Some real estate agents fail in commercial real estate brokerage and they do so rather quickly due to a lack of focus and the right personal development. That doesn’t have to be the case. If the right personal skills and focus were developed early in their careers, results would come a lot easier to most of those agents.
We should define what ‘results’ are now so that this important topic can be handled and solutions set. Results for most commercial real estate agents are defined in the following terms:
- Quality exclusive listings
- Better market share of controlled listings within their sales territory
- A good database of clients and prospects
- Referral business from existing clients
- Closed deals in sales and leasing
- Growth in commissions
The agents that struggle in the industry usually have weaknesses in most if not all of the categories. Scary isn’t it?
Most of the agents that drop out of the industry will do so inside the first twelve months of their career; or they will move brokerage a few times to extend their ‘stay’ in the industry for a couple of years. If those agents had taken the time to develop the right levels of personal focus on growth of their business, things could have been a lot different. This focus should have started immediately a person enters the industry. The ‘clock is ticking’ as they say.
In the industry it is not so much a matter of an agent doing a lot of things each day to stay ahead of the demands of the job, but rather doing a few things extremely well that will help drive more business and market opportunities.
When you break down the real estate agent or broker role into categories or skills you will see a list that looks like this:
- Researching property owners, business leaders, and property investors to talk to
- Prospecting within those groups for potential new business and listings
- Presenting and pitching for listings and sales and leasing opportunity
- The listing process with a big focus on exclusive listings
- Property inspection skills across specialised market segments
- Marketing skills to reach the target audiences for each listing directly and effectively
- Negotiation skills for the property type and the location
- Closing skills and the accurate documenting of sales and leasing deals
- Building positive and valuable relationships with clients and prospects for the long term
If there are problems in any of these areas they will impact the success and momentum of any agent. That is where training and practice comes in very handy.
If you look at the list again and consider the factors involved you will also see that items 1 to 4 are likely to be far more important than the others. Most agents fail in the industry because they do not focus enough on those four items and systemise their prospecting and pitching relevance for new business; they then struggle with building market share and any relevance as a real estate agent.
It is a fact that most towns or cities have an abundance of properties to list and many agents or brokers to provide those services. The best agents win a larger slice of the new listing business simply because they are so good at items 1 to 4 in the list. Are you up to the challenge?
Commercial Real Estate Online 