In commercial real estate agency you need to market yourself every day. Whilst the issue sounds so obvious, many commercial real estate agents don’t do this. They let each day occur with minimal focus on marketing and growth. That is why their market share is so unpredictable, and why listings are so hard to get.
The other problem that so common in the industry is that many agents will market their listings and yet not market themselves for the skills and the knowledge that they bring to the market. It’s a strange problem that needs resolve. The top agents understand the process of marketing and the importance of doing so for themselves.
Each day they will get out into the market place to meet new people and create new circumstances of networking and contact.
Here are some of the problems that I see so often with agents that struggle with this process:
- They may have listings but most of them are open listings. Exclusive listings are a rarity for this type of generic agent.
- They do not have many clients to work with and get referrals from.
- They rely on the enquiry that comes from their agency or their website for most of the business that they convert. When the enquiry levels are down, so is their commission.
- Every listing is a struggle given that this agent is competing with other agents as part of their listing presentation and pitch process.
When you market yourself you find other listings that others have not yet seen. Your interaction with the client becomes more direct and you can convert more exclusive listings. When you control your listing stock you control your market and commissions. That is how top agents do it.
So here are some rules to help you reach out to more new clients and prospects:
- Most competing agents will not be doing much in the way of regular prospecting. That is a fact to convert to your advantage.
- Make contact with new people every day. Create a system of prospecting that gets you in front of new people. Devote about 2 or 3 hours each day to the process.
- Use a good database that allows you to track the contacts and clients that you connect with. Repeat the contact process with all people in your database at least once every 90 days.
- Understand what you are good at and brand yourself around that. You must stand out as a top agent and have relevance to the market and the prospects in it.
Every day is a new opportunity to connect with more people. When you really work with that fact and create your contact and prospecting system, the commercial real estate market opens up for you. Start marketing yourself as the industry expert you claim to be.