Make Sure to Take Some Time Off From Working in Your Commercial Real Estate Business Over the Holidays!
By Jim Gillespie | December 20, 2010
The Holiday season is fully upon us right now, and this is the time of year when most everything within our industry slows down. And in keeping this in mind, this is probably a good time to make sure you schedule some time off and get some rest and relaxation for yourself. Which means to make sure you’re taking some days off where you’re not doing any work at all in your brokerage business. Because if you don’t do this, and you go through the Holidays still working 2-5 hours a day or more in your business, when January gets here you’ll risk not being recharged and re-energized to work your business full-out again in the New Year.
It’s easy sometimes for people, instead of taking time off from work to relax and re-energize themselves, to just continue on working in their businesses but work less hours or work less productively, and you don’t want to become one of those people. Because you could end up working for weeks or months at a time feeling burned out in your brokerage business, and not feeling relaxed and being productive. This is because working less hours, or working less productively, isn’t the same thing as taking a vacation away from work. And if you’re thinking you could use some time off from your business but you don’t take it right now during the Holiday Season, when are you going to take it? Because once the New Year gets here you may feel guilty about taking some time off for awhile, and feel that you should be working full-out in your brokerage business.
So if you were just planning on working through the Holidays but working less hours, schedule some specific days or consecutive days off from doing any work whatsoever. Block these days out in your calendar, and relax and enjoy yourself on these days. Because if you do this and you do it right, you’re more likely to feel fired-up and will hit the pavement running when the New Year finally gets here.
And if you’re not planning on traveling during the Holidays, you may want to schedule one or more days where you can drive within 1-2 hours from your home to someplace where you’ll enjoy yourself…because you’ve earned it!
So in moving through the Holidays, make sure you pace yourself appropriately. One of your most important goals should be to do what will have you return to work right after the first of the year, fired-up and on track in your business, and oftentimes this will happen right after taking time off and relaxing. I know for me the perfect vacation oftentimes is when I’ve been away from work and enjoying myself, but as the vacation is ending I’m looking forward to getting back to work and being productive again.
So have a Merry Christmas and a great Holiday Season, and make sure you’re doing what will have you be fired-up to work your brokerage business again full-out in January!
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If you’re interested in one-on-one coaching to take your commercial real estate brokerage business to the next level, I have various programs available for you…Including you getting direct access to listen to my extensive library of more than 50 audio interviews with top commercial brokers. So if you’re interested in one-on-one coaching to take your brokerage business to the next level in the New Year, click here and contact me.
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Ashwill Associates
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Planning Your Commercial Real Estate Excellence in 2011
By Jim Gillespie | December 7, 2010
Once again we’re getting close to the beginning of a new year, which means for a lot of us it’s time to set new goals. This can be a time to put this last year behind us and create a brand new slate of opportunities to pursue for ourselves in 2011.
But what are you really going to do differently this next year? I’m asking this because so many agents often begin the new year feeling excited about all the possibilities that they can create for themselves with a fresh, full calendar year ahead of them. But in the end, how many agents will really accomplish throughout the year what they originally setout to do in January? Oftentimes agents can have the best of intentions every new year of accomplishing some exciting new goals, but by the time the end of the year rolls around they then feel disappointed with their results.
If you’d like to know the reason for this, it sometimes lies in the unrealistic goals that agents can set for themselves at the beginning of the year, and at other times it can lie in the flawed game plans that they utilize throughout the year when working towards accomplishing these goals. For example, an agent who made $100,000.00 this past year might set an income goal of $250,000.00 for 2011. But keep in mind that the sum total of all the best the agent could bring to the table throughout 2010 had them earn and get paid a total of $100,000.00 in commissions. So do they really now know what they have to do differently in 2011 to make the jump from $100,000.00 to $250,000.00 in commission income? And if they do know, why didn’t they just apply this information to their real estate business during 2010?
Setting goals at the beginning of the year can be a great experience for all of us, but it’s how we’re going to get those goals accomplished that represents the real meat and potatoes that will either lead us towards accomplishing those goals, or feeling disappointed.
So with this in mind I’m asking you:
1) What are your goals in your real estate business in 2011?
2) What specifically is your game plan of activities that you’re going to do to make these goals a reality by December 31, 2011?
