http://www.commercialrealestatenewsletter.net/

Leveraging your time as a commercial broker today is very important. In addition, prospecting is an important part of your weekly routine in developing more new business for yourself, too. But if you’re like most commercial brokers, you may be having difficulty in always getting your prospecting done.

This is where voice broadcasting can become a very powerful tool for you. Voice broadcasting allows you to record a spoken-voice message and then leave it as a voicemail message for hundreds or thousands of your clients and prospects, all without you needing to make one single phone call.

Let’s say, for example, that you have a new listing that’s priced to move, and you want to discover who in your database may be looking to buy a building right now. In this situation, you could record a voice message similar to the following:

"Hi, this is Jim Gillespie with Capital Business Properties, and I hope you’re doing well. I’ve just listed a building in the area that’s for sale at $60.00 a square foot, and I know that it’s going to move very quickly at this price. If you’re looking to buy a building give me a call right now at XXX-XXX-XXXX. Thanks."

You’ll then upload this voice message into the voice broadcast system along with the phone numbers of everyone you want the message to be broadcast to, and the system will dial all of the phone numbers and broadcast the message to everyone. In addition, your message will only be broadcast when your client or prospect doesn’t answer their telephone directly, and their voicemail system answers for them instead.

This can be a great way to reach everyone in your database simultaneously with a prospecting message, all for just 3 cents to 6 cents a call, depending on your call volume. In addition, you can leave messages for your clients and prospects giving them market updates, offering them a comps report, or telling them that you have someone with $2,000,000.00 cash who needs to buy a building, and to call you if they’re interested in selling theirs.

If you plan on utilizing a service like this one, make sure that with the people you’ll be calling you’re in compliance with any Federal, state, and local laws, and make sure that your broker will be OK with you doing this, too.

If you’re interested in more information on this, do an Internet search under the term "voice broadcast" and talk with some of the companies who are already providing this service.

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If you’re interested in one-on-one coaching to take your commercial real estate brokerage business to the next level, click here to contact me.

"My work with Jim has helped my team, my company, and my development business to perform at substantially higher levels."

D. Alex Rhoten
Coldwell Banker Commercial

Click here to see more testimonials from my coaching clients.

For many brokers within our industry, their brokerage careers began by someone telling them to pickup a phone and begin calling people, and then from there after some time they started to wing it. The problem with this is that when you begin getting busy, working on transactions, closing transactions, and still trying to generate more new business for yourself, things can start getting crazy.

Oftentimes brokers get themselves to the point where they become reactive…responding to incoming phone calls, texts, and E-mails from their clients and prospects, instead of being proactive and doing what will control their destiny. If you’re being reactive to the demands of your clients and prospects, instead of being proactive and controlling your own destiny, you’re letting other people determine your own level of success in your business.

Here are some questions to be asking yourself right now around this:

1) How much do you feel you’re in control of your own destiny in your commercial brokerage business?

2) How much do you feel you’re in control of how you’re spending your time right now in your commercial brokerage business day-to-day?

3) Do you feel that other people or other circumstances are interfering with how you really should be spending your time?

If you want to control your own destiny within your commercial brokerage business, you need to be the person who’s in control of how you’re spending your time.

With this in mind, ask yourself how much time you’re spending every week in your business working on these five activities:

1) Prospecting 10-12 hours every week.

5) Working on your presentation skills so you continually improve them and deliver the best presentations of any broker in your market.

These five activities represent a system and an approach that will help keep you focused, on track, and doing what will have you continually grow your brokerage business.

Many brokers aren’t prospecting 10-12 hours or more every week in their brokerage business, yet brokers most of the time are relying on prospecting to develop more business for themselves. So if you’re serious about developing more new business for yourself, get your prospecting done with no excuses.

Mailing is a great way to brand yourself in the minds of the people you want to do business with. Sending 24 or more mailers a year to your people will make it really difficult for them to think of any other commercial broker except you, especially when you’re providing them with helpful, informative information in your mailers. Sending 24 mailers every year, in addition to making 2-4 prospecting calls every year to your people, will brand you far ahead of all your competitors who are just making their prospecting calls.

