Recently I had the pleasure of attending the SoCal CRE Market Trends event hosted by AIR CRE, featuring top experts in commercial real estate brokerage, construction, and shipping and transportation, all telling us what they're now experiencing, and predicting for the months ahead...

The words you say to your clients and prospects will either direct them towards closing a transaction with you, or direct them away from doing so. So with this in mind, you need to be very careful of what you say to your people, because you can unconsciously be directing them away from your desired outcome...

Several years ago I was interviewing a young broker on the subject of prospecting, and he told me the story of one question that he began asking during his prospecting calls, that quickly became an important, lucrative question for him to be asking...

How much research should you do on your commercial real estate prospects before you finally pickup the phone and call them? Because there are some brokers I've encountered over the years, and they're oftentimes with the larger brokerage companies, who believe that they need to spend a significant amount of time researching and learning about a company or an organization, before they ever pick up the phone and call them...

So when you encounter an owner who is interested in selling, but they tell you that the tenant has the first right of refusal to purchase the building, I recommend that you say something like the following to the owner...

Years ago I interviewed a woman who is a member of CCIM, and she told me what she had been doing during the last economic downturn that generated such tremendous income for her...

On the residential side of the real estate brokerage industry, there are people known as transaction coordinators who will work along with the agents on their sale transactions, and basically do most of the follow-up once the agreement to sell a home has been signed by both buyer and seller...

Here are two key questions to ask your sellers to determine whether they are for real, or whether they will be totally wasting your time.