Preparing Yourself to Deliver Powerful Real Estate Presentations

By Jim Gillespie | December 5, 2012

At the end of this article I’m going to show you a video of someone who nailed what was probably the most important 4-minute presentation of her life, and she did it in front of many of the greatest peers within her own industry, along with a worldwide television audience watching.

When you’re making important presentations to your clients and prospects, presentations like listing presentations and exclusive right to represent presentations, it’s extremely important to completely nail your presentation. Inherent in this, too, is the importance of preparing for the presentation so that you’re peaking with great energy, right as you’re about to begin your presentation.

Whenever I’m speaking in front of a live audience, this is something I focus on also. I make sure that I get the right amount of sleep the night before, I eat food beforehand that I feel will have me deliver my presentation with the greatest amount of energy, and I time my arrival at the place I’ll be speaking so that I’m preparing for my presentation with the perfect amount of time in advance, such that when I begin my presentation, I’m peaking right then and there with a solid amount of energy.

The same must apply to you also whenever you’re making your own presentations. Are you preparing properly in advance so that when it’s time to begin your presentation, you’re feeling a solid amount of great energy running through you? If not, your presentation may be perceived as being flat by your audience. Heck, even the great singer Tony Bennett said that after all these decades of performing in front of live audiences, he still gets nervous beforehand. And in my opinion, being nervous or excited often depends on which one of these two emotions you believe you’re experiencing. So if you think you’re feeling nervous before your presentation, tell yourself that you’re really feeling excited. Because this is a much more empowering place to be coming from!

In terms of one specific example of someone really nailing their presentation, singer Sara Bareilles’ performance at this year’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony immediately became the talk of the entire industry. Sara was asked to perform a hit song written by the great songwriter Laura Nyro, in honor of Laura being inducted into the Hall of Fame. The song was a #2 hit originally sung by Barbra Streisand back in 1971, and when you’re an up-and-coming singer within the industry, doing a remake of any song sung by Barbra Streisand takes guts.

Laura Nyro was such a prolific songwriter that at one moment in time she had three top ten singles simultaneously all in the charts, all performed by three different bands. And her songwriting prowess was so profound that she originally retired from the music industry at the ripe old age of…24.

So here comes Sara Bareilles, knowing that Laura couldn’t be there because she had passed away from ovarian cancer, and knowing that Sara herself was about to try and do Laura justice by performing her hit song in front of many of the greatest stars in music, along with an entire worldwide television audience watching.

We all have moments that define who we really are in our lives, and this was clearly one of those moments for Sara.

Click here to see the video.

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We can transform your commercial brokerage business and get you making more money by doing one-on-one coaching work together. If you’re interested in one-on-one coaching to take your commercial brokerage business to the next level, click here and contact me.

"My work with Jim has helped me to fine tune and systematize my marketing program, and produce more leads for my business with far greater ease"

Ian Bertolina
Bertolina Commercial Real Estate Services

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The Power of Keeping Your Mind Focused in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage

By Jim Gillespie | November 6, 2012

We’ve all heard expressions over the years similar to "What you believe, you will achieve," and "You can achieve anything you want to if you really focus your mind on it."

There’s no better example I know of this than the six-minute video I’m going to share with you.

Dr. Bruce Moseley, a surgeon, designed an experiment to determine how powerful the placebo effect is in surgery. So he separated his patients into three groups, including one group who would receive "fake" surgery, believing that the surgery being performed on them was real.

What were the results from this experiment? The patients receiving the "fake" surgery improved afterwards similar to his patients who were receiving the "real" surgery. This shows us how important it is for our minds to be totally convinced that we’ll accomplish everything we have our hearts set on.

If people who are convinced that they’ll become healthy once again can make this happen just by believing in it, imagine what you’ll accomplish within your brokerage business when you’re constantly convinced that you’ll always achieve everything that you want to. This is the state of mind that top producers constantly live in.

Click here to see the six-minute video.

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"My work with Jim keeps me focused on being productive and doing the activities that will maximize my success."

Terry Adams
TOLD Partners

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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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"My work with Jim has stepped-up my marketing program, making it easier for me to follow-up on deals while continually creating a steady stream of solid new leads for me to work on."