And…
3) What do you have to do differently than what you did in 2010 in order to achieve your new goals in 2011?
And finally, one activity that’s extremely important to incorporate into your game plan for 2011 is feedback. You need to check in with how you’re doing throughout the year to determine if you’re on track or off track in accomplishing your goals. And if you’re off track, you need to make modifications to your game plan to still ensure that you’ll successfully achieve your goals by December 31st.
As an example of this, experts say that a jet flying from New York to Los Angeles is off track from reaching it’s final destination approximately 98% of the time. But the continued monitoring of the flight path and correction through both the jet’s inertial guidance system and the pilot’s actions will ensure the jet’s timely arrival in Los Angeles.
With real estate agents, however, this is often not the case. One’s ideal goals for the year can be created in January, but the "flight path" of the agent throughout the year can oftentimes be completely off track from accomplishing these goals. The agent can be thinking something like, "As long as I’m feeling really busy, I must be on track towards accomplishing my goals for the year." This is similar to the pilot of the commercial airliner saying, "As long as I’m up here right now flying this aircraft, I must be on track towards arriving at my desired destination on time."
But alas, in both situations, achieving the desired goal in a timely manner does not result from just being busy doing activities, it comes from doing the right activities at the right time, and in the right sequence.
With this in mind, see if the following has ever applied to you:
You set your goals for your real estate business in January and feel enthusiastic about accomplishing them. You feel extremely busy throughout the year, but you recognize you’re falling behind in achieving your income goal for the year along the way. Then around September or so, you start thinking a thought similar to "If I can just find, negotiate, and close both sides of a $30,000,000.00 transaction by the end of the year, I’ll meet my income goal."
Like the airline pilot and the inertial guidance system within the plane itself, you need to monitor your success throughout the year to make sure you’re on track. Set a reminder at the end of every month in your contact management program to check in and see how you’re doing. Are you on track towards achieving your income goals for the year, or are you falling behind? And if you’re falling behind, go immediately and get some help from someone. Sit down and talk with a top producing agent, your manager, or hire a real estate coach. Because right now you’re risking throwing your income goals completely out the window if you don’t.
You may have noticed something in our industry over the years. Our industry has its fair share of people with big egos. I deal with this constantly with brokers who produce great results in their business through working with me, but more than anything they really want to return to having no one whatsoever advising them on running their real estate business. But trying to do it all alone in this business on an ongoing basis can be a very costly decision. As Albert Einstein once said, "We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." And if you’re constantly trying to solve your business development problems with the same mind that created them…your own mind…you could be in for a very long and frustrating year.
So check in with yourself once a month to see how you’re doing in accomplishing the goals you’ve created for yourself in 2011. And if you find yourself falling behind in accomplishing these goals, stop everything you’re doing and find someone who can give you the help and direction you need to get back on track and make these goals happen for you.
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SPECIAL EVENT WEDNESDAY: PLANNING YOUR
COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE EXCELLENCE IN 2011
If you’re not already registered to attend it, I’m inviting you to join me for an important live teleconference this Wednesday, December 8th, where you’ll hear from one of the top commercial real estate brokers in our industry, who’s closed more than $2.7 billion in transactions, on how to plan your next year in 2011 so you make a ton of money. This broker I’m interviewing has been a commercial real estate broker for more than 25 years, and during his career his clients have included General Motors, Mattel, Bank of America, Xerox, ProLogis, Sara Lee, 3M, and Whirlpool, and his 1,686,590 square-foot lease transaction was awarded the "Leasing Deal of the Year" award for all transactions closed within the entire United States. And if you can’t attend the live teleconference, I’ll still send you the audio CDs, written transcription, and highlights of the teleconference all in the mail to you!
Click here to learn how you can get all of this information.
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Travers Realty Corporation/ONCOR
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4 Important Activities to Explode Your Commercial Real Estate Brokerage Business
By Jim Gillespie | December 2, 2010
Most of us have heard of the 80/20 rule. The rule that says that 80% of the business closed in sales organizations is normally closed by just 20% of the salespeople. And there’s probably a lot of truth in applying this rule to the commercial real estate brokerage offices throughout our industry, too.
