An Idea for Hosting Your Next Commercial Real Estate Open House

By Jim Gillespie | October 1, 2007

Commercial real estate open house events are much fewer and farther between than they are on the residential side of the business. But every once in a while you may have a building that could warrant hosting this kind of event to get brokers to see the building and generate interest from some potential customers. But what the heck do you do to get people’s attention and get them to attend an event like this…especially if your owner feels the event should be paid for out of your own pocket because of how kind he was in giving you the listing?

Well here’s an idea…you could contact one of the more upscale car dealerships in your area…a Mercedes Benz, Lexus, or Cadillac dealership, or whichever dealership you feel best represents the kind of cars the people you want attending the open house would like to drive. Then have the dealership bring the latest models of all their cars to the building and offer free test drives to everyone attending the open house.

You’ll get people attending the open house, the car dealership will get people test driving their cars who are the kind of people who may want to lease or buy one, and their sales people will now have new prospects for them to follow-up with. In addition, you’ll create a certain buzz around the event with people talking about both the cars and the owner’s property at the same time.

And of course one of the greatest benefits of all to you is…you’ve created a successful open house event for everyone for FREE!

And now if you could just find the right people to take the building you’d have the down payment for the new car, too!

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Join Me for FREE on my Next Teleconference Call on
Wednesday, October 17th, on “Mastering Your Power Persuasion Skills”

If you’ve never been a member of my Commercial Real Estate Inner Circle before, you can join me for FREE on my next Inner Circle teleconference call on Wednesday, October 17th, when I’ll tell you how to be more persuasive with your commercial real estate clients and prospects and begin closing more business with them. Most people think that persuasion means being pushy, but that’s how the bad salespeople do it. During this teleconference I’ll show you how to get your clients to take action without ever feeling you persuaded them to do it, which is really how the best salespeople do it.

Now imagine how much more business you’d close if you learned how to master this technique yourself.

If you’d like to learn how you can join me on this teleconference call for FREE…click here.


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Why Giving Gifts to Your Commercial Real Estate Clients is Extremely Important

By Jim Gillespie | September 10, 2007

Giving gifts to clients in our industry is not something that’s normally done on a regular basis. At the very most sometimes a gift is given immediately after a transaction closes, but that’s usually about it for most commercial real estate brokers. But if you’re not giving gifts to your clients on a continual basis, you’re missing a huge opportunity to generate some solid repeat business for yourself.

Commercial real estate brokerage is transactional in nature, and this can make it more difficult to create the feeling within our clients that we have an ongoing relationship with them between transactions. Attorneys and accountants on the other hand often have ongoing interactions with their clients throughout the year, so the client then feels that they have a continual, ongoing relationship with these people.

But in commercial real estate your clients may do just one transaction every three to seven years, and when they’re not looking to do another transaction, it’s easy for them to feel that there’s no ongoing relationship between the two of you, and that you’re not their broker anymore. And this can lead to you feeling you must compete with all the other brokers again every time your clients have a real estate need, if you haven’t done a great job of maintaining your relationships with them between transactions.

This is why gift giving can be an important component of you maintaining great relationships with your clients and having them feel that you’re the broker who will represent them again on their next transaction. What we’re talking about here is the law of reciprocity, where when someone does something kind for another person, the person who received the act of kindness feels a desire within them to reciprocate in some way. And in the context of the relationship with your clients, the best way for them to reciprocate is to have you represent them on their next transaction.

If your average commission on a transaction is $20,000.00, and you give every one of your clients $200.00 in gifts throughout every year, it’s very easy to see how well this will work for you. If your clients do one transaction every five years, that’s an investment of $1,000.00 towards ensuring you’ll earn and receive an additional $20,000.00 commission. And that’s a very good return on your investment.

With this in mind I’ve had coaching clients tell me that the moment they walked into a client’s office and gave them a gift, the client then asked them to sit down and discuss representing them on their next transaction to buy, sell, or lease commercial real estate. This is the law of reciprocity in action.

