« | Home | »

Powerfully Positioning Yourself in the Minds of Your Commercial Real Estate Clients and Prospects

By Jim Gillespie | February 15, 2011

Most commercial real estate brokers rely primarily on prospecting to develop more new business for themselves. And while prospecting is a solid way for brokers to develop more new business, it can be very limiting when compared with both prospecting and doing solid marketing together.

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.

__________________

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! 

__________________

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.

 


Topics: Marketing, Prospecting, Uncategorized | No Comments »