In addition to the 80/20 rule, I believe more than 80% of the growth of your brokerage business will come from focusing on the following four areas:
1) Prospecting
2) Mailing
3) Improving Your Presentation Skills
4) Building Relationships
Prospecting
Prospecting is both the easiest and fastest way to build your real estate business. The main problem here is that most commercial agents, both new agents and veterans, keep making excuses about why they can’t get their prospecting done. If you just prospected 10-12 hours every week of the year you’d be immersed in so much solid activity, that you’d stop making those kind of excuses altogether. You’d just be making more money for yourself, plain and simple. The key, though, is continuing on with your prospecting when you get busy with solid new activity, because this is when most brokers stop doing their prospecting.
When you prospect every week year-round you make more money, you upgrade the quality of client you’re working with, and you upgrade the average commission you earn per transaction. This is because you’re constantly focused on finding new and better leads, and you let go of the more marginal leads you used to be working on.
Mailing
Mailing is definitely the most underutilized tool in commercial real estate brokerage. And when you mail to your clients and prospects two or more times every month, you brand yourself in their minds as the agent they’ll want to work with. The problem, though, is that most commercial brokers won’t spend any money on a regular mailing campaign.
A solid mailing program will make you a lot more money in new commissions when compared with what you’re spending on the mailing program. This definitely applies if you’re mailing to your clients and prospects two or more times every month, as your clients and prospects will constantly have you on their minds when you’re mailing to them with this kind of frequency.
One very successful broker who I’ve interviewed, who’s a member of both SIOR and CCIM, told me that his brokerage income quadrupled when he began his solid mailing campaign to his clients and prospects, and he now spends more than $100,000.00 a year on marketing. This is how much of a difference mailing can make to you in your brokerage business, if you’re willing to seize the opportunity.
In addition, solid, targeted E-mailing can be a great way to develop new business for yourself also, but you need to be utilizing the right system to make it all happen for you. With this in mind I recommend the people at http://www.mindmatrix.net, as they have this solid system already in place, and they have a number of additional products and services that you may find very useful as a commercial broker, too.
Improving Your Presentation Skills
Improving one’s presentation skills is one of the most overlooked areas in commercial real estate brokerage. If you normally close 40% of your prospects on working with you exclusively, and you improve this percentage to 50% through improving your presentation skills, you’ve just increased your income by 25%. (The 10% improvement divided by the original 40% closing ratio represents a 25% improvement…and 25% more money in your pocket.)
Find someone to deliver your "exclusive" presentation to and videotape it. Then after watching the video you’ll recognize that you’ve learned a great deal from it. Notice the areas you’d like to improve on, implement your improvements, and videotape yourself again in three months. When you continue doing this on a regular basis you’ll find your clients and prospects saying "Yes" to you more frequently, which translates into more money for you.
Building Relationships
So many commercial agents neglect the clients they’ve already closed transactions with. And this often continues for weeks, months, and even years after closing a transaction with them. In the mean time your competitors keep calling these people and positioning themselves to work with them the next time they have a real estate requirement.
If after 10-20 years in the business you’ve closed transactions with 200 different people (or companies), and on the average these people continue closing one transaction every five years, that’s 40 transactions you could be involved in closing every year just off of the repeat business from these people. But this only applies if you build relationships with them and position yourself as their "broker for life" throughout the years along the way.
Stay in contact with these people, ask them how you can help them even when you don’t think they’re looking to close a real estate transaction right now, take them to lunch constantly, and give them gifts 2-4 times a year. And in doing this it makes it very hard for your clients to ever think about working with anyone else.
All the success you’ve ever wanted to achieve as a commercial real estate broker is constantly available to you. And if you just focus on these four arenas and do what I’ve recommended, you’ll experience solid growth in your commercial brokerage business in the months and years ahead.
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If you want to plan next year so you achieve solid success in your commercial brokerage business, join me for my upcoming teleconference titled, "Planning Your Commercial Real Estate Excellence for 2011." I’ll be interviewing a top commercial broker who’s closed more than $2.5 billion in commercial real estate transactions, and I’ll send the audio CDs, written transcription, and highlights of the teleconference all in the mail to you. Click here for more information on this teleconference, and to learn how you can obtain all of this information.