You must have a database that includes every prospect you want to do business with along with their contact information. Because if you don’t have this information in your database, you can’t do business with the people who aren’t in there. In addition, if you need a solid resource for getting your database into great shape, take a look at the service that’s available at www.ProspectNow.com.

One of the greatest mistakes commercial brokers make is dropping out their communication with their past clients after they’ve already closed transactions with them. This then has you competing with other brokers to work with the same clients the next time. By keeping in contact with your past clients, going to lunch with them, socializing with them, and giving them gifts, you maximize the probability that they’ll be working with you once again on their next transaction.

And finally, working on your presentation skills is what will have you close more people on working with you exclusively, which then leads to you making more money. Role play with someone with them acting as your decision maker, and videotape the presentation. Then watch the video and learn what you can to improve your presentations to your clients and prospects in the future. The more that you impact people through your presentations, the more they’ll want to work with you.

So if you focus on the five basic activities I’ve outlined above, you’ll begin making more money and you’ll obtain more repeat business from your past clients. Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 for each of these five activities, determine which ones represent the greatest opportunity for immediate growth within your business if you begin focusing on them, and then get to work on improving your business! When you continually do this process throughout time, you’ll end up systematizing your business, focusing on the activities that will make you more money, and you’ll become more proactive rather than reactive within your brokerage business…doing the activities that will have you chart your own destiny.

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The latest edition of my Commercial Broker Newsletter is now ready for you to mail or E-mail to all of your clients and prospects. If you’re not currently sending a monthly newsletter to all of your clients and prospects, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to brand yourself and keep you in people’s minds every month throughout the year! If you’re interested in more information on how you can send this newsletter to your clients and prospects, click here.

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If you’re interested in one-on-one coaching to take your commercial real estate brokerage business to the next level, click here to contact me.

"With Jim’s coaching I landed $1.7 million in new business in my first eight weeks!"

Mark Whitman
Dorin Realty

Click here to see more testimonials from my coaching clients.

Dan wrote the book to unquestionably brand himself as a top real estate authority within his own marketplace. As in any marketplace, there are brokers in his territory wanting to be perceived as a top authority, but Dan seized the opportunity and took a bold step to set himself apart from everyone else.

"I had three main objectives in writing the book", Dan says. "Number one, I wanted to endear my clients to me. I involved them in the development process of the book and exposed them to the wealth creation concepts in it that they weren’t getting directly from any other source. Many of my clients provided me with valuable feedback on the earlier drafts of my book, and my first objective has largely now been accomplished.

Second, I found that many times I was arguing with my clients when I’d see them getting off track from making the decisions that were the best ones for them. So in the book I compiled the ‘golden rules of investing’, and now when a client fights me on something that is clearly in their own best interest, I refer them to those golden rules, which then usually solves the problem. The book itself is an authoritative instrument on the subject, and a broker arguing with them is not!

Third, I wanted to generate more business with this creative marketing idea. Since I’ve just released the book, this aspect of my plan is currently a work in progress, because I really want to finish the audio version of the book before I begin marketing the book full out to my prospects. But the early feedback I’ve gotten from people on the book has been very positive!"

Then when I asked Dan to elaborate further on this last statement, he said, "When someone learns that I’ve written a book, a ‘real’ book, they’re both surprised and then they want me to tell them more about it. In addition, they treat me with more respect. My clients and prospects are very complimentary and admire what I’ve accomplished. However, once they actually read the book, they turn into raving fans and tell all their friends about it!"

For most brokers, writing a book alone would be a great accomplishment, but as I mentioned earlier, Dan also invented a card game that teaches people the principles of building wealth. The game is called "Net Worth, The FUN Money Game", and here’s what Dan has to say about it:

"The game teaches people the value of becoming debt free and collecting assets like investment real estate. Players shed their debt, collect assets, and use financial events to prevent other players from doing the same. As the game’s name implies, the player with the highest net worth at the end of the game wins.

