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The
Heart and Soul of Getting Exclusives From
time-to-time I have commercial agents
I've never even spoken with before call me or
E-mail me asking me the following
question: "Can
you send me copies of all the exclusive
presentation packages you've got in your
possession from the top-producing
commercial agents you've worked with
over the years?" And
of course they want me to make all the
copies myself and then send them these
packages for free. But
in reality I don't have any of these
presentation packages in my possession.
And even if I did I'd never give them
out without the approval of the brokers
who put them together. And
I'm mentioning this to you for a reason,
and that reason is that there's a lot
more that goes into determining whether
or not you'll be chosen for an exclusive
assignment by someone outside of the presentation package
you hand them. In fact, depending on
your relationship with the prospect,
your presentation package may have very
little to do with whether or not you get
chosen to represent them. But
there's a mentality within some brokers
in our industry that has them believing
the reason they're not successful at
getting exclusives is because they
don't have the unbelievably impressive
package to put on the conference room
table in front of people. And that
somehow if they had this package, people
would magically just start saying
"Yes" to them more frequently.
Because the package would say and do
everything that somehow the agent cannot say and
do themselves. In a way it's as if the
package represents the Holy Grail,
and if the agent could only get their hands on
one to copy from someone, then somehow
all of their fortunes would immediately
begin changing in their commercial real
estate business. And
the joke of the matter is that in
reality, most of the agents who think
this way would simply look at this
package if they ever received it, admire
it, and then never get around to
adapting it to utilize in their own
business. It would just be too much work
with all the other things they've got
on their plate to keep them busy all the
time. Because if it really was that
important to them they would have
developed a package like it quite some
time ago. And two years from now they'll still
probably be thinking that they'll get
around to
it sometime soon. What
I've just described to you is one of the
classic differences between mediocre
agents, and top producing ones. There's
so much more that goes into getting an
exclusive agreement than having a great
presentation package. In fact, in an
interview I did with Grubb & Ellis'
Stan Mullin who is this year's SIOR
President, Stan mentioned that in his
opinion 65% of the time when he's
presenting for an exclusive, the
principals have already decided who
they're going to hire for the job before
he makes his presentation. And in
situations like these having the most
unbelievable presentation package to
hand to people when you walk in the door
really isn't going to make much
difference. So
what does make the difference? Your
people skills, your relationship skills,
and the relationship your company has
with important decision makers in the
companies you want to work with. The
latter item is more important with
corporate-style decision makers you want
to do business with and less important
with entrepreneurial-style decision
makers who own their own companies and
make their own decisions. As
an example of this, I was talking with
one of my coaching clients recently and
asked him what he does in his
presentations for exclusive listings
with people. He responded with, "I
don't have a presentation I utilize, and
I haven't made a listing presentation in five
years. All of my business has come to me
in the last five years from the people I
know and the people they introduce me
to...and no formal presentation on my part has
ever been necessary." Which
shows you how important relationships
and knowing the right people are as compared to
just having an amazing
presentation package to hand to people. Now let me make it clear that I'm all in
favor of you presenting amazing
presentation packages to people. When
you're in the running for an exclusive
and it's tough for the principals to
differentiate between you and one or
more other brokerage companies, your
package may definitely help you out there. It can
also help you out by presenting a
congruent image of yourself and your
team, one that is in complete alignment
with the impeccable presentation you
hopefully delivered when interacting
with the principals themselves. But if
you had to choose between mailing a
great presentation package to the
principals and never talking to or
meeting with them, or meeting with them
and handing them no presentation package
at all, which route do you think would
give you a better chance of landing the
exclusive? In my opinion, your people and
relationship skills are more important
than any package you hand to them. So
recognize that there's much more that
goes into getting a signed exclusive
than handing people a great presentation
package. When you're dealing with
corporate decision makers whose
companies own or lease many different
locations nationwide, they may already
know who they're going to give the
assignment to before you meet with them.
And for entrepreneurial decision makers,
they're more likely to go with their gut
feeling on who they feel is the best
broker to represent them right
now. So
yes, you want to hand your people a great
presentation package. But more
importantly, you want to make sure you
have the people skills, solid relationships,
and presentation skills to land you the
business. 
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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 more
than a million of dollars a year.
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