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Mike Spears, SIOR
The National Realty Group
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The Power of Giving Holiday Gifts to Your Commercial Real Estate Clients
By Jim Gillespie | November 18, 2010
The Holiday Season is upon us right now. And when I was a kid growing up in Santa Monica, California, my mother used to tell me that we’d start seeing the Holiday decorations in the stores soon after Thanksgiving. But these days I’m seeing decorations in some of the stores by mid-October, which makes me wonder if hearing the term "Fourth of July Christmas Sale" might be just around the corner.
The Holidays are a great time for you to reconnect with your clients–the people you’ve already closed transactions with over the years. And one of the reasons I’m writing this article at this exact time, is to give you plenty of time to buy Holiday gifts for your clients and get the gifts into their hands, especially if this is something you normally haven’t done.
Giving gifts to your clients is a great way to show them how you feel about them, and show your appreciation for the business they’ve already brought to you. But at the same time, a lot of commercial brokers don’t understand how much gift-giving can lead to constant, repeat business for them over the years. Which is why I’m including the following dollars and cents analysis in this article.
Let’s say that you have a client who closes one transaction every five years, and you earn approximately $10,000.00 in commission every time you close a transaction with them. And let’s say that you give them gifts twice a year, for a total of $100.00 that you spend every year on gifts for them.
So when you’re giving gifts twice a year to your past clients, this represents tremendous insurance towards having them work with you again on their next transaction. It’s simply too difficult for most people to receive two gifts a year from someone they’ve done business with, and then turn around and do business with their competitors instead. Yes, there are people like that out there, but they’re definitely in the minority.
So in getting back to our example, if you spend $100.00 a year on gifts for your client for five years, and then you earn and get paid a $10,000.00 commission when closing their next real estate transaction along with them, that’s a solid rate of return on your money. Anytime you can spend $500.00, having it lead to you getting paid $10,000.00…is a solid return on your money.
All of this assumes, of course, that you continue treating your clients appropriately along the way, and that you continue being the solid commercial real estate professional they’d still want to work with.
(And yes, I know. There’s still the problem of you parting with the $500.00 and buying the gifts!!!)
Now compare what I’ve described here with what many commercial brokers do instead, which is close a transaction with someone, drop out all communication with them for 1-2 years or more…figuring they won’t have any real estate needs during that time, and then they find out that they’re competing all over again with all the brokers in their territory to represent the client again on their next transaction. All because the broker never did what would have solidified their relationship with the client, and position them to close more transactions with the client again in the future.
So you have a choice this Holiday Season, and you can now choose to do things differently. If you recognize the value in giving gifts to your clients, then go out and make it happen during this Holiday Season. You’ll feel great, your clients will feel great when receiving the gifts from you, and you’ll be building the bond that will help ensure you’ll be representing your clients again on their next transaction.
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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.
"We own a commercial brokerage company, a real estate development company, and a property management company. With Jim’s help we’ve now substantially reduced our overhead, and have implemented a marketing approach that’s bringing us more quality transactions than we ever would have imagined."
Jeffrey Weitz & Matt Schweitzer
North Rim Partners
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How Effectively Are You Differentiating Yourself From Your Competition in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage?
By Jim Gillespie | November 9, 2010
As far as the concept of coming up with "out of the box" thinking is concerned, there’s a video that’s been circulating on the Internet within the last 48 hours that I’m going to share with you. The coach of the middle school football team in this video is to be commended for coming up with a play that so completely caught the opposing team’s defense off guard, that his quarterback was able to just walk through the defensive line completely untouched, on his way to scoring a touchdown.
Click here to see this 27-second video.
In following-up, this kind of "out of the box" thinking leads me to asking you the following question:
What compelling reason do your clients and prospects have for choosing you over your competition?
Because I find that many brokers aren’t doing much to stand out and differentiate themselves from their competitors as the best choice their clients and prospects can make in a broker, and it’s costing them a ton of money.
With this in mind ask yourself the following questions:
1) How could you improve on your overall presence, visibility, and image of yourself as a broker within your marketplace?
2) How could you improve on your presentation packages?
3) How could you improve your presentation skills?
4) How could you communicate even more effectively to your clients and prospects, that what you stand for at all times is serving their own best interests above yours? (Because people absolutely love to work with these kinds of salespeople.)