While I was writing the book, I thought that it would be nice to be able to teach some of its wealth strategies in a tangible, fun way. But I had two big challenges to overcome while I was creating the game. First of all, it had to be fun to play. Secondly, it had to have a tie-in to my commercial real estate brokerage business. Eventually, both challenges were solved.

The game is another tangible reminder that I am not your average broker. When clients get their hands on both the game and the book their jaws tend to drop. In fact, most are so curious about the game that they interrupt our meeting and want to play it! Then after a few hands we return back to the real estate business that we need to talk about.

I’ve been giving each client and prospect I meet with a single card game for themselves, but inevitably they like the game so much that they ask me for more of them, and on the average, I end up giving away three card games per client. This is something I didn’t anticipate when I created the game, and the game has really become a huge conversation piece!

The game is really a blast to play. It’s probably best been described as ‘Uno meets Monopoly, with a dash of financial planning’".

So there you have it. One broker’s quest to stand out from and beat his competitors has him writing a book about becoming rich, and inventing a card game on the subject also. In times like these, the subject of becoming rich really gets people’s attention, too, because so many people’s financial statements aren’t what they used to be.

Click here if you’d like to download Dan’s book, or if you’d like to read more about his book and his card game.

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The latest edition of my Commercial Broker Newsletter is now ready for you to mail or E-mail to all of your clients and prospects. If youre not currently sending a monthly newsletter to all of your clients and prospects, youre missing out on a huge opportunity to brand yourself and keep you in peoples minds every month throughout the year! If youre interested in more information on how you can send this newsletter to your clients and prospects, click here.

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If you’re interested in one-on-one coaching to take your commercial real estate brokerage business to the next level, click here to contact me.

"Just one marketing idea Jim gave me produced $14,500,000.00 in new listings for me. His coaching program really works!"

Mark Groves
BRC Advisors

Click here to see more testimonials from my coaching clients.

Here’s a link to a summary of the publications that Bill’s currently sending to his commercial real estate clients and prospects:

http://www.billgladstone.com/gillespie/

Here’s a link to an archive of previous publications that Bill’s already sent out to his clients and prospects:

http://www.billgladstone.com/Resources/ArchiveIndex.htm

Bill utilizes his own bobblehead doll as part of his marketing efforts, and here’s a link to the "Bill Gladstone Bobblehead Doll" photo gallery:

http://www.billgladstone.com/Services/bobble.htm

This is a link to all of the items that Bill hands out to his clients and prospects as part of his ongoing marketing campaign, and he includes an explanation as to why he utilizes each item:

http://realestatesalescoach.com/Bill_Gladstone_Marketing_2011.pdf

Here’s a video Bill’s recorded that he utilizes to introduce people to his brokerage team:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTIoCWQ4XyQ

Here’s a video Bill’s recorded for his clients and prospects, where he features an expert talking about the impact of Federal Reserve policy on bank lending:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwFTbrUJzEA&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

Here’s an example of Bill’s quarterly video report that he makes available to his clients and prospects:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB3wOJZmjAI&feature=youtu.be

And finally, as you can see in this video, Bill and his team like to have fun together, and here’s a link to the music video that they’ve recorded:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgOjN9TD0kI&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

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Next Wednesday, July 13th, I’ll be leading a teleconference where I’ll tell you about the company that’s doing telephone prospecting for brokers with some of the largest, most recognizable firms in our industry. If getting someone else to do your prospecting for you is something that interests you, click here to learn more about this teleconference. In addition, if you’re registered for the teleconference, I’ll send you the audio CDs, written transcription, and written highlights from the teleconference, all in the mail to you!

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If you’re interested in one-on-one coaching to take your commercial real estate brokerage business to the next level, click here to contact me.

"We own a commercial brokerage company, a real estate development company, and a property management company. With Jims help weve now substantially reduced our overhead, and have implemented a marketing approach thats bringing us more quality transactions than we ever would have imagined."

Jeffrey Weitz and Matt Schweitzer
North Rim Partners

Click here to see more testimonials from my coaching clients.

