|
It's
Time to Reinvent Commercial Agent
Marketing Commercial
real estate brokerage is a very unique
arena. As individual brokers we're
business owners, but we're not business
owners in the complete traditional
sense. We
don't pay rent every month and we
normally don't pay any employees'
salaries unless we own the brokerage
company we're working for. And we
normally don't have any ongoing fixed
expenses in our businesses that we have
to pay every month, regardless of
whether or not we're making money. These
expenses are normally taken care of
every month by the company we work for. But
it's this dynamic of having no business
expenses outside of maybe the car we
drive, that sometimes gets in the way of
brokers developing their businesses to
extraordinary levels. Traditional
business owners on the other hand
understand the concept of spending money
to make money. They have to spend money
to build their businesses even before
the day they open them. Every month
they've got expenses to pay and checks
to mail to keep their businesses
operating, and the concept of spending
money to make money is often deeply
ingrained in them. But
with most commercial brokers we see an
entirely different situation. Within our
industry we have what is known as the
"commission split," the
percentage of commission the brokerage
company keeps from any commissions
generated by the brokers themselves.
This commission split is the way we
reimburse the company for its expenses
and ideally provide them with a profit,
in exchange for the individual brokers
not having to pay any out of pocket
expenses along the way. So when a broker
is closing transactions the office takes
their share, and when the broker has
some lean months without many
transactions closing, at least the
broker doesn't have to pay any business
expenses. While
this arrangement can be a good one
between both the company and the broker,
it can also lead the broker to develop
an attitude like the following: "If
the office won't pay for something I'd
like to have and utilize in my business,
I'm not going to pay for it
either." And
this attitude can prove to be a costly
one. There's
no arena where this attitude proves to
be more costly than when it relates to
brokers marketing themselves. In fact,
the subject of brokers marketing
themselves can sometimes be an oxymoron,
because relatively few brokers do much
of anything to market themselves to
their clients and prospects on a regular
basis. And their attitude often once
again is "If the office isn't going
to pay for it then I'm not going to pay
for it either." This
is a major arena where brokers fall
short of doing what normal business
owners do themselves. But the good news
is there's tremendous opportunity for
any brokers who choose to be outstanding
at marketing themselves, because very
often they have no competition from
other brokers in their own territory
around this. Outside of having their
signs up on available properties, most
brokers do very little to build their
image, positioning, and visibility in
the marketplace. To
be successful at marketing yourself as a
broker, you must be willing to spend the
money, regardless of whether or not your
office will be sharing the expense with
you. The payoff for you in doing this is
simply way too big to not be willing to
do this on your own. As
I've instructed the brokers in my monthly
Commercial Agent Inner Circle
telecoaching program in great
detail, spending $25,000.00 a year or so
on a solid mailing campaign to 2,000
prospects can generate an additional
$450,000.00 or more a year in
commissions for you. But you need to get
the proper direction on how to design
and implement this program in order for
it to be most effective for you. Several
months ago I had a conversation with a
young agent who's become a major player
in his market after being in the
business for only 2-3 years. He's got
the veterans in his market scratching
their heads wondering what he's been
doing to gain such a huge amount of
market share in such a short period of
time. And
what's his secret? He mails to all of
his clients and prospects eight times
every month! And when people receive
information from you as a broker eight
times a month, it's difficult for them
to ever think of working with anyone
else. In
addition, two of my coaching clients,
working as a team, designed 12 postcards
under my guidance and direction and
mailed one postcard a month to their
clients and prospects throughout this
past year. Their investment in the
design, printing, and mailing over the
course of the year was $12,000.00, and
the postcards have now generated more
than $500,000.00 in additional
commissions for them. That's what's
possible when you commit yourself to a
solid mailing program. But
because most offices will not invest
this kind of money in a mailing campaign
for you, you need to be willing to
invest this kind of money yourself. And
as you can see, the payoff can easily be
well worth it. No
matter how good you are at prospecting,
you can't have a conversation with every
client and prospect you'd like to work
with every single month. But through
direct mail, people will receive your
message every month, and this will brand
you in their minds as the broker they'll
want to work with when they're ready to
take action. The
one remaining question here for you is,
"Will this be the year you'll
invest in a solid mailing campaign that
will generate great new commissions for
you...or not?"
Click
here for downloadable E-books and live audio interviews with
top-producing commercial real estate agents. These interviews
are with industry experts
who show you exactly what they do to
continually make $500,000.00 to over a million of dollars a year.
|