In addition, to work on improving your commercial brokerage business results even more, ask yourself these two questions:
1) What are the three things that you could change or take action on in your brokerage business right now, that would make you the most amount of money within the coming months?
2) What’s holding you back from implementing all of your answers to the questions you’ve answered above, and how can you break through these excuses and implement these solutions into your brokerage business…right now?
And when it comes to standing out from the competition, there’s much that we can all learn from this video I’ll now show you of Harvey the Dog. As you’ll see in the video, Harvey wants to be certain that he stands out as the one dog that people will want to adopt and take home with them, ahead of all the other dogs, and he does a pretty solid job of making his case.
Click here to see this one-minute video.
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Click here to join me for my upcoming teleconference this Wednesday, November 10th, where my special, top commercial real estate broker guest expert will tell you how to get constant, repeat business from your clients. This broker is a recipient of the CoStar Power Broker Award, and during his career he’s represented major companies including Eastman Kodak, Metropolitan Life Insurance, UPS, Earthlink, and IBM, and has closed more than two million square feet of transactions with IBM.
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Colliers International
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Why Isn’t the Consumer Price Index Rising, But the Cost of Living is Skyrocketing?
By Jim Gillespie | November 2, 2010
If you’re a broker representing landlords, you may have heard something similar to the following being said by one or more of the landlords you’ve represented:
"Why is it that the price of both food and gas have skyrocketed over the past 8-10 years, but the Consumer Price Index shows that inflation is still very low?"
And this statement is often made by these landlords when they’re scratching their heads wondering why the CPI rental increases that are called for in their leases with their tenants, always seem to be so minimal.
And the reason these increases have been so minimal, is because in recent years the way that the Consumer Price Index is calculated has been modified, and any increases in the prices of both food and energy have been completely removed from its calculation.
Perhaps the best way to show this to you here is visually, and I’ll do this through a chart prepared by John Williams and his company ShadowStats.com. John Williams is a consulting economist whose clients have included Fortune 500 companies, and as you can see on the following chart, if the inflation rate were still calculated the same way that it was back in 1980, the rate would be substantially higher than it is today.
On the following chart the blue line represents the inflation rate as it would have been calculated utilizing the 1980 approach, and the red line represents the inflation rate as it’s being reported today:
Click here to see the Consumer Price Index chart.
In addition, if you’ve been wondering why the Unemployment Rate is still under 10%, while the economy feels like it’s in much worse condition than this rate would represent, the same overall approach applies. The way that the Unemployment Rate is being calculated has changed substantially since 1994, and long-term discouraged workers who have been unemployed for longer periods of time are now completely removed from calculating the index. And as you can see from the following chart, today’s Unemployment Rate would be substantially higher if it were still calculated the way that it was back in 1994. So in the following chart, the red line represents the Unemployment Rate as it’s being reported today, utilizing the current approach when calculating it. And the blue line represents today’s Unemployment Rate if it were still being calculated utilizing the exact same approach and methodology that was utilized back in 1994:
Click here to see the Unemployment Rate chart.
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Click here to join me for my upcoming teleconference, where my special, top commercial real estate broker guest expert will tell you how to obtain constant, repeat business from your clients. This broker is a recipient of the CoStar Power Broker Award, and throughout his career he’s represented major companies including Eastman Kodak, Metropolitan Life Insurance, UPS, Earthlink, and IBM, and has closed more than two million square feet of transactions with IBM.
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Delphi Business Properties
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Opportunities Are Expanding For Selling Commercial Real Estate Notes
By Jim Gillespie | October 20, 2010
For approximately one year now I’ve been telling commercial brokers to consider selling notes held by lenders on commercial properties, along with selling and leasing properties as part of their own commercial brokerage businesses. This is becoming more relevant and important right now, as commercial lenders, who haven’t really been foreclosing much on their distressed properties, are getting inundated with even more distressed properties. And the idea of selling the notes on these properties, and relieving themselves of needing to take any further action on them, is becoming more appealing to them.
With this in mind, take a look at the following article featuring an interview with a former Managing Director of Jones Lang LaSalle. In this interview he discusses how commercial lenders have increased their activity level in selling their commercial notes, and how Jones Lang LaSalle has positioned itself to capitalize on these opportunities.