When you’re designing your own template for a listing presentation package, it’s much easier to do it if you’ve got one or more other listing presentation packages you can utilize as your guideline, to generate some great ideas for you. Attempting to design your listing presentation package template from scratch, without looking at other outstanding presentation packages, is like trying to reinvent the wheel without ever having seen one. It’s not easy, and you can really knock yourself out in the process.

So the question for you then becomes, "How can I see some great listing presentation packages that I can then utilize to generate some great ideas for my own package?"

Here are some ideas for you:

1) When you’ve made a listing presentation where you’ve successfully landed the listing, and you’ve competed against other brokers for the listing, ask the owner to let you have the other listing presentation packages. You’ve already impressed the owner enough to have been awarded the listing, and since they’ve already rejected the other brokers, they’ll probably be OK with giving you the other presentation packages. After all, they’re not going to be having a continued relationship with these brokers since they’ve already turned them down.

2) When you’ve made a listing presentation where you haven’t gotten the listing, and the listing has been awarded to another brokerage firm, you could say something similar to the following to your owner: "Bob, it’s very important to me to continually improve myself as a broker, and as you know I’ve spent some time in researching your property, preparing my listing presentation package, and making my presentation to you. All I ask since I didn’t get the listing, is that you let me review the other listing presentation packages, so that I can improve both my package and my presentation, and land the listing the next time."

3) If you’re friends with a broker who doesn’t compete with you, because they specialize in another kind of commercial real estate, or they work in a different territory than you, ask them to let you see their listing presentation package. (This person could even be right in your own office!) If they don’t compete with you and the two of you are friends, this is probably something they’d be willing to do for you.

4) If you’re a member of an organization like SIOR or CCIM, or you work for a brokerage company that has offices in other cities, this could be a perfect opportunity for you to network with other members of your organization, share information with them, and obtain copies of people’s listing presentations that will help you to build your own. 

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If you’d like to obtain a PDF copy of an 18-page listing presentation package that a top SIOR broker is now utilizing in his brokerage business, then join me for my upcoming teleconference this Wednesday, April 13th. This SIOR broker will tell you what he’s been doing to close 45 transactions a year in this difficult market, and he’ll be giving you a copy of his listing presentation package, too!

So if you’re not already registered for this live teleconference, click here for more information. And even if you register but can’t attend the live teleconference, I’ll still send you the audio CDs, written transcription, and highlights from my interview with this top expert, all in the mail to you!

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If you’re interested in one-on-one coaching to take your commercial real estate brokerage business to the next level, click here to contact me.

"My work with Jim is making me more effective at finding new business with the kind of companies I want to work with."

Larry Crumbley, SIOR, CCIM
Fickling & Company

Click here to see more testimonials from my coaching clients.

Mailing and E-mailing to your people throughout the year, with good, solid information they’ll definitely want to know about, and informing them on the important trends you’re observing within the market, is one way. But here’s another approach that could really help you differentiate yourself in the minds of the people you want to do business with, if you decide to move forward and implement it:

Record 15 to 30-minute telephone interviews with business leaders within your community, and E-mail the links to listen to the interviews to everyone you want listening to them. You can choose the people you’ll interview according to who you want to do more business with, and you could interview civic and political leaders within your community also.

Choose subjects your commercial real estate prospects would like to know about, and choose people to interview who will do a great job of delivering the information to them. And in the process you’ll provide your people with insights from top community leaders they’ll want to hear from, and you’ll be positioning yourself as the one broker who has an inside relationship with these people, too. And people love to work with others within their community who they feel are connected with the top-level people!

Now in addition to you sending these interviews out to the people on your E-mail list, the people you’ll interview will probably want their own interview heard by everyone on their own E-mail list, too. So just provide the people you interview with a link to send to their own people so they can listen to the interview, and you’ll be getting great publicity with a wider audience!

So now when you’re calling the people on the telephone who you’d like to do business with, and who you’d like to interview, you could leave a voicemail message for them similar to, "I’m calling because I’d like to schedule an interview with you as a top business leader within our community, and the interview will be listened to by thousands of business owners in the area."

