In commercial real estate agency, the skills required of the sales executive are specialized and numerous. Every property market, town, or city will have unique requirements of negotiation and listing. On that basis you need to be training yourself for top performance.
Far too many salespeople wait for the boss to pay for some training session or send them off to a workshop or seminar. Whilst that process may seem convenient, most of those generally motivated salespeople do not improve or learn much from any of the workshops or seminars.
They might remember a few things for a few days, and attempt some of the recommendations or tools from the program although the problem of breaking old habits and setting new ones will always stifle progress. That being said, the top agents in our industry are people that can modify their actions and improve their processes. They train themselves to be the best in every respect possible.
Whilst we do many things on a daily basis, there are really only 8 things that are fundamentally important to our career and progress. Self-improvement in these 8 separate items will radically improve listings and finalized transactions.
Here are those eight special items:
- Prospecting for new business will always be number 1 on the list regardless of how busy you are on any given day. Prospecting should always occur without fail and with great focus. It will take about 2 hours per day. That being said, you need to practice your prospecting methods and your dialogue. In contacting people you are simply seeking to understand if they have a need or an interest in commercial or retail property.
- From a successful prospecting process, you can move to a meeting with a prospective client or customer. The frequency of your meetings and the growth of your market share will come from prospecting. That being the case, you will need to practice your meeting presentations and sales pitch.
- From a successful sales pitch you will have the opportunity to list the property. If you list with a predominant focus on exclusive listings you will build a better market share. In that case you will always build a list of sales and leasing stock that you can control and hence avoid the interference of competing agents.
- The marketing process for each listing should be regarded as unique and special. Every listing should be directed to the target market that best suits the improvements and location of the property. Gone are the days of generic marketing in commercial real estate. We really do need to drill down on the property type and the levels of enquiry that are existing today. That is what marketing is all the and you will know the types of marketing that work more effectively than others in today’s economic climate.
- From a successful marketing campaign you will generate some enquiries with qualified prospects. Those enquiries will then be converted to property inspections. The process of the property inspection can be optimized and improved through deliberate effort. Understanding the features of the property and the best way to take people through the property will always help you convert better outcomes from property inspections. Preparation is the key. Knowing the property will help you greatly.
- A successful property inspection will evolve into a negotiation process. Given that you are negotiating the requirements of the client to the prospective buyer or tenant as the case may be, you really can optimize the outcome through self-improvement of negotiation skills. Top agents with excellent negotiation skills are self-made people. They have deliberately chosen to improve every stage of the sale or lease marketing process. Practice your negotiation skills. Control the negotiation at every stage.
- A successful negotiation will move through to the creation of the correct documentation or a heads of agreement as the case may be. Given that this is one of the most important parts of the sale or lease process, there is no excuse for inaccurate or average property documentation. Understand what needs to be done and then improve your documentary skills for accurate transactions. The clients that we serve expect us to provide watertight documentation. In some cases a complex transaction should be referred to the client’s solicitor for final documentation. If you do not know what to do with the document, do not start it; find someone that knows what to do.
- When a transaction has been successfully documented, it is not the end of the deal. The transaction is at a critical stage that needs to be followed through to finalization. It is interesting to note that many solicitors and accountants have been known to slow down the property transaction for all types of reasons. As the agent working for the client, you need to track the progress of the deal and make sure that no one is ‘dragging the chain’. It’s your commission that is in the balance here!
These are the key factors at the core of a top agent’s performance and focus. You can optimize these skills and drive the results that you seek. Start practicing.