I know one broker personally who sold a portfolio of $200 million in mostly non-performing notes to an investor for $1.4 million, and then immediately flipped that portfolio to another investor for $2.8 million. So these opportunities are out there if you’re ready to go after them!
Click here to read the article.
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Sperry Van Ness
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Sending Mail That Gets Your Commercial Real Estate Clients and Prospects to Call You
By Jim Gillespie | October 5, 2010
There are, generally speaking, two goals that you want to ideally accomplish when mailing to your commercial real estate clients and prospects. And these same principles apply when you’re sending E-mail to them, too.
1) You want to brand yourself in their minds with your mailers so they’re already interested in working with you when they have a commercial real estate requirement.
2) You want to get them to pick up the phone and call you directly from one of your mailers whenever they have a commercial real estate requirement.
And in terms of accomplishing the latter of these two goals, here’s one approach that I recommend to help you make this happen:
Approximately once every quarter, mail a postcard to your clients and prospects saying something similar to, "Hot off the press! I’ve just put together a comps report showing what all the buildings in your area have sold and leased for over the past six months. Quantities are limited, so if you want me to send you your free copy of this report in the mail before I run out of them, call me NOW at 1-XXX-XXX-XXXX."
What will happen is some of your prospects will call you just because they want the report to keep themselves informed on what’s going on in the area, and others will call you because they’re thinking of buying, selling, or leasing soon. And calling you to get your comps report in their hands will help them to understand the current values in the market better, and help them to make better decisions.
So either way you definitely want to hear from both of these kinds of people. And for the people who aren’t looking to do anything right now but they want you to send them your report, this gets you talking with them, building a better relationship with them, and finding out when they may be looking to buy, sell, or lease in the future. And for the people who are calling you because they’re looking to buy, sell, or lease very soon, you definitely want them calling you so you can find out more about their requirements.
This is one reason why you wouldn’t just send everyone the comps report in the mail instead of sending them the postcard. Because if one of your prospects is looking to do something very soon, they could receive your comps report in the mail, read it and educate themselves on what property values are in the area, and then put the report down and not call you. And then they’ll talk to the first broker who calls them on the telephone while doing their normal prospecting…telling that broker all about their upcoming requirement.
The first time one of my coaching clients followed my direction and sent out a postcard similar to the one I’m recommending to you, someone called him, requested the report, and then listed $14,500,000.00 in property with him as a direct result of him taking this action.
But of course, when sending out your very first postcard in this situation, your mileage may vary. 
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Beitler Commercial Realty Services/TCN Worldwide
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Why the Stock Market is Looking Extremely Dangerous
By Jim Gillespie | September 21, 2010
The financial collapse that began in September of 2008 was a big surprise, but it didn’t come without any warning. I even published an article in June of 2008 citing the Royal Bank of Scotland predicting that a major collapse in the financial markets would happen within the next three months, and we definitely remember what happened in September of that year.
Then came the bailouts, followed by the rise in stock values once again, mainly because a ton of the bailout money was being invested back into the stock market. So when a rise in stock values is being caused by this funny money being invested back into the market, and not by any rise in the productivity or the profits of the companies themselves, or by an increase in more of people’s hard-earned money actually being invested into the stock market, can you see that we have a potential problem here? Because if we think that creating hundreds of billions of dollars that never existed before out of thin air, and then having that money invested into the stock market, solves all of the underlying problems that caused the market to crash in the very first place, we’re greatly deluding ourselves.
Since I see nothing that leads me to conclude that the stock market is now on solid footing, based on legitimate, sound fundamentals, I feel strongly that another collapse is coming. It’s just a matter of the exact timing of when it’s going to happen, which leads me to the following videos that I thought I should pass along to you…
These videos feature someone we all know to be an extremely positive person, Tony Robbins, discussing what he’s learned from the Wall Street experts he’s been associating with. He also discusses how his having access to these people enabled him to advise his top clients to prepare for and position themselves in advance of the financial collapse that happened back in 2008, and how he also advised them back in March of 2009, that the market had now reached its new bottom.
All in all, that would have been some very good information for his clients to have known about.