Now that’s a great message to be leaving for people, as compared with one that’s asking them about their current real estate needs!

In addition, if you wanted to you could create audio CD sets from these interviews and give them to the people you want to do business with. Because who else but the top commercial broker in your territory would have audio CD sets to give away, featuring their own interviews with top business, political, and civic leaders within the community?

Positioning yourself in the minds of the people you want to do business with, so that you stand out as the best choice they could ever make in a commercial real estate broker, is where you want to be playing the game. And as I once heard a great direct response marketer say on this subject, "When it’s time to ask your people for their business, you want them to be so sold on working with you in advance, that it feels more like order taking from them and a lot less like you having to sell them." 

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My April Commercial Broker Newsletter is now ready for you to mail or E-mail to all of your clients and prospects. If you’re not currently sending a monthly newsletter to all of your clients and prospects, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to brand yourself and keep you in people’s minds every month throughout the year! If you’re interested in more information on how you can send this newsletter to your clients and prospects, click here.

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If you’re interested in one-on-one coaching to take your commercial real estate brokerage business to the next level, click here to contact me.

"Jim has helped me to organize a game plan and work it with the tenacity that’s producing a greater number of transactions for me in my marketplace."

Scott Wilcott
NAI Capital

Click here to see more testimonials from my coaching clients.

Think about this for a moment…When you’re prospecting people throughout the year, how many times are you actually prospecting them? Twice? Three times? Maybe four times at the most if you’re not currently following up with them on a particular real estate requirement? But if you’re marketing to them also by mailing to them 12-24 times a year, you’re branding yourself in their minds 12-24 more times during the year when compared with just doing your prospecting alone. And these additional 12-24 contacts with them are extremely powerful!

Even if you were instead just E-mailing to them one or more times a month, with solid information they’ll want to know about, this is much more powerful than just prospecting them 2-4 times a year alone. When you’re mailing or E-mailing to people, providing them with information they’ll definitely want to know about, you’ll stay in their mind much more as someone they’d be interested in working with. In addition, when you include a photo of yourself in every mailer or E-mail you send to them, they begin to feel that they already know you, which is very, very powerful also.

Yes, we all know that residential agents include photos of themselves in their mailers, and there are a lot of commercial brokers who won’t do this because this is what the residential agents are doing. But it’s solid marketing, and it makes your clients and prospects feel that they already have a relationship with you, and that they already know you. Residential agents are getting signed exclusive listing agreements from their owners also, and I’ve yet to meet a commercial broker who refuses to do this in their own business, because this is what the residential agents are doing. So whether it’s including your photo in your mailers, or getting signed exclusive listings, they’re both activities that make solid business sense.

And when you’re mailing or E-mailing to all of your clients and prospects, don’t focus exclusively on sending them "just listed" and "just sold" information…or comparable sales and leasing rate information. Sending this information does nothing to differentiate you in their minds as a brilliant consultant or an advisor, and it doesn’t do much to differentiate you from your competitors either.

Any broker can send just listed, just sold, and comparable sales and leasing information to all of their clients and prospects, and there will definitely be times when you’ll want to be doing this. But what you’ll want to be doing in addition to this, is differentiating yourself as the consultant or advisor who will expertly guide your people through their next transaction. Send them information including articles that you’ve written, telling them all the important trends going on in your marketplace, how these trends affect them, and what this now means in terms of what they can expect with property values in the area in the coming months.

People want to work with the person who they feel understands both the trends in the market, and where the market is headed, much more than they want to work with the person who just reports data and information to them that’s easily obtainable from other brokers.

So when you’re mailing and E-mailing to your clients and prospects, position yourself in their minds as the one consultant or advisor who knows what’s really going on, who can expertly guide them through the closing of their next transaction. Keep this in mind when you’re writing what you’re going to be sending to them, and write to them in the voice of the person who already is this expert they want to be working with.

