« | Home | »

Are You in Control of Your Own Destiny in Your Commercial Real Estate Brokerage Business?

By Jim Gillespie | August 25, 2011

For many brokers within our industry, their brokerage careers began by someone telling them to pickup a phone and begin calling people, and then from there after some time they started to wing it. The problem with this is that when you begin getting busy, working on transactions, closing transactions, and still trying to generate more new business for yourself, things can start getting crazy.

Oftentimes brokers get themselves to the point where they become reactive…responding to incoming phone calls, texts, and E-mails from their clients and prospects, instead of being proactive and doing what will control their destiny. If you’re being reactive to the demands of your clients and prospects, instead of being proactive and controlling your own destiny, you’re letting other people determine your own level of success in your business.

Here are some questions to be asking yourself right now around this:

1) How much do you feel you’re in control of your own destiny in your commercial brokerage business?

2) How much do you feel you’re in control of how you’re spending your time right now in your commercial brokerage business day-to-day?

3) Do you feel that other people or other circumstances are interfering with how you really should be spending your time?

If you want to control your own destiny within your commercial brokerage business, you need to be the person who’s in control of how you’re spending your time.

With this in mind, ask yourself how much time you’re spending every week in your business working on these five activities:

1) Prospecting 10-12 hours every week.

2) Sending out mailers to your clients and prospects two or more times every month.

3) Having 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.

4) Building great long-term relationships with your past clients, taking them to lunch, socializing with them, and giving them gifts 2-4 times a year.

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

These five activities represent a system and an approach that will help keep you focused, on track, and doing what will have you continually grow your brokerage business.

Many brokers aren’t prospecting 10-12 hours or more every week in their brokerage business, yet brokers most of the time are relying on prospecting to develop more business for themselves. So if you’re serious about developing more new business for yourself, get your prospecting done with no excuses.

Mailing is a great way to brand yourself in the minds of the people you want to do business with. Sending 24 or more mailers a year to your people will make it really difficult for them to think of any other commercial broker except you, especially when you’re providing them with helpful, informative information in your mailers. Sending 24 mailers every year, in addition to making 2-4 prospecting calls every year to your people, will brand you far ahead of all your competitors who are just making their prospecting calls.

You must have a database that includes every prospect you want to do business with along with their contact information. Because if you don’t have this information in your database, you can’t do business with the people who aren’t in there. In addition, if you need a solid resource for getting your database into great shape, take a look at the service that’s available at www.ProspectNow.com.

One of the greatest mistakes commercial brokers make is dropping out their communication with their past clients after they’ve already closed transactions with them. This then has you competing with other brokers to work with the same clients the next time. By keeping in contact with your past clients, going to lunch with them, socializing with them, and giving them gifts, you maximize the probability that they’ll be working with you once again on their next transaction.

And finally, working on your presentation skills is what will have you close more people on working with you exclusively, which then leads to you making more money. Role play with someone with them acting as your decision maker, and videotape the presentation. Then watch the video and learn what you can to improve your presentations to your clients and prospects in the future. The more that you impact people through your presentations, the more they’ll want to work with you.

So if you focus on the five basic activities I’ve outlined above, you’ll begin making more money and you’ll obtain more repeat business from your past clients. Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 for each of these five activities, determine which ones represent the greatest opportunity for immediate growth within your business if you begin focusing on them, and then get to work on improving your business! When you continually do this process throughout time, you’ll end up systematizing your business, focusing on the activities that will make you more money, and you’ll become more proactive rather than reactive within your brokerage business…doing the activities that will have you chart your own destiny.

__________________

The latest edition of my Commercial Broker Newsletter is now ready for you to mail or E-mail to all of your clients and prospects. If you’re not currently sending a monthly newsletter to all of your clients and prospects, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to brand yourself and keep you in people’s minds every month throughout the year! If you’re interested in more information on how you can send this newsletter to your clients and prospects, click here.

__________________

If you’re interested in one-on-one coaching to take your commercial real estate brokerage business to the next level, click here to contact me.

"With Jim’s coaching I landed $1.7 million in new business in my first eight weeks!"

Mark Whitman
Dorin Realty

Click here to see more testimonials from my coaching clients.

 


Topics: Marketing, Prospecting, Uncategorized | No Comments »