John Kilroy
John Kilroy Realtors

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Topics: Persuasion | No Comments »

How to Brand Yourself in the Minds of Your Commercial Real Estate Prospects

By Jim Gillespie | September 18, 2012

What is it that will have your clients and prospects already thinking about working with you whenever they have a commercial real estate need? Scott, a broker who’s been a coaching client of mine and who works for one of the largest, most recognizable commercial real estate brokerage companies in the world, did something very amazing. Scott pulled out all the stops, and what he did had him sell more than $1 billion in property in his first 9 years in the business.

When Scott was brand new in the business he came to me as his coach and said, "Once I’ve been in commercial real estate brokerage for 2-3 years, I want people to feel like I’ve actually been in our industry for 10 years."

What Scott was referring to was creating a presence through his marketing that made people feel like he’d been in our industry for a long period of time, and we began working together on the game plan that would accomplish this.

Scott began mailing to his people constantly, but he exploded his marketing program way above and beyond this. In addition to both his phone prospecting and his mailing, he was faxing and E-mailing his people, too, so that on an annual basis he was contacting them more than 100 times.

Now compare this with many other brokers who are at best contacting their clients and prospects 2-4 times a year. Who do you think is going to brand themselves within the minds of their clients and prospects better?

And it all began with Scott’s determination to do it.

When your clients and prospects are hearing from you constantly in an appropriate manner, and you’re providing them with solid information they’ll definitely want to know about, you’re going to land a lot more business.

So what is your marketing plan for developing new business right now? And how often do you want to be contacting your clients and prospects every year through your different marketing approaches? If you’d like to learn more from Scott directly, I’m going to be interviewing him this Wednesday, September 19th, on everything he’s now doing to produce outstanding results in his brokerage business. I’ll even send you the audio CDs and the MP3 recording of the interview, too.

Click here for more information on the interview.

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"After 20 years in real estate I needed to revive my business and look at new options and ideas. Together Jim and I evaluated my entire business plan, designed new strategies, and implemented a game plan that’s now making more money for both me and my team."

Bill Ukropina
Coldwell Banker Commercial

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Here Are Some Tips for Speaking in Front of Live Audiences

By Jim Gillespie | September 12, 2012

Speaking in front of live audiences can be a good way to promote yourself as a commercial real estate broker, and a good way to get more new business, too. You can find opportunities to speak for 10-30 minutes or so at events like economic forecasts, chamber of commerce events, business networking events, as well as meetings for trade organizations for professionals such as attorneys, CPAs, and any other industries you’d like to be representing.

If you’re not a professional speaker and you pay attention to the following simple guidelines, you’ll help ensure that you’ll deliver a solid presentation that’ll be well-received by your audience.

1) When you’re planning your presentation, design it sequentially with numbered items or bullet points, and for each item write one word or several words describing a subject, a concept, or an idea that you can then speak on extemporaneously for maybe 2-5 minutes. Have each subsequent item then flow sequentially from the beginning all the way to the end of your presentation, so that when you’ve completed speaking about these items, you’ve then completed your presentation. And if you’ll be utilizing PowerPoint, you can then design your slides to follow this exact same sequencing, too.

2) Don’t feel compelled to have to open your speaking presentation with a joke. I remember reading a funny story about an American speaker who was speaking in Asia in front of an Asian audience. He opened his speaking presentation and spoke for about 10-15 seconds before then pausing, and when he paused the audience then broke into laughter right in front of him. He turned to his translator and asked him, "Why did the audience just laugh at me?", and the translator then told him, "They know that American speakers always like to open with a joke, so when you paused they thought it was then their turn to laugh." So don’t feel compelled to have to open with a joke, because unless it’s a good one and it’s really appropriate for your audience, you can begin sounding trite right away.

3) Utilize stories whenever possible to illustrate what you’re communicating to the audience. People love listening to stories, and if you’ve got one that represents a real-life experience around what you’re trying to communicate to them, and you believe that the story will really help to drive your point home and/or entertain them, utilize it!

