Congratulate and Involve Your New Commercial Real Estate Clients

When it comes to gaining new clients and listings within commercial real estate brokerage, every new client should receive a direct telephone call from the sales manager or the principal of the brokerage as soon as the listing is signed up.  In this way the client will understand the value that you place on them when it comes to providing professional service, feedback, and growing the client relationship for the long term.

In simple terms as the team leader of the business you can congratulate the client for using the services of your agency and to encourage them to connect if any problems develop.  This then allows for the differences in agent performance and gives real control when it comes to client service.  The team leader can monitor the client relationship so that the clients business is preserved and encouraged in a positive way.

Spending more time on the client relationship at the ‘front end’ reaps the rewards later when it comes to client conditioning and any negotiation that may be required when it comes to any sale or leasing situation.

Here are some ideas to help you connect with the client professionally at the start of and throughout the property marketing campaign:

1. As soon as the listing has been agreed to and signed, the sales manager or agency principal should make the phone call direct to the client thanking them for the business and encouraging ongoing communication if required.
2. Depending on the size of your team and your business it can be valuable for the team leader to meet the client in the first week of the property campaign.  The face to face connection is valuable when and if things become difficult in moving the property to a sale or a lease.
3. At least once a month the team leader can communicate again with the client as part of the maintaining the connection process.  Some listings will stay on the books for a very long time for any number of reasons and on that basis this connection will help preserve the focus of the client and to encourage them to remain positive in the protracted marketing or negotiation process.
4. Providing the client has given you an exclusive listing for the property then the levels of service to be provided should include regular reporting of campaign and negotiation progress by the telephone, in emails, and by summary at the end of each week.

Within larger agencies the client experience will vary from agent to agent for any number of reasons; make sure you know the agents that are not good with client service and communication and take steps to intervene where necessary.

The team leader can be a ‘standard’ to hold the client experience at a level of control and allow positive feedback.  If the individual agent ‘under performs’ then the team leader will soon know about it and take steps to fix it.