It is a good idea to keep score in commercial real estate, so you understand where you’re heading when it comes to listing conversions, meetings, and transaction. In his podcast today, you can learn how to track your activities, and most importantly the activities that matter. Take the ideas in this podcast and grow your business through deliberate and direct tracking of your KPI indicators.
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When you think about it, there are plenty of things that you can watch when it comes to your activities each week and each day in commercial real estate. Those indicators will include outbound calls, meetings, inspections, and negotiations. All of those things lead to commission opportunities over time.
Listen to the podcast to understand how you can improve your activities each day with the things that matter in brokerage.
Where are you today in your property activities and your commissions? Can things improve? If you are like most people in commercial real estate, there are always some more promotional strategies that you can develop and solutions that you can provide to your targeted client base. So let’s look at some personal improvement initiatives and some marketing strategies to help you boost your business locally.
There are some reasons that you could be struggling in commercial real estate brokerage today. A big reason for many agents and brokers struggling is usually the lack of an online presence when it comes to professional skills and property speciality. They are simply ‘not known’ when it comes to the local area and the property speciality.
The people of the marketplace (your clients) sometimes don’t know of certain individuals when it comes to solving their property challenge. The top agents of the market are remembered and that is the key to their success. So you need to do more with that promotional strategy online for yourself as a broker or an agent in your location.
Specialise This Way
When you specialise in a property type, it is wise to spread some ideas and some strategies across the online channels of social media and the blogging platforms to show the world that you really understand what you’re doing and what you’re talking about when it comes to local property activity in your town or city. of course there are many things that you can talk about when it comes to your location given sales, leasing, and property management activity. There are things to talk about when it comes to your successes in the industry and the property market changes for your location.
In this podcast, we share some ideas relating to your personal profile and how it can be promoted across your property market and your client base. You can learn how to grow your online brand and also your online activities as an industry specialist for commercial real estate locally.
Bring Your Promotional Ideas Together
Take these ideas and merge them into your real estate promotional activities every day, so that the consistent message regards your skills and relevance to the property market is well understood and optimised.
Help your prospects and clients that you work with remember you as the industry specialist that you are or want to be in your location. The core message here is for you to spread the word about your expertise, your availability, and your property speciality. You want people to remember you at the right time in the right way with the right property types. These are specifically online marketing strategies for commercial real estate brokerage.
In today’s podcast you can learn how to optimise your activities as a broker or an agent in your location. Those activities apply to both sales and leasing activity. Refine your working day so that you can boost enquiry, presentations, and client interaction. This is a personal thing that needs to be considered and developed as a system for every individual agent and broker over time.
Consistency is an important thing in commercial real estate brokerage. That is the consistency that happens when it comes to client contact, prospecting, and presentations. In this podcast, you will learn how to build some consistency in your actions and in your property market. Drive your business forward with greater levels of consistency on the things that really matter from a listing and commission perspective.
Here are proven ideas to help you know how to solve a slump in commercial real estate business. Use these ideas to lift your results with listings and clients to the next level.
In commercial real estate, there is no point in listing a property unless you know what you are going to do with it. You need a marketing plan from the very start, and that plan should feature early in your client conversations and property presentation. Show your confidence so that the client can see that you are listing the property with a purpose. Put some strategy into your ideas and conversation.
Top Agent Systems in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
Confidence in Property Presentations
So how direct and confident are you in your property
presentations now? While we are all different in how we approach
the listing process, your style and character can and should feature positively
in your listing process. Here are some
ideas to help you with that:
Client motivation and targets – Ensure that you question the client comprehensively and that you know the property in all respects before you go too far in the listing process. There will be strengths, weaknesses, issues, and facts to identify at the earliest stages of client and property engagement.
Set the target market – Be clear and precise about your property market and what it is doing. Your client wants to see that you understand things and how the client’s property fits into the local area and or the competition of other properties. Again, put some strategies in your comments on this. Lead the conversation with facts and strategies.
Define the inspection process and method – Tell the client how you will be taking people through their property and what you will be focusing on as part of that process. Build some stories around the features of the property and show how you see those features helping you with the inspecting people.
Give reasons for the best method of sale or lease – Don’t just put a property on the market for sale or lease. Show the client how you can vary the intensity of marketing and enquiry through choosing the best methods of sale or lease. Have some evidence to support the recommendations that you are making.
Set timelines to your listing approach and marketing process – It generally takes time to list and sell or lease a commercial property. You can simplify the whole process for the client by using a visual timeline that you can then show the client as part of your listing activity. That ‘visual’ approach can be the ‘roadmap’ to display your marketing efforts and listing strategy.
Schedule your marketing plan to a strategy – Just about every agent will use the ‘generic’ approach to marketing with most of their listings. They simply get a property into their listing books and then they promote in some basic way. They don’t overly consider timing, media choices, and intensity. You can change all that and show your client how important it is in the business approach you are taking to resolve their property challenge. Be different and relevant to your marketing recommendations; have a plan that is proven and logical. It is wise to have a solid ‘game plan’ when it comes to marketing any exclusively listed property. Notice the focus word here is with ‘exclusivity’.