The key here is for you to recognize the tremendous value of giving gifts to your clients 2-4 times every year on an ongoing basis, because most commercial brokers won’t take the time and spend the money to make this happen. But I must tell you, if you do this on an ongoing basis with all of the people you’ve closed transactions with, you’ll make it very difficult for them to work with another broker.

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Join Me for FREE on my Next Teleconference Call This Wednesday on
“Becoming a Power Broker and Master of Delegation”

If you’ve never been a member of my Commercial Real Estate Inner Circle before, you can join me for FREE on my next Inner Circle teleconference call this Wednesday, September 12th, when I’ll tell you how to become a Power Broker and take your commercial real estate brokerage business to an entirely new level. And if you’re already a Power Broker you’ll want to listen in on this call also because I’ll be interviewing Scott Caswell, one of the most successful Power Brokers in America. Scott is continually one of the top producing brokers in Los Angeles, and he’s been named his company’s Broker of the Year for 14 of the past 18 years. During this teleconference we’ll discuss what you need to know to move beyond what you’ve already accomplished in your commercial real estate brokerage business and begin making more money right now. And if you’ve ever felt that you needed to delegate more activities to other people instead of letting those activities bog you down and sap your productivity, we’ll tell you exactly how to get this done also.

If you’d like to learn how you can join me on this teleconference call for FREE…click here.


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Are You on Track Right Now to Meet Your Commission Goals for 2007?

By Jim Gillespie | August 27, 2007

We’re now at the end of August and it’s important to check in and find out how you’re doing towards meeting your income goals for the year.

Well how are you doing? Are you on track to meet the goals you set for yourself at the beginning of the year? Or even if you didn’t set goals back then, are you on track to make the money that will have you feel that 2007 was a successful year in commercial brokerage for you?

If your commercial real estate business is dependent on sale transactions, you may need to have all of your sale agreements for the year signed and moving forward before September 30th for the commissions to be earned and paid to you in 2007. This is because commercial property sale transactions normally take 60-120 days to close once the initial purchase agreement has been signed. So as long as you have sale agreements signed that are expected to close within 90 days, and you have these agreements signed by September 30th, you should have a good opportunity to earn and get paid these commissions in 2007.

For lease transactions you can negotiate and have these agreements signed even in December, and still get paid your commissions in 2007. But this depends on many things including the size of your lease transaction, how large and “corporate” in nature the parties are who are negotiating the transaction, how fast the attorneys respond during the lease negotiations and when preparing the lease, and whether or not the lessee feels like moving into the new facility over the Holidays. Even if the lease is signed in 2007 but the lessee won’t be taking possession of the property until 2008, many owners simply won’t pay you the commission until the lessee has taken possession of the property.

The more entrepreneurial the parties to the lease transaction are the faster the lease can oftentimes be both negotiated and signed. And the more “corporate” in size and nature the parties are the longer it can take.

So knowing that you’ve got to get moving to generate any new activity that you’ll get paid on in 2007, particularly on new sale transactions, I’d like to ask you the following three questions:

1) Should you be doing more prospecting throughout the rest of the year than you’ve been doing over the past 30 days?

2) Are there people you haven’t contacted in some time who you think might want to do a sale or lease transaction?

3) Are there clients of yours who you haven’t spoken with in quite some time who it’s time to pickup the phone, call, and find out what’s happening with them?

If you answered “Yes” to any or all of these questions it’s time to just stop making excuses and get moving! Do all the prospecting you know you should be doing, and contact the people you know you should be both contacting and following-up with. Your income in 2007 as a commercial real estate broker depends on it!

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Join Me for FREE on my Next Teleconference Call on
“Becoming a Power Broker and Master of Delegation”

If you’ve never been a member of my Commercial Real Estate Inner Circle before, you can join me for FREE on my next Inner Circle teleconference call on Wednesday, September 12th, when I’ll tell you how to become a Power Broker and take your commercial real estate brokerage business to an entirely new level. And if you’re already a Power Broker or want to become one, we’ll cover in great detail what you need to know to move beyond what you’ve already accomplished in your commercial real estate brokerage business and begin making more money. And if you’ve ever felt that you needed to delegate more activities to other people instead of letting those activities bog you down and sap your productivity, we’ll show you exactly how to get this done.