In Part 2 of these two videos, beginning at about 3 minutes and 45 seconds into it when he’s discussing the future of the stock market, and what he’s been learning from his Wall Street experts about the stock market, he says, "Sometime in the late Fall or early 2011, we’re likely to see a major retracement…major…on a major scale."
These two videos featuring him talking on this subject total 24 minutes:
So I wanted to pass this information along to you in case you or someone close to you are invested in the stock market. Because the underlying fundamentals of the market don’t look very strong at all right now, and it seems that a big correction will definitely be coming. And again, it seems to mainly just be a matter of the overall timing of this correction.
I also want to pass along a link to see a 55-minute movie online that I found to be very interesting. The movie is called "The Crash of 1929", and it gives an inside look at exactly what was going on back then, who the players were, how they tried to stop the market from collapsing, and the warning signs about the coming collapse that were ignored by the investors. Click here to see the 55-minute movie, then choose the "Watch Online" option when you land on the movie’s Web site. In addition, the movie can also be viewed on Netflix.
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Click here for my audio interview with commercial real estate brokerage legend and bestselling commercial real estate brokerage author Robert Ringer. Our interview is titled, "Mastering the Art of Commercial Real Estate Brokerage".
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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.
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Bertolina Commercial Real Estate Services
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How to Leave Powerful Voicemail Messages That Get Your Commercial Real Estate Prospects to Call You Back
By Jim Gillespie | September 14, 2010
One mistake that commercial brokers often make when doing their telephone prospecting, is leaving voicemail messages that don’t really inspire their prospects to call them back. You ideally need to answer the "What’s in it for me?" question in your prospect’s mind to get them to want to pickup the phone and return your voicemail message, and a lot of brokers aren’t really doing this.
Many brokers will leave a voicemail message similar to, "Hi John, this is Steve Robinson with ABC properties. I’m calling to see if you’re interested in selling your property right now, so if you are interested please call me back at XXX-XXX-XXXX."
And here are some of the problems with leaving a voicemail message similar to that one:
1) If the prospect isn’t looking to sell their property right now, you’ve given them no reason to call you back. And you want to be engaging in telephone conversations with your prospects even when they aren’t looking to do anything right now, so they feel that they know you better when they are finally looking to buy, sell, or lease.
2) Even if the prospect is interested in selling their property right now, they may not call you back because you still haven’t given them a compelling reason to do so. You’ve only identified yourself as a commercial real estate broker who’s working in the area, and let’s face it, you have a lot of competitors in the area who are calling this exact same prospect. So you haven’t really differentiated yourself to the prospect to get them to want to call you back.
Consider leaving a voicemail message similar to this one instead:
"Hi John, this is Steve Robinson with ABC Properties. There are some important trends occurring in the marketplace right now that are affecting the value of your property, and I’d like to tell you about them. In addition, I’ve put together a report showing what all the properties in your area have sold and leased for over the past six months, and I’d like to send you a copy of the report in the mail. So if you’d like me to send you the report and you want to learn about these important trends, give me a call at XXX-XXX-XXXX."
This voicemail message does much more to answer the "What’s in it for me?" question in the prospect’s mind to get them interested in calling you back. They’re much more likely to want to talk to a broker who can tell them important trends affecting the value of their property, and provide them with a six-month comps report, than they are likely to want to talk to a broker asking them to call the broker back if they’re interested in selling. This is especially true if they aren’t interested in selling right now, which will probably be more than 90% of the time when you’ll be prospecting them. But even if they are interested in selling right now, they’ll more than likely be interested in hearing about the important trends affecting the value of their property, and they’ll more than likely be interested in getting your comps report, too.
So understand that the percentage of the time you get your prospects to return your voicemail messages when prospecting them, is directly proportionate to how compelling of a reason you give them to call you back. And when you leave voicemail messages that compel your prospects to call you back, you’ll be speaking with them more frequently than your competitors will be, and you’ll be building more solid relationships with your prospects because of this, too.
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Click here for my upcoming interview this Wednesday with one of the top brokers in our industry. The title of the interview is "Becoming An Unstoppable Power Broker in Our Industry", and if you can’t join us for the live interview, I’ll still send you the audio CDs, written transcription, and highlights of the teleconference in the mail.
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Terry Adams
TOLD Partners
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Topics: Persuasion, Prospecting |
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