4) Rehearse your presentation before you ever deliver it live, so that you’ll both nail it and know that you’ll remain within the allotted time you’ve been given. One of the greatest mistakes I see people making within this arena…people who are not professional speakers…is they get concerned that they may not have enough material to speak about for their entire allotted time. So they then pack a ton of material into their presentation, they don’t rehearse the presentation to find out how long it’s actually going to take to deliver, and then they end up going way over their allotted time slot…and getting the director of the event very angry!

Don’t be one of those speakers!

5) When you’re planning your presentation, ask yourself "What mental and emotional state do I want to leave my audience in at the moment that I’ve completed my presentation?" And in answering this question, is there a story that you can tell at the end of your presentation that you believe will both leave them in this state, and help you to illustrate one of the main points that you’d like them to learn? If there’s a story that you can tell that you believe will accomplish this, and maybe even get them to laugh when you’re telling it, this is a great way for you to leave the audience when you’re walking off the podium.

When you’re not a professional speaker, speaking can become much easier than many people believe it can be. When you’re speaking occasionally at business events for maybe 10-30 minutes or so, and you follow these simple guidelines, you can deliver presentations that will both inform and entertain your audience.

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"My work with Jim is making me more effective at finding new business with the kind of companies I want to work with."

Larry Crumbley, SIOR, CCIM
Fickling & Company

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Topics: Marketing, Prospecting, Uncategorized | No Comments »

A Must See Movie About Healing Cancer

By Jim Gillespie | August 29, 2012

There’s a movie that’s been released on the subject of healing cancer, and I feel it’s important that I tell you about the movie. In addition, I’m going to give you a link so that you can watch the movie online for free.

If watching this movie makes a difference in just one person’s life, then writing this article will have been completely worth it.

If you or someone you know has cancer, or if you have an interest in learning more about cancer, and learning about an additional potential treatment for it that has had patients raving about the treatment, continue reading…

The movie I’m talking about is, "Burzynski, The Movie", and it is quite compelling. The movie describes a Houston-based doctor named Stanislaw Burzynski, who has been credited with discovering Antineoplastons, which the doctor says are "peptides and amino acid derivatives" that were discovered by him back in 1967. The doctor further observed that people suffering from cancer typically are deficient in certain peptides within their blood, and his therapy is designed to address this deficiency.

During the movie you’ll see testimonials from patients stating that they’ve become cancer-free from utilizing his approach, and you’ll see something else that’s quite shocking…

You’ll see that powerful forces within the medical industry have been working hard to stop Dr. Burzynski from utilizing his approach. In addition, they’ve been trying to take away his patents for his new approach, and reissue his patents under other people’s names. This is despite the testimony you’ll hear that no one has ever suggested that Dr. Burzynski’s treatment is toxic in any way.

Click here to see the trailer for the movie.

"Anyone who is dealing with cancer and/or the effects of treatment–you owe it to yourself to see this documentary."

Tony Robbins

"This documentary should be shown at every medical school in the country."

Dr. Joy Browne
Syndicated Radio and Television Show Host

Click here to see the movie.

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"Jim has helped me to organize a game plan and work it with the tenacity that’s producing a greater number of transactions for me in my marketplace."

Scott Wilcott
NAI Capital

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Why Mailing to Your Commercial Real Estate Clients and Prospects is So Vitally Important

By Jim Gillespie | August 21, 2012

Most commercial brokers call or visit their clients and prospects two to four times a year…at the very most. In many situations the number of contacts that a broker makes with these people may be just one to two within the year…and sometimes, in reality, it’s zero.

Keep in mind that your brokerage competitors are for the most part doing the exact same thing that you’re doing…dialing their prospects, finding out if they have any upcoming needs, and then scheduling another prospecting call for sometime in the future. With this in mind, what is it that you’re doing to differentiate yourself from all of the other brokers who are doing the exact same thing, so that you position yourself within people’s minds as the one broker they’ll definitely want to work with?

This is where mailing can really come into play, and if you do it right, you can make it both very simple and very effective for yourself for positioning you within people’s minds for doing business with them.