If you’d like to learn how you can join me on this teleconference call for FREE…click here.


Topics: Prospecting, Uncategorized | No Comments »

New U.S. Supreme Court Decision Will Increase Real Estate Commissions

By Jim Gillespie | August 13, 2007

As Florida real estate attorney Henry T. Sorensen wrote in his brief dated July 27, 2007, “On June 28, 2007, an atomic bomb went off in the real estate brokerage industry. The question is whether anyone heard it. On that date, the United States Supreme Court rendered an opinion that could profoundly affect the central compensation structure in the real estate industry, specifically the control of commission schedules offered by brokers to the public.”

In his brief Sorensen discussed the recent Supreme Court decision in the case “Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. vs. PSKS, Inc.” This is a case involving a manufacturer of leather products and accessories instituting a minimum pricing schedule for its products to maintain minimum retail pricing levels and to also maintain a strong brand image of the company’s products. And the U.S. Supreme Court held that Leegin has the right to do this.

Attorney Sorensen further wrote that “In one of the most significant parts of the opinion, the Supreme Court noted that without imposing the pricing schedule, retailers would be encouraged to discount prices to the point where (at) quality stores, training and marketing simply could not be provided due to the ever lowering margins made on such sales.”

Do you see any parallels here with the downward pressure on commissions these days in the commercial brokerage industry combined with lower profit margins and less money being available for training and marketing?

In his brief Sorensen concluded that this decision will be a blow to brokerage companies that discount their commissions and that it will have far reaching effects by increasing real estate commissions within the industry. And it appears that the U.S. Supreme Court decision may be most relevant to franchised commercial real estate brokerage companies in terms of any minimum standards that may be imposed on franchisees. But it also raises the question of “What if traditional real estate brokerage companies want to impose minimum commission amounts that must be charged on all real estate transactions closed by their own agents?” Does the U.S. Supreme Court decision apply in this situation also? And as always, you need to consult with your own legal counsel to learn the answer to this question and to learn how this recent Supreme Court decision will impact both you and your company.

With all the downward pressure on commissions these days combined with buyers and lessees themselves wanting to cooperate in receiving portions of the commissions from their commercial real estate transactions, any decision that can help brokers to earn and get paid fair commissions on their transactions will be welcomed by brokers all over the country.

The information on this U.S. Supreme Court decision came to me through an article written by Blanche Evans of Realty Times. For the complete text of Sorensen’s brief on the U.S. Supreme Court decision, click here.

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Join Me for FREE on my Teleconference Call This Wednesday on
“Becoming a Master at Getting Exclusive Listings”

If you’ve never been a member of my Commercial Real Estate Inner Circle before, you can join me for FREE on my next Inner Circle teleconference call this Wednesday, August 15th, when I’ll be interviewing the following two experts:

Scott Lamontagne of Marcus & Millichap, who’s been one of my one-on-one coaching clients, and in 2006 Scott sold more apartment buildings than any other commercial agent in the state of Texas. His success has led him to flying in a private plane throughout Texas to utilize his time more effectively and close more business as a commercial broker. The subject of my interview with Scott is “Becoming a Master at Getting Exclusive Listings,” and Scott is definitely an agent who has proved that he’s quite excellent in this arena.

My second interview on the call will be with Robert Campbell, author of the book “Timing the Real Estate Market,” who’s going to tell us when to buy, sell, and hold real estate in our own markets. Robert told everyone here in Southern California in August of 2005 to list and sell their homes if they wanted to cash out at the top of the market, and that prediction has proven to be accurate. In addition, Robert will tell us which markets in the U.S. are now in danger of major reversals in value, and which markets are much safer to invest your money in right now, too.

If you’d like to learn how you can join me on this teleconference call for FREE…click here.