So, these are specific ways you can list a property with a
real ‘purpose’; you are putting the client at the centre of your real estate
business. You can build a real support, and
directness to your professional property services. That will help the client see that you are
the ‘agent of choice’ when it comes to listing and marketing their property and
solving their property challenge. That
is how you will win more listings over time.
When you are about to meet a new client to discuss their property, prepare a list of questions beforehand to get to the facts of what the client is trying to achieve. There are five key questions here that I always start with when meeting a sales client for the first time. Preparation is the key to a productive sales marketing campaign. The questions help with that.
Of course, there are always more questions that evolve from the first five questions, so be prepared to probe the client for information, and document the answers that you get. Preparation is the key to getting to the real facts of the property and the client’s situation. Note taking is then wise to protect yourself from misleading events or later disagreements.
Why ask all these questions? Well, it is a known fact that some clients will hide or not disclose the full information about a property. They tend to think that withholding the negative information at the start of marketing will give them a higher price or perhaps better enquiry. The reality is that any hidden information will usually come out in the sale or due diligence process.
The buyers of commercial and retail real estate today are smart and informed. The earlier you can get all the facts about the property, the better it is for you and the client. Explain to the client that they must disclose all that they know.
Top Agent Systems in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
Watch for What Is Not Said in Listing or Sales Negotiations
As another note on this here, any hidden information will usually do a few things to your transaction including:
Stop the negotiations and any progress
Threaten the legality of the transaction
Jeopardise the ability to achieve a settlement
Risk the transaction being taken to court
Allow claims to be lodged against the property owner and agent for misrepresentation
Don’t allow yourself and or your client to be involved in these difficult situations. Get to the full facts of every property transaction before you take it to the market; when in any doubt ask more questions. Through all and any property enquiries, do not speculate about any information that you may not have available.
Key Sales Questions
Here are the key questions that I believe are the starting points for getting to all the client’s property issues. These questions allow you to go further and deeper into issues identified:
When and why did they purchase the property? This question allows you to understand the original motivations of the client in the first acquisition. Perhaps they purchased the property for investment and or as a base for their business to operate. When you know why they purchased the property, you can then judge whether the asset has satisfied their needs.
What is the ownership structure of the property? Sometimes there are multiple owners and or decision makers to the sale and marketing of commercial or retail property. Understand who they are, and more importantly, that you understand their motivations and agreement to proceed.
What are the restrictions and limitations applicable to the property? Some properties will have issues of operation, compliance, legality, and function. The best way to probe these things is to use a checklist of questions that you know would apply to property types in the location.
Has the property been on the market recently? It is very possible that they have tried to sell the property recently. If that is the case you must know about that activity and the results that evolved from the promotion. Buyers locally will see the listing coming back into the market; you must have your answers ready.
Why are they selling and what is their target price today?Perhaps these are quite direct questions, but the variety of answers that you get will help you with knowing the momentum that the client may have towards any sale and marketing process.
As mentioned, these questions allow you to go deeper into the client’s situation and their property as it appears to you today. Be prepared to ask these questions and others as part of the listing meeting and before the property is released to potential buyer enquiry.
In commercial and retail real estate, there are different ways to find new property management listings and clients. Some strategies are more successful than others. Either way, the growth of a portfolio under management is a good part of commercial real estate brokerage today.
A thriving and successful brokerage and agency business will have an established process to finding new management appointments. That process will or should be ongoing.
So why do this? The object here is to build growth in a property portfolio under management. That portfolio will bring fee stability to a brokerage and potentially future sales and leasing stock over time. Every person in the sales and leasing team should be encouraged to raise the ‘property management question’ in all interactions with good clients and established contacts.
Commercial Leasing Program
Locating Good Properties to Manage
Where can you find new property management business? Try these for starters:
Sales activity – as properties are sold, some purchasers are investors in some way or form. They don’t have the time or the skills to control the leases and cash flow from investment activity. The greater the number of tenants in a property, the harder the work involved. They will likely need property management help. Recognise the complexities of property management with arrears, lease management, vacancy reduction, and property optimization. Sell your management services through to buyers of your listed properties.
Leasing activity – every lease converted will allow you to ask the question of landlords as to how and who manages their property now. Are they happy with their existing property controls and services? Are there things that you could do that are better?
Referral business – knowing that you should have a good list of clients or properties on your books now, the referral question is a strategic advantage. When should you put the referral question to, and who should ask it? Sometimes the sales and leasing team must be reminded or shown how to introduce the idea of property management services into a meeting and or a discussion.
Large investment groups and companies – many larger corporations have property portfolios and need help with facility management, property management, reporting, and risk reduction. Generally, those companies are not property specialists, and they do not want to employ teams of people internally to solve day to day property problems. Can you offer a cost-effective and professional way of managing properties to those larger groups and businesses? Build a ‘corporate property management package’ to be specifically promoted in your region and those identified key corporate groups.