When you’re mailing, frequency is very important, as the more often people are receiving mail from you the more branding you’ll be accomplishing within their minds. So the frequency with which your people receive something from you in the mail is more important than the length of your mailers and the number of pages that you’re sending to them. Keeping this in mind, sending postcards to your people twice a month will be more effective than sending a 4-8 page newsletter to them once every quarter. When you’re mailing only once a quarter, that’s three full months of time between mailings where your people are very likely to have forgotten about you completely.

You ideally want your mailings to come across their desk with a frequency such that when they finally have a need to talk to a commercial real estate broker, your mailer with your name and phone number on it lands right in front of them.

In terms of what to include within your mailers, helpful information positioning you as a consultant or an advisor within their minds is a great idea. Anyone can send out just listed/just sold information, but you really want to send people information about things like important trends you’re observing within the marketplace, and what people need to know to protect themselves and successfully close their next real estate transaction.

A simple way to organize the bulk of your ongoing mailing campaign is to brainstorm about 25-40 subjects that you could write about briefly in your postcards, subjects like the difference between net and gross leases, the difference between standard and ALTA title insurance, and how to accurately measure the correct size of office and/or industrial buildings. Since this is information that isn’t likely to change, once you’ve designed your 24 postcards you can now send the exact same mailing campaign to your people every single year. It’s unlikely that people will remember that they received the exact same postcard 24 postcards earlier and one full year ago, and even if they do, the information will still serve as a good reminder to them.

If you’re prospecting your people by telephone only 2-4 times a year, and all of your competitors are doing the same thing, you’re not doing much to differentiate yourself from all of your competitors. But if you’re mailing to your people 24 times a year in addition to doing your prospecting, and you’re providing your people with solid, helpful insights within your mailers, you’re now positioning yourself within their minds far ahead of your competitors, and you’ll be in a much better position to now represent them on their next transaction.

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"My work with Jim has given me better scripting and new approaches to get more listings and exclusive right to represent agreements signed by my clients and prospects."

Mike Spedden
MacKenzie Commercial Real Estate Services

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Topics: Marketing, Prospecting | No Comments »

How to Recognize When You’re Not Getting Enough Commercial Real Estate Prospecting Done

By Jim Gillespie | August 8, 2012

There are so many brokers within our industry who believe in prospecting, but they’re still not getting it done. In addition, there are brokers in our industry who believe they’re getting more prospecting done than they really are within their brokerage businesses. Regarding the latter, there are brokers who are scheduling hours of time for their prospecting, but they’re still taking incoming calls during that time, and they’re spending time on the Internet during their prospecting time, too. So in reality, this makes the actual time that they’re spending doing their prospecting much less than they may actually believe.

If you’re wondering if you’re getting enough prospecting done, here’s one additional way to check in on this…

Ask yourself the following questions:

1) Are there listings that have come onto the market in your territory where you didn’t even know that the owners were going to sell or lease their property?

2) Are there transactions being closed in your territory where you didn’t even know that the buyers and lessees were looking for another property?

If you specialize in getting listings, or specialize in working with only buyers and lessees, then only one of these two questions will apply to you. But if you’re working both sides of the fence as a commercial real estate broker, then both of these questions will apply to you.

If there are listings coming onto the market, or if properties are being sold or leased within your territory, and you’re not even aware in advance that the principals had an upcoming commercial real estate need, this is a major red flag that you’re not getting enough prospecting done. You should know in advance the needs of the principals within your territory, even if you don’t end up representing them. So if there are a number of principals who are listing, buying, or selling properties within your territory, where you’re not even aware in advance that they’ve been intending to do this, you need to step up your prospecting!

If you had been prospecting these people on a regular basis, you would have known about their upcoming real estate need, and you would have worked on representing them exclusively. But you instead never even got the chance, and someone else ended up representing them on their transaction.

When you get your prospecting done, these kinds of opportunities stop slipping through the cracks in your brokerage business. Schedule your prospecting time in advance every week, get it done with no excuses, and when you do you’ll find more opportunities, you’ll close more transactions, and you’ll make more money.

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"I have had so many responses to the marketing letter I’ve mailed out that you wrote for me. Sellers have called in on properties they would like to sell, and the total dollar value of these properties so far is $56,000,000.00. I am blown away by the success of this program. One seller has an $8,000,000.00 property that we may already have a buyer for. Thank you, thank you, thank you."