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How to Successfully Land More Expired Commercial Listings

By Jim Gillespie | August 7, 2007

Commercial real estate markets are transitioning right now in many areas. Listings are often not moving as quickly as they once were, and for the first time in many years brokers are experiencing markets where commercial listings are expiring before they’re sold or leased. This is extremely common with large parcels of developable land as many developers are concerned about building new projects that won’t be ready for occupancy for one to two years down the road. But the same is also happening in many areas with existing buildings, too.

With this in mind, one of the areas that I’ve often observed being overlooked in commercial brokerage is going after expired listings with a targeted, organized approach. It’s rare to find a commercial broker who goes after listings like these in a very systematic, organized manner. At the very best maybe a phone call or two is made to the owners or a marketing package on the broker or brokerage company itself is sent to the owners in the mail, but often that’s about it.

In the midst of this something to be recognized is the mindset of the typical owner whose listing has just expired with their commercial agent. When they signed the listing with the agent the owner was convinced that the property would be sold or leased by now. But the agent didn’t deliver a buyer or a lessee to the owner, and right now the owner probably doesn’t have the highest opinion of any promises being made to them by commercial agents. So they may need a little time to evaluate where they went wrong before feeling confident once again in choosing the next commercial agent they’ll work with. And this length of time may be days or weeks depending on how motivated they are to get their property back on the market with another agent again.

So for you to be the agent the owners will want to list with you must be persistent, and you must also convince them you’re different than all the other brokers in your market. Keep in mind that the sum total of the owner’s knowledge, logic, and intuition had them list with a broker who didn’t deliver for them, so they may be a little unsure about trusting another broker again.

A solid, ongoing mailing campaign where the owner receives several postcards or mailers a week from you offering insight into why their property probably didn’t sell or lease, and telling them specifically what you do differently than the other brokers in your territory to make sure your listings move, can be a great idea. If you called the owner multiple times a week on the phone without them wanting to hear from you this frequently, you’ll run the risk of actually repelling them away from working with you. But calling them at appropriate intervals that do work for them, while mailing them information that informs them and allows them to read it when they want to, is a much better way to go. And the beauty about this is if you design your mailers one time for an expired listing campaign like this, you can then use the same designs over and over again with all the other owners of expired listings throughout your career.

Successfully landing expired listings involves differentiating yourself from your competitors, educating and inform your owners on the reasons why their listing didn’t move, and convincing them that you’re the broker who has the game plan that will move their property at a price they’ll be very thrilled with.

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Join Me for FREE on my Next Teleconference Call on
“Becoming a Master at Getting Exclusive Listings”

If you’ve never been a member of my Commercial Real Estate Inner Circle before, you can join me for FREE on my next Inner Circle Teleconference call on Wednesday, August 15th, when I’ll be interviewing the following two experts:

Robert Campbell, author of the book “Timing the Real Estate Market,” who’s going to tell us when to buy, sell, and hold real estate in our own respective markets. Robert told everyone here in Southern California in August of 2005 to list and sell their homes if they wanted to cash out at the top of the market, and that prediction has proven to be very accurate. In addition, Robert will tell us which markets in the U.S. are now in danger of major reversals in value, and which markets are much safer to invest your money in right now, too.

My second interview on the call will be with Scott Lamontagne of Marcus & Millichap. Scott’s been one of my coaching clients and in 2006 he sold more apartment buildings than any other commercial agent in the entire state of Texas. His success has led him to flying in a private airplane throughout Texas to utilize his time more effectively and close more business as a commercial broker, too. The subject of my interview with Scott is “Becoming a Master at Getting Exclusive Listings” and Scott is definitely an agent who has proved that he’s quite excellent in this arena, too.

If you’d like to learn how you can join me on this teleconference call for FREE…click here.


Topics: Marketing, Prospecting, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Getting Your Commercial Prospect Database in Great Condition

By Jim Gillespie | July 16, 2007

Most commercial real estate agents do a mediocre job of having a thorough, accurate database put together for themselves. Oftentimes their database is a combination of what they can find from the public records, combined with whatever they’ve entered into their contact management system from the business cards they’ve collected over the years.

