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How
to Explode the Growth of
Your Commercial Real Estate Business 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: Prospecting
Mailing
Improving Your Presentation Skills
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 activity you wouldn't have time to
keep making excuses. You'd just be
making more money. The key though is
continuing with your prospecting when
you get busy with solid new activity,
because this is when most brokers stop
their prospecting. When
you prospect every week year-round you
make more money, you upgrade the quality
of client you work 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 work on. When
you block out your prospecting time in
advance in your calendar every week and
just get it done with no excuses, you'll
catapult your income to new levels. 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 their
money on a regular mailing campaign. As
I've mentioned in detail to members of
my Commercial
Real Estate Inner Circle (click here for
more information), a solid mailing
program will produce at least 18 times
as much money in new commissions as what
you spend on it. This definitely applies
if you're mailing to your clients and
prospects two or more times every month.
With this in mind, two of my coaching
clients generated $500,000.00 in new
commissions within one year by designing
and mailing 12 postcards, one a month,
to their clients and prospects in 2006.
And the total cost of their mailing
program was only $12,000.00. If
you're serious about making great money
in your commercial real estate brokerage
business, you've got to implement a
solid mailing campaign. 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 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 you making more money. Building
Relationships So
many commercial agents neglect the
clients they've already closed
transactions with. And this often
continues for weeks, months, and years
after closing a transaction. 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 10-15 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 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" over the
years. 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
areas and do what I've recommended,
you'll experience tremendous growth in
your income in the months and years
ahead.
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.
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