Lisa Godley-Gilstrap
Lee & Associates

Click here to see more testimonials from my coaching clients.

Topics: Prospecting | No Comments »

Here’s How to Build Better Relationships With Your Commercial Real Estate Clients and Prospects

By Jim Gillespie | August 1, 2012

One of the biggest mistakes that commercial real estate brokers often make is keeping their relationships with their clients and prospects at "arm’s length". By saying this I mean keeping their relationships on an "all business" basis, without ever becoming personal friends with the people they’re doing business with.

Personal relationships are the glue that holds your business relationships together. If the people you’re doing business with don’t feel any personal connection to you, you’re much less likely to have them remain loyal. So whenever you’re beginning to do business with someone, anything you can do to take your relationship to a more personal level with them is definitely a step in the right direction.

One of the ways to do this is to notice what’s on the walls within their office, or to notice what they have sitting on their desk. In doing so you may learn that they enjoy playing golf, that they’re active in a particular community organization, or that they donate to a certain charity. In addition, you may see photos of them with people, including their own family, and this can be a great opportunity for you to ask them about one of these photos, and get them to start talking to you about it.

If, for example, you see a photo of them that was taken at a golf tournament, you could ask them about the photo, and there’s a good chance they’ll want to open up and start talking to you about it. This can easily lead you into a conversation about one of their passions, which is exactly where you want them to be. You’ve now crossed over into their own personal life, and you’ve begun the process of solidifying your relationship with them at an even deeper level.

Doing something like this can then lead you towards activities such as playing golf with them, going to sporting events, enjoying fine wine tasting with them, and/or contributing to their favorite charity…all of which can help you to solidify your relationship with them at an even deeper level.

This certainly beats the heck out of keeping things strictly on an "all business" basis, in terms of both landing your first transaction with them, and in landing subsequent transactions with them, too.

So whenever you’re doing business with your clients and prospects, do everything you can to build more personal relationships with them. When you build more personal relationships with your people, they’ll feel more bonded to you, they’ll be more loyal, and you’ll end up closing more transactions with them.

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"Jim’s coaching and training has assisted our company in landing millions of dollars of new real estate business."

Pat Hall
TOLD Partners

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Get a Free iPad 3 with One-on-One Commercial Real Estate Coaching

By Jim Gillespie | July 24, 2012

If you become a one-on-one coaching client of mine, and we work together for the next six months, you’ll immediately get the new iPad 3 from me…and you can pay for the coaching in three monthly installments, too!

But in order to receive your iPad, you need to be one of the first 5 people to sign up for the six months of coaching.

Here’s what you’ll get:

Two 30-minute one-on-one coaching sessions with me every month for the next six months, and in addition you’ll become a member of my Million Dollar Commercial Real Estate Agent Inner Circle Program. In this program you’ll get access to all of my monthly teleconferences for the next six months, featuring my interviews with top commercial real estate brokers…telling you all of their secrets about what they’re doing that’s producing such solid results for them in this economy. In addition, you’ll get all of the audio CDs, written transcriptions, and written highlights from these interviews, the MP3 recordings from them, and my 4-page monthly newsletter for you to send to all of your clients and prospects, too.

And…You’ll immediately get your new iPad!

Here is the rate for joining the program:

1) One payment of $1,097 when we begin the program, followed by payments of $1,097 in each of the following two months

2) A one-time payment of $2,997 when we begin the program

The iPads will only be given to the first 5 people who enroll in the program, so call me or E-mail me right away if you’re interested.

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Preparing Yourself to Deliver Powerful Real Estate Presentations

The Power of Keeping Your Mind Focused in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage

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

How to Brand Yourself in the Minds of Your Commercial Real Estate Prospects

Here Are Some Tips for Speaking in Front of Live Audiences

A Must See Movie About Healing Cancer

Why Mailing to Your Commercial Real Estate Clients and Prospects is So Vitally Important

How to Recognize When You’re Not Getting Enough Commercial Real Estate Prospecting Done

Here’s How to Build Better Relationships With Your Commercial Real Estate Clients and Prospects

Get a Free iPad 3 with One-on-One Commercial Real Estate Coaching