear.  Your success in the industry is really up to you in all respects.  Do you have what it takes?

Get more tips for commercial real estate agents right here at our parent website http://www.commercial-realestate-training.com/      Or you can join our Newsletter here.

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Lifting Productivity in Your Commercial Real Estate Team

Commercial Real Estate Sales Team
You must solve problems of productivity in the commercial real estate team the right way and do it fast.

There is no doubt that a commercial real estate office is a busy place with agents coming and going at all times of day.  The situation gets worse the more salespeople that you have on your team.  It should be said that productive salespeople should not be in the office much during the day, but out in their territory.  The only time that they should come into the office is when they have some calls to make, or paper work to complete.  They should be in the office for only 2 hours per day maximum.

The office principal or team leader that wants the salespeople in the office most of the time is really not giving enough trust to the team to get on with the job. 

Sure, if you have some members of the team that are not producing then they are likely to be wasting the business day and not doing the right things.   In that case you need to know where those sales team members are and what they are up to.  But do you really want them in the office?  Wouldn’t it be better for them to get out and about and meet the people?  Couldn’t you get them to give you a diary update of movements at the end of the day or week that would satisfy your questions?

Poorly performing salespeople that cannot account for their movements should be dismissed as part of an ongoing business cleansing process every 3 months or so.  There are ways to manage out the underperformers.  A constant recruiting process goes hand in hand with running a real estate business.

Salespeople are intelligent and will make their own choices.  If their choices do not match your business model then they should go somewhere else and be helped to do so.  Do not let any underperformers become the ‘elephant’ in the sales team that is frustrating everyone else and taking the majority of your focus.  You and the team do not need the stress of the issue.

Why would you want to tolerate a member of the team that is not producing and is destabilising everyone else?  Sure, they may be providing some income and that fact may hold back your decision to sack or dismiss them, but eventually the ‘elephant’ issue will become so frustrating that it will have impact on your personal performance as team leader.  Remove on any ‘elephant’ issues quickly.  Get on with supporting and helping your good people achieve.

Here are facts that apply to running salespeople in a team:

  • Great salespeople like flexibility and support to get on with the job and produce commissions
  • Great salespeople will produce business their way if you give them the flexibility and the trust to do the business
  • Great salespeople know that they are responsible for the results that they achieve and will get on with the process if you give them the leverage to do so.

If you do not trust any or all of the members of the sales team then you either have the wrong people, inexperienced people, or your need to adjust your business practices.  Trust is really important when it comes to optimising listings and commission results from the real estate team.

Whilst you want the team to perform, the sales team need to see and feel the trust between you and them.  If they know and feel that you do not trust them, they will break the rules anyway and eventually leave the business to move somewhere else where they think they will be ‘trusted’.

Don’t make the sales office a ‘roller coaster’ of emotion for the sales team.  If you are the team leader, give them stability, trust, and direction in the office.  Give them the real flexibility and trust to do a good job and achieve.  Manage yourself first and foremost.

The team needs the leverage and opportunity to be out in the market place most of every working day.   Track their performances by KPI’s and if they do not soon show their results in the figures, then you have the wrong people.  You cannot micro manage salespeople for too long; they will take too much of your time and soon revolt and move on.  Give your top performers flexibility and trust above everything else.

Check out some more tips for commercial real estate teams at http://www.commercial-realestate-training.com/