In commercial real estate sales and leasing, it is increasingly common to hear that agents have no time to spare each day. Usually there are plenty of things going on around the office and in the property market. That being said, you still need to get to some critical things that allow you to build your business. The solution is to put more people around you and get some outside assistance.
When you look at the daily tasks that need to be done, there are still two or three that are very important. Typically they are:
- Finding new business opportunities through daily prospecting
- Servicing your existing clients with effective marketing campaigns
- Matching buyers and tenants to your listings
So these three things drive the entire commercial real estate cycle. Some of these things can be adjusted to involve other people to assist you. Having a good personal assistant that understands your business processes will be of high value in your career. First and foremost, you need to get to the point where you can afford this high quality person. You will need the right person and that will be a cost to you personally or to the business.
Before I go further here into the strategy behind the process, I would like to say that you should never ultimately delegate the prospecting process to other people, and do so for the wrong reasons. I have seen many salespeople seize the opportunity to give others the task of making cold calls and door knocking. The best salespeople always prospect every day in some way or form, and find the process critical to their leverage in the market place.
Always remember that you are in a professional selling industry; that requires an exceptional salesperson that is prepared to do the difficult things each and every day. You have to 'sell' in many ways and forms.
So you can appoint people to assist you with each of these three processes. They should however not entirely take over and remove you from the 3 key activities. You must still have a discipline of client connection and negotiation as part of your business model. You are the person to do the deals and that is a fact to be remembered.
Taking these three points that I have just mentioned, you can adjust your business day in the following way:
- Get someone to research the correct people to cold call. This research process takes a lot of time. When the correct numbers and contact details are passed to you, you can still make the calls. The results of the calls can then be entered into the database by your personal assistant. You should always keep a close connection with your database and review its progress every night or at the end of the business day.
- Your personal assistant can send correspondence and emails to your clients in your absence. This does not even remove you from personal contact and telephone calls with all your clients at least once or twice a week. You are the person that they hired to solve a property problem.
- You can have your personal assistant review the database to match the buyer and tenant enquiry to the lists that you have currently. This then allows you to make the personal calls to qualified people in a timely way. When the match is made, you make the call.
Always keep in touch with your market, and do not let shortcuts remove you from the process. The best salespeople are always at the front line of their business activity and marketing processes.