It’s not that this is the way the agents wants their databases to be, it’s just that this is the way it’s all come together over the years. And while the agents ideally would like to have detailed, pristine databases in place to work from in their brokerage businesses, they normally just can’t find the time and get organized enough to make it happen.

The good news is that there are a lot of agents in your territory whose databases are in this exact kind of condition. This means that these databases have a lot of holes in them, which means there are a lot of prospects not being contacted by these agents regularly because they don’t have the names and contact information for all of these decision makers. For example, if an agent has a lot of owners in their database listed only as entities like “Premier Partners, LLC,” this means there are a lot of owners that they have no relationship with, and no way of contacting directly. The agent could send a letter addressed to “Premier Partners, LLC,” but any letter sent addressed like this has a high probability of never being opened and read by the decision maker.

So if you want to start making more money in your real estate business, one of the greatest ways that you can begin to move in this direction is to have the names of all the decision makers you want to be working with, the property or properties they own or occupy, the square footage and the features of these properties, the mailing addresses for these decision makers, and their telephone numbers all in your database.

With so many competitors not having this detailed information for the prospects you want to be doing business with, this will give you a huge competitive advantage over them. But with everything else you constantly need to get done in your business right now, when are you going to find the time to get your database in this kind of solid condition?

In my next Inner Circle teleseminar call this Wednesday night, I’ll be interviewing the CEO of a company who will do all of this for you. His company is currently doing this for commercial real estate agents all over the country, and they have the resources in place to locate the decision makers behind all the corporations, LLCs, and partnerships that appear on property ownership records, and assemble all of this information into a solid database for you. Included in the database will be the phone numbers of the decision makers you want to do business with so you can pick up the phone and call them directly.

During the call I’ll also interview someone with the best service I’ve seen for positioning yourself in the minds of your clients and prospects and compel them to want to work with you, and I’ll tell you the top three contact management software programs that have been designed specifically for you as a commercial real estate agent. For more information on how you can join me and learn all this great business building information for FREE…click here.


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Closing Your Commercial Real Estate Prospects on Doing Business with You

By Jim Gillespie | July 5, 2007

Closing is a term we often hear about in our industry. If you’ve been in our business for 10 years or more you’ve probably been at a lunch or in a meeting sometime when an agent is talking about how they just lost a prospect to a competitor, and then someone speaks up in the meeting and says something like, “You know why you lost that prospect? Because you didn’t close them! You’re not a closer!”

And the person making the statement is often a veteran in our industry talking in a gruff, angry, authoritative tone of voice. And that person sometimes acts as if closing is something that can be done at anytime by any Master Closer by physically positioning themselves properly, saying the magic words in the right tone of voice, and then watching as all objections are immediately removed from the prospect’s mind as they just move forward and sign the paperwork.

But closing is really much more than this, and closing itself is one of the most overhyped myths ever created in the business world. True closing happens when you’ve done everything right from the very first time you met the prospect up through the time you get them to give you the business. And if there’s anything you’ve done along the way to appear incongruent, if there’s anything you’ve done to appear like you really don’t know what you’re talking about, and if there’s anything you’ve done to give the impression that the most important part of your relationship with the prospect is you getting paid a commission, you’ve now thrown a major impediment into the entire closing process.

Closing is the natural result of your prospects feeling that you understand their needs, that you’re knowledgeable, that they can trust you, that you have their best interests at heart, and that you’re the best choice they could ever make in a commercial real estate agent. When these factors are present in your relationships, people will allow you to guide them all the way through the closing of the transaction. These are the important underlying ingredients of what real closing truly represents.

You can’t just eliminate any mistakes you’ve made in building your relationships with people by strongly coming over the top and trying to powerfully close them at the end. You wouldn’t give people like these any business yourself, so it’s reasonable to assume that others would do the same as you would when they’re treated in this manner also.