Family businesses – some successful family businesses put money back into the property or their portfolio. Research all the local property owners to find those families and understand what they own. How could you help them with rent collection, vacancy reductions, and property optimisation?
There is a good foundation of new property management business to be extracted from this list of initiatives. Build a system of business development around it and shape it to your location and preferred property types.
Show me a commercial or retail property manager, and I will show you a busy person. Rarely will a property manager have much spare time; 10 hour working days are not uncommon. Systems of control and reporting are required to keep the workload of a property manager in balance and optimised for the best results.
Large properties have teams of people to control and respond to the numerous property events as they happen; shopping centres are a case in point.
Leasing system for finding commercial tenants
Property Management Pressure Points
So, why is a commercial or retail property manager so busy? Here are some of the most common reasons:
Large properties are active assets of importance and volatility. Lots of things are happening most of the time with tenants, customers, maintenance people, and property performance.
Reports have to be prepared and submitted on critical property facts such as income, expenditure, budgets, lease events, and critical dates. Every landlord will have certain requirements with their reports and facts.
Maintenance issues will be both planned and unplanned. Either way, they have to be managed to a budget and a safe outcome. The larger the property, the more complex the maintenance events; risk events also have to be watched. There will also be ‘unplanned matters of crisis’ that occur, so be prepared for all issues. It pays to have some structure in place to monitor all the larger mechanical elements of the property to contracts and routines. If you have a good group of contractors, the maintenance issues are supported by contractor communication and regular reporting.
Financial matters vary throughout the year. Income expectations will vary based on occupancy, leasing, incentives, expenditure, and tenancy movement. That being said, most of the factors of property income can be structured to a budget, so the client does not have too many variables to contend with. A good property budget will bring stability to an asset over time.
Undertake a lease audit as soon as possible and stay ahead of lease events and critical dates. The greater the number of leases in the property, the more significant the time required to keep ahead of lease changes, dates, and events. A lease audit will show you the critical dates and lease changes applicable to rent reviews, options, outgoings reconciliations, and the lease expires. The important fact to remember here is that all leases should be optimised for a good market rent and long-term Vacancies will happen, but you can stay ahead of lease vacancies with a proactive marketing campaign to attract new tenants. That is what shopping centres do most of the year, so they are not exposed to rental disruption when leases come to an end.
Taking all of these points in balance, it is easy to see why a commercial or retail property manager is ‘busy’ most of the time. When they are then loaded with more assets and properties, the ‘busy factor’ just gets deeper. Ultimately that can lead to stress and property performance problems. Unfortunately, that is all too common in the industry.
Learn how to handle the struggles of commercial property management
There are differences to consider in a sales pitch for a lease listing in commercial or retail real estate. You are working with elements of rent, vacancy factors, supply and demand, property types, and certain target markets of tenants. Landlords need a bit of help in knowing how you see the ‘attraction factors’ that apply to their property. Tell a story about their property and how you will move on the leasing requirement; demand exclusivity for your intense focus and time commitment.
Before going too much further here, it should be said that the leasing part of our business is very lucrative as you can connect with plenty of local landlords and that can lead to sales appointments over time. Be prepared to work with lease listings and convert them; go ‘deeper’ and make direct calls to local or targeted tenants.
Quality is important in working with lease vacancies and the different properties. That is a rule to ‘live by’ in brokerage. Choose the properties that are likely to create tenant interest. Know what motivates a tenant to look at or take up a property. That knowledge can be gained and used as you talk to plenty of local businesses.
Listing Facts for Presentations
Take every potential lease listing and do a ‘SWOT’ analysis before you engage with the landlord client. You are then prepared to ‘pitch’ for the listing. Here are some things for you to talk about with the landlord as the client for you:
Levels of enquiry – show the landlord what is happening with the inbound enquiry and list the questions by a group as to what tenants are looking for. Will the landlord’s property satisfy that list of questions?
Property types – put the client’s property firmly in a property grouping for the zone. At that point, you can then tell the client what they are up against with other listings and lease offerings.
Location preferences – explain how different tenants look for location advantages such as roads, transport points (ports and airports), location to end users or markets, and other local businesses. Some locations are more attractive than others when it comes to those elements.
Target marketing – shortlist a few tenant types that will be valuable in the target marketing process. Your promotional strategies can then be direct and deliberate as you spread the word about the property. Tell the client how you will do that.
Local area comparisons and coverage – list the competing properties in the precinct, and then take some photos, get the property facts in each case, and look at the strengths and weaknesses of each property. The competitive position for the listing is then something that you can talk about with the client and make some clear recommendations.
In saying all these things, simplicity is important in what you say, do, show in the listing process or pitch. Help the client see and hear how you can move things ahead with a direct focus on results. That is the best way to pitch for a commercial real estate lease listing. Be different, real, and relevant to the property and the client.
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