When it comes to getting more commercial real estate listings, there’s definitely the prospecting that will have you locate more owners who will want to list their properties, and then there’s what you do after you’ve already located the lead in attempting to move forward to get the listing. So with this in mind, once you’ve located the lead, everything you then do in moving forward has to do with your presentation skills, and with what specifically you do to stand out from all of your competitors to land the listing.
Ideally you’ll want to move forward as quickly as you can to set up a face-to-face meeting with the owner, and ideally, you don’t want it to be a Zoom meeting, either. There’s nothing quite like having a real face-to-face meeting with someone to take your relationship with them to the next level, so do everything you can, while treating your owner with respect, to make this live, in-person meeting with them happen.
For example, can you get the owner to go to lunch with you? Because there’s something about sharing a meal with someone that can really help to move the business relationship to the next level. In addition, something you may want to do at the second or third meeting with your owner is to give them a book as a gift. This will show them that you’re kind, and that you care and are thoughtful, and if you choose your books wisely, this one small gift can impress them.
So with this in mind, I recommend that you continually have 3-5 potential books in mind that you can give to your prospects, and then pick just one based upon which one you believe would resonate the best with the person. While giving something like a gift basket or a gift that costs significantly more than the book would be appropriate after you’ve closed a transaction with someone, it would be overkill when you’re just getting to know someone.
Then what you ideally want to do is design a systematic approach that you’ll follow with every single owner who becomes a listing prospect. Determine the sequential steps you’ll want to go through with each owner, leading all the way up through asking them for the listing. Then keep track of each prospect, noting at which step they are within your system, so that you’ll make sure to follow a similar approach with every owner.
What we’re talking about here is you putting together a system that you believe will have you stand out from your competitors to successfully get more listings, so that you begin closing an even higher percentage of your owners on giving you their listings. There are a number of different items and approaches that you can include within your system…too many, actually, to list within this article, but one item you’ll definitely want to address is what you’ll be telling and showing your owners you’ll be doing to market their property for them. With this in mind, understand that the question that is continually going on in the back of the owner’s mind is, “How do I know you’re the one broker who will sell my property in the shortest amount of time, and at the price that I’ll be absolutely thrilled with?” As an example of this, if you have 17 different things you can show them you’ll be doing to market their property, this will collectively look, sound, and feel much better to them than the broker who will be showing them just 5-7 things that they’ll be doing to market the property.
In addition, continually work on improving your presentation skills, too, as it is the sum total of your presentation skills that will have you either successfully landing the listing, or have the listing go to one of your competitors instead of you. So with this in mind, go into your conference room and role play with someone acting as your owner, and deliver to them what would normally be your first face-to-face presentation that you deliver when you first meet an owner, as well as deliver to them your official listing presentation. Video these presentations, watch them, learn from them, and adjust them to become even more impactful. In addition, ask yourself the following question, “If I were an owner of one of these properties, what would I want to see, hear, and feel from an agent, in order to then move forward and list my property with them?”
Then, what you’ll really want to do is…move forward and become this agent.