So many times over the years I’ve been asked the question, “How can I begin landing the larger, more expensive commercial real estate listings?”

The problem here is if you’re a broker who’s working on your own within your office, without having your own team of commercial real estate brokers all working together, this is going to be more difficult for you to accomplish—especially if the owner of the property is a large corporation.

Large corporations oftentimes believe that they should be listing their properties with brokerage firms that are also large corporations. This is basically about rapport within the corporate world… with like being attracted to like.

In addition, in Corporate America, the people making the decision on which brokerage firm to list the property with want to cover their rear ends in case something goes wrong, either with the listing not moving, or with there being a problem within the transaction itself, and hiring one of the largest brokerage firms in existence will help them to accomplish this.

So then if something goes wrong, the company officers who hired the brokerage firm can say, “We hired one of the largest, most respected brokerage firms in America” to their bosses, or something like, “We hired the same brokerage firm that our company has always utilized in other major cities”, and that should then help to get these decision makers off the hook with their bosses.

In addition, if you’re a broker doing business without a team of brokers surrounding you, and you’re competing against other major brokerage companies to get a listing, you may seem very small and insubstantial during your listing presentation. You may be presenting to a group of corporate officials in a room all by yourself, while the big brokerage companies will be presenting with teams of 3-6 brokers all in the room together… and this alone can make you feel like a less desirable choice for the officials to then move forward and list their property with.

In addition to this, the amount of commission paid on the larger transactions has been beaten down over the years, and if you’re operating as a solo broker without a team, you could make more money by selling a $5,000,000.00 listing, than each individual broker might make when selling a $50,000,000.00 listing, by the time you divide what may be a 1% commission (or less) on that transaction, among 3-6 brokers.

So while it may seem more glamorous to be listing and working on the really big deals, when you pull out the calculator and do the math, the money waiting for you on a per-deal basis may not be what you had anticipated, and you’d better be going after those larger listings along with a solid brokerage team working along with you, if you are serious about landing them.

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If you’re interested in one-on-one coaching, having me do a one- hour strategy session with you, or in having me lead a webinar or a training for your organization, send me an Email or give me a call!