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This Wednesday, February 16th, I’ll be interviewing a man who’s a Past President of SIOR, who’ll be telling you how you can get paid hundreds of dollars an hour in guaranteed money by handling distressed properties. This broker has represented some of the biggest, most recognizable names in Corporate America, including General Motors, Kraft Foods, Nike, Motorola, General Dynamics, Hughes Aircraft Company, Cox Communications, Bank of America, Sanwa Bank, and Mary Kay Cosmetics. Click here for more information on this live teleconference, and even if you register for it but can’t attend it, I’ll still send you the audio CDs, written transcription, and highlights from my interview with this expert, all in the mail to you! 

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If you’re interested in one-on-one coaching to take your commercial real estate brokerage business to the next level, click here to contact me.

"My work with Jim has helped my team, my company, and my development business to perform at substantially higher levels."

D. Alex Rhoten
Coldwell Banker Commercial

Click here to see more testimonials from my coaching clients.

In addition to the 80/20 rule, I believe more than 80% of the growth of your brokerage business will come from focusing on the following four areas:

1) Prospecting
2) Mailing
3) Improving Your Presentation Skills
4) Building Relationships

Prospecting

Prospecting is both the easiest and fastest way to build your real estate business. The main problem here is that most commercial agents, both new agents and veterans, keep making excuses about why they can’t get their prospecting done. If you just prospected 10-12 hours every week of the year you’d be immersed in so much solid activity, that you’d stop making those kind of excuses altogether. You’d just be making more money for yourself, plain and simple. The key, though, is continuing on with your prospecting when you get busy with solid new activity, because this is when most brokers stop doing their prospecting.

When you prospect every week year-round you make more money, you upgrade the quality of client you’re working with, and you upgrade the average commission you earn per transaction. This is because you’re constantly focused on finding new and better leads, and you let go of the more marginal leads you used to be working on.

Mailing

Mailing is definitely the most underutilized tool in commercial real estate brokerage. And when you mail to your clients and prospects two or more times every month, you brand yourself in their minds as the agent they’ll want to work with. The problem, though, is that most commercial brokers won’t spend any money on a regular mailing campaign.

A solid mailing program will make you a lot more money in new commissions when compared with what you’re spending on the mailing program. This definitely applies if you’re mailing to your clients and prospects two or more times every month, as your clients and prospects will constantly have you on their minds when you’re mailing to them with this kind of frequency.

One very successful broker who I’ve interviewed, who’s a member of both SIOR and CCIM, told me that his brokerage income quadrupled when he began his solid mailing campaign to his clients and prospects, and he now spends more than $100,000.00 a year on marketing. This is how much of a difference mailing can make to you in your brokerage business, if you’re willing to seize the opportunity.

In addition, solid, targeted E-mailing can be a great way to develop new business for yourself also, but you need to be utilizing the right system to make it all happen for you. With this in mind I recommend the people at http://www.mindmatrix.net, as they have this solid system already in place, and they have a number of additional products and services that you may find very useful as a commercial broker, too.

Improving Your Presentation Skills

Improving one’s presentation skills is one of the most overlooked areas in commercial real estate brokerage. If you normally close 40% of your prospects on working with you exclusively, and you improve this percentage to 50% through improving your presentation skills, you’ve just increased your income by 25%. (The 10% improvement divided by the original 40% closing ratio represents a 25% improvement…and 25% more money in your pocket.)

Find someone to deliver your "exclusive" presentation to and videotape it. Then after watching the video you’ll recognize that you’ve learned a great deal from it. Notice the areas you’d like to improve on, implement your improvements, and videotape yourself again in three months. When you continue doing this on a regular basis you’ll find your clients and prospects saying "Yes" to you more frequently, which translates into more money for you.

Building Relationships

So many commercial agents neglect the clients they’ve already closed transactions with. And this often continues for weeks, months, and even years after closing a transaction with them. In the mean time your competitors keep calling these people and positioning themselves to work with them the next time they have a real estate requirement.

If after 10-20 years in the business you’ve closed transactions with 200 different people (or companies), and on the average these people continue closing one transaction every five years, that’s 40 transactions you could be involved in closing every year just off of the repeat business from these people. But this only applies if you build relationships with them and position yourself as their "broker for life" throughout the years along the way.