Focus on becoming the salesperson you’d like to have asking for your business. And when you become this salesperson you’ll find more people just saying “yes” to working with you as a commercial real estate agent, very similar to how you’d just be saying “yes” to the salespeople who would treat you in this manner also.

In my next commercial agent teleseminar I’ll interview someone with the best system I’ve ever seen for differentiating yourself from the competition. This positions yourself in the minds of your prospects as the best commercial agent they would want to work with. For more information on how you can join me and learn this great business building information for FREE…click here.


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Marketing and Positioning Yourself for Commercial Real Estate Success

By Jim Gillespie | June 26, 2007

One of the greatest mistakes I find commercial real estate brokers making is forgetting they’re constantly being compared with the competition. With this in mind, what do you do that differentiates yourself from your competitors? When going after listings or exclusive assignments, why should decision makers choose you instead of all the other brokers they could be choosing instead? If you don’t let people know you’re different, and tell them what you’re going to do that makes you the best broker they could be working with, you’re making it harder on yourself to land more exclusive assignments.

Once I was listing a home for sale and my choices were narrowed down to two residential agents. One agent was named Scott and he had the inside track with me, as I had been talking with him longer than the other agent I was interviewing, an agent named Ellen. But in the end Scott made some very costly mistakes that had me give the listing to Ellen…

As it was getting close to the time I’d be making my final decision, I told both of them I wanted to meet with them one more time, and I wanted them to each tell me what they’d be doing differently than their competition to market the home for me. Ellen agreed to the one final meeting and asked that she be the last meeting I’d have before awarding the listing (the mark of a true real estate professional), and Scott took himself out of the running for the listing by saying the following on the telephone to me:

“There’s really no need for us to meet again as I’ve told you everything I can tell you about marketing the home. And all of us agents pretty much do the same things in marketing homes so there’s really nothing I’ll do differently for you than any of the other agents.”

And in a split second, Scott took himself out of the running and I listed the home with Ellen.

Who wants to give their listing to an agent who turns down a request for one final meeting with them, and then tells them they’re just the same as all the other agents in the territory?

You want to always make sure you’re differentiating yourself from your competitors in the minds of the people you want to do business with, and not just giving people the impression that you’re the same as everyone else is.

So ask yourself:

1) How is my company different than the companies that we compete with?

2) How am I different as an agent in the service I can provide to the people I want to do business with?

3) How can I communicate to the people I want to do business with that I’m the best agent they can work with on their next commercial real estate transaction, so they hire me instead of the competition?

So when you present yourself as being no different than the competition you cost yourself a lot of money. But when you differentiate yourself in ways that excite the people you want to work with and compel them to hire you over your competitors, you’ll make far more money and you’ll get chosen for the exclusive assignments you want more easily.

In my next teleseminar I’ll interview someone who’s come up with one of the best ways I’ve ever seen for commercial agents to differentiate themselves from the competition and standout as the best choice people will want to hire over everyone else. For more information on how you can listen to this information for free click here.


Topics: Marketing | No Comments »

How to Create a Ton of New Commercial Real Estate Business Within 90 Days

By Jim Gillespie | June 11, 2007

How are you doing at developing great new business for yourself these days? If you don’t have the amount of solid leads you want to be working on the chances are very high that you’re not doing enough prospecting. There’s simply nothing that can bring you a constant stream of the kind of leads you want to be working on like prospecting can. But you just have to do it.

All the business you’ve ever wanted for yourself in commercial real estate brokerage is out there for you. The fact that your competitors are closing transactions that you’re not involved in proves this. You just need to constantly prospect so you direct those leads to you in the future, instead of letting them go to your competitors.

If you prospected 10-12 hours every week for the next year, how much of a difference would this make in your income? And if you like your answer to this question just get the prospecting done with no excuses!

On my next Inner Circle teleconference call I’ll be joined by two experts who will tell you how to put together a great mailing campaign for your clients and prospects that will make you a ton of money easily and inexpensively. For more information on how you can listen to this call for free click here.


Topics: Prospecting | No Comments »

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