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Your 5-Point Blueprint for Commercial Real Estate Success

By Jim Gillespie | May 7, 2008

I was talking with a veteran commercial broker on the telephone recently and he said the following to me:

“Real estate is easy. It’s the people who are difficult.”

And I found myself laughing in recognizing the truth in that statement that I had experienced many times myself throughout my own 20-year commercial real estate brokerage career. The problems in my own commercial real estate transactions usually revolved around the egos of the people I was dealing with, and how much they wanted to get their own way with the other principal. And when you add to this the fact that sometimes the other broker I was working through wanted everyone to know how important he was in the transaction, sometimes things got really interesting.

But when you’re in the heat of battle in your brokerage business, trying to get more things done than you seem to have time for, it’s helpful to have a target or blueprint to shoot for so you have a standard to measure your business by. With this in mind I’ve created an easy 5-point blueprint that I think is a good, simple target for you to follow. And if your production level isn’t where you want it to be right now, the chances are very high that you’re falling short in one or more of these 5 areas.

So here are the 5 areas of my blueprint system to help ensure your commercial real estate brokerage success:

1) Be prospecting 10-12 hours every week

There are very few income and production problems in commercial real estate brokerage that won’t be resolved by constantly prospecting 10-12 hours every week. Ask yourself the following question: “If I prospected 10-12 hours every week for the next 12 months with no excuses, how much income will I earn in my business?” And if you like your answer to that question just get your prospecting done with no excuses.

2) Send mailers to your clients and prospects twice or more every month

Mailing may be the most underutilized resource in commercial real estate brokerage. When you mail to your people 12-24 times a year or more, in addition to making your prospecting calls, you make it very difficult for them to think of working with anyone else. And if you’re ever not getting your prospecting done you’ll still be prospecting your people through what you’re sending to them in the mail every month.

The best marketer in our industry who I know of spends more than $100,000.00 a year in marketing himself, including sending mailers to his clients and prospects five to seven times every month. So remember…mailing works in a big way in commercial real estate brokerage!

3) Have a database that includes every prospect you want to do business with, their individual names, phone numbers, the properties they own or occupy, and their mailing addresses

You can’t prospect all the people you want to if they’re not in your database. And if your database has holes in it you’re missing out on prospecting a lot of people you could be closing transactions with. This costs you a lot of money that’s just waiting to be discovered by you in your territory.

4) Build great long-term relationships with your past clients, take them to lunch, socialize with them, and give them gifts 2-4 times a year

You want to continue building relationships with the people you’re closing transactions with so you get additional business from them in the future. Socializing with them and giving them gifts builds the bond that will lead to future transactions with them. And if you don’t do this you’ll be competing with all of the other brokers once again for your clients’ next transactions without having any inside advantage with the clients. Or even worse you’ll find out that your client closed a transaction with another broker and you never even knew that your client was looking to do another real estate transaction. Spending $100.00-$200.00 a year on gifts for every one of your clients, to position yourself to earn more than $10,000.00 in commissions with every one of them three years from now on their next transactions, is a great investment of your time, energy, and money.

5) Work on your presentation skills so you continually improve them and deliver the best presentations of any broker in your market

When you improve your presentation skills and close more transactions with them, you’re making more money without needing more prospects to make it happen. But when you combine improving your presentation skills along with doing 10-12 hours of prospecting every week, you’ll then experience explosive growth in your business. The big problem here is that most brokers find the presentation style that makes them feel the most comfortable, which has nothing to do with finding the presentation style that compels the greatest amount of people to work with them. I recommend that you role play your presentation with someone acting as the decision maker along with you, and videotape the presentation. And when you watch the videotape I can almost guarantee you’ll see things you’ll want to change in your presentation immediately, which will then have you close more business.

So take a look at these 5 areas of my blueprint and see how you measure-up right now in your own brokerage business. And when you find yourself approaching the ideal in all 5 of these areas, I can pretty much guarantee you’ll be thrilled with your success and the amount of money you’ll be making in your brokerage business.


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