Stay in contact with these people, ask them how you can help them even when you don’t think they’re looking to close a real estate transaction right now, take them to lunch constantly, and give them gifts 2-4 times a year. And in doing this it makes it very hard for your clients to ever think about working with anyone else.

All the success you’ve ever wanted to achieve as a commercial real estate broker is constantly available to you. And if you just focus on these four arenas and do what I’ve recommended, you’ll experience solid growth in your commercial brokerage business in the months and years ahead.  

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If you want to plan next year so you achieve solid success in your commercial brokerage business, join me for my upcoming teleconference titled, "Planning Your Commercial Real Estate Excellence for 2011." I’ll be interviewing a top commercial broker who’s closed more than $2.5 billion in commercial real estate transactions, and I’ll send the audio CDs, written transcription, and highlights of the teleconference all in the mail to you. Click here for more information on this teleconference, and to learn how you can obtain all of this information.

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If you’re interested in one-on-one coaching to take your commercial real estate brokerage business to the next level, click here to contact me.

"After just weeks of working with Jim I’m getting much more done now with far greater ease, and he has my agents completely on fire and much more passionate about their business!"

Mike Spears, SIOR
The National Realty Group

Click here to see more testimonials from my coaching clients.

The Holidays are a great time for you to reconnect with your clients–the people you’ve already closed transactions with over the years. And one of the reasons I’m writing this article at this exact time, is to give you plenty of time to buy Holiday gifts for your clients and get the gifts into their hands, especially if this is something you normally haven’t done.

Giving gifts to your clients is a great way to show them how you feel about them, and show your appreciation for the business they’ve already brought to you. But at the same time, a lot of commercial brokers don’t understand how much gift-giving can lead to constant, repeat business for them over the years. Which is why I’m including the following dollars and cents analysis in this article.

Let’s say that you have a client who closes one transaction every five years, and you earn approximately $10,000.00 in commission every time you close a transaction with them. And let’s say that you give them gifts twice a year, for a total of $100.00 that you spend every year on gifts for them.

So when you’re giving gifts twice a year to your past clients, this represents tremendous insurance towards having them work with you again on their next transaction. It’s simply too difficult for most people to receive two gifts a year from someone they’ve done business with, and then turn around and do business with their competitors instead. Yes, there are people like that out there, but they’re definitely in the minority.

So in getting back to our example, if you spend $100.00 a year on gifts for your client for five years, and then you earn and get paid a $10,000.00 commission when closing their next real estate transaction along with them, that’s a solid rate of return on your money. Anytime you can spend $500.00, having it lead to you getting paid $10,000.00…is a solid return on your money.

All of this assumes, of course, that you continue treating your clients appropriately along the way, and that you continue being the solid commercial real estate professional they’d still want to work with.

(And yes, I know. There’s still the problem of you parting with the $500.00 and buying the gifts!!!)

Now compare what I’ve described here with what many commercial brokers do instead, which is close a transaction with someone, drop out all communication with them for 1-2 years or more…figuring they won’t have any real estate needs during that time, and then they find out that they’re competing all over again with all the brokers in their territory to represent the client again on their next transaction. All because the broker never did what would have solidified their relationship with the client, and position them to close more transactions with the client again in the future.

So you have a choice this Holiday Season, and you can now choose to do things differently. If you recognize the value in giving gifts to your clients, then go out and make it happen during this Holiday Season. You’ll feel great, your clients will feel great when receiving the gifts from you, and you’ll be building the bond that will help ensure you’ll be representing your clients again on their next transaction.

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If you’re interested in one-on-one coaching to take your commercial real estate brokerage business to the next level, click here to contact me.

"We own a commercial brokerage company, a real estate development company, and a property management company. With Jim’s help we’ve now substantially reduced our overhead, and have implemented a marketing approach that’s bringing us more quality transactions than we ever would have imagined."

Jeffrey Weitz & Matt Schweitzer
North Rim Partners

Click here to see more testimonials from my coaching clients.