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This One Tip Will Help You Land a Lot More Commercial Real Estate Listings

By Jim Gillespie | October 3, 2012

Earlier this year, as part of my Million Dollar Commercial Real Estate Agent Inner Circle Program, I interviewed a top commercial broker who’s one of the greatest brokers to ever work within our industry. During his career he’s sold and leased more than $5 billion worth of commercial properties.

During our interview he shared a private secret of his that, once he began implementing it, skyrocketed his success ratio at landing more new listings up from 47% of the time, all the way up to 89% of the time whenever he’d be going after listings.

All that he changed within his repertoire was he began having a meeting with the owners of the properties several days ahead of his official listing presentation, and during this advance meeting both he and his team would then ask the owners questions that they’d written for them.

The idea behind this was that they wanted to show the owners that they truly cared about understanding all of their needs, and that they would provide everything necessary to ensure that all of the owners’ expectations would be met. The team then asked questions like, "What’s important for you to accomplish within this transaction?", "Do you have any concerns about this transaction that you’d like us to know about in advance?", and "What are your expectations for the commercial brokers who you’ll be hiring to market your property?"

Sitting with a property owner for 30 minutes to an hour or so and asking these kinds of questions, sends them the message that you truly care about them and want them to accomplish what’s really most important to them. Too many brokers when going after listings, instead convey the message of, "There’s a commission around here that’s going to be earned by someone, and we want to be the people earning it."

That’s a very different message to be sending to your owners, when compared to the message that I’ve been describing here.

Now imagine how both scheduling an advance appointment like this, and then asking the kinds of questions that I’m outlining here, will make an owner feel about you before you ever make your official listing presentation. Most brokers will usually be making the exact same canned listing presentation they’ve been making for years to their owners, but you’ve now communicated in advance to your owners that you really care about knowing what’s most important to them.

Then, in following-up, the broker I’ve been describing makes sure to address all of the answers and concerns that the owner gave to him, when the broker and his team then make their listing presentation. This enables the broker to make his owners feel that they’ve truly been listened to, and that solutions will definitely be implemented that will address the owner’s concerns.

This is much more persuasive than owners just sitting down and receiving the one-size-fits-all listing presentations that many brokers deliver to all of their property owners, just basically changing the address and the specifics about each property whenever they’re making their next listing presentation.

With this amount of personal attention, it really makes sense that this broker’s success ratio in landing new listings went from a base amount of 47%…all the way up up to 89%, simply by implementing this one addition to all of his presentations.

Whenever you make people feel like they’ve truly been listened to, and that you really care about them, and then you provide solutions that specifically address their own personal concerns, you stand out as the one broker that more people will definitely want to work with.

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John Kilroy Realtors

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