Commercial real estate is a dynamic industry. Incredible success in the business can be achieved by those brokers who know success tips for selling commercial real estate, utilize proven real estate marketing tools, and uses CRE software for prospecting and lead generation.
Therefore, in this article, I’m going to shed light on the following questions:
Sounds interesting and relevant to you? Let’s delve into the topic.
AscendixRE automates property listing, marketing emails and client reporting. Request your personal demo session.
Before answering the main question of this passage, I’d like to narrow down the query and start with the basic question: “How to be a commercial real estate broker? To be more specific, let’s take the US commercial real estate market as an example.
Every state requires commercial real estate brokers to be licensed. Requirements vary by state but generally, candidates have to be at least 18 years old, complete a number of hours of real estate or college courses, and pass a licensing exam.
So, the first three steps are covered. Okay, what’s next? The next step is to analyze the competitiveness of the market you’re in.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 518,800 jobs in the real estate and CRE industries. On average, about 47,500 openings for real estate brokers, commercial real estate agents, and sales agents are projected each year. As the industry is sensitive to economic fluctuations, the employment rate varies accordingly.
The fifth step in the career of a successful commercial real estate agent is creating a robust strategy for your professional development.
Every successful commercial real estate agent knows that to be on the wave, you need to:
And that’s the basis for gaining success in CRE. Also, as an agent, you need to know the number of closings required to hit your goal and how many other activities you need to reach the predefined number of closings (e.g., listings, proposals, meetings, phone calls, emails, etc.).
“ Your formula is simple:
1. Call, fail.
2. Call, meet, fail.
3. Call, meet, get proposal, fail.
4. Call, meet, get proposal, get listing, fail.
5. Call, meet, get proposal, get listing, get property under contract, fail.
6. Call, meet, get proposal, get listing, get property under contract, close. ”
Networking is another milestone worth mentioning.
If you want to get ahead (I’m sure you want) and turn leads into clients – you need to know how to network. Meet with different people regularly, contact them via social networks, make valuable posts on your pages to attract new followers.
Your audience isn’t only prospective clients but your fellow commercial real estate agents, either. So, connect with them to introduce yourself.
Another great way to widen your networking is to join commercial real estate associations. It increases your credibility with clients and gives your career a boost.
Here’s the list of the biggest CRE associations to join:
By joining the listed-above associations, you’ll get access to the most successful commercial real estate brokers, resources, professional insights, priceless experience, and continuing education opportunities.
Having an arsenal of cutting-edge commercial real estate resources and tools is a must-have for every broker and agent in this day and age. Below I’m going to present you with seven tools every successful commercial real estate agent should use.
7 Tools Every Successful Commercial Real Estate Agent Should Use
Multiple Listing Service (MLS)
Your listing must be visible and promoted to the targeted audience to get the best offer when selling commercial property. That’s where the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) – a database of properties for sale or lease – comes into play and gives CRE agents a competitive advantage.
Due to security requirements, only brokers can post listings on the MLS System, which means sellers get the added benefit of working with experienced professionals.
Also, MLS allows industry professionals to find the right property, track the performance of your listings, automatically add leads to your CRM (we’ll talk about it in the next passage), follow up leads.
MarketSpace is one of the examples of tools for brokers. It helps to promote your Listings and Availabilities and set up enhanced communication with tenants and investors.
CRM
CRM is #2 in our list of CRE tools for brokers. Many successful commercial real estate brokers invest in a powerful and robust CRM system that can help them save time, improve relationships with clients, and streamline their workflows.
There is a lot of information about CRM best practices. However, the benefits are impressive as well:
A good CRM is designed to help you run your commercial real estate business more successfully and allows you to track and organize your interactions with your clients and prospects in one click. Look for a CRM system that integrates with your favorite CRE tools and has a mobile application.
“ AscendixRE has proven to be an excellent solution for our Commercial Real Estate firm. Beyond the CRM functionality, it has been indispensable for deal tracking, inventory tracking, internal commission reporting, process management and client reporting. The platform is a strong "off the shelf" solution but can be tailored through custom development to fit a company's particular needs. Highly recommend. ”
Email Integration
Email integration is an essential part of success tips for selling commercial real estate. Industry professionals must be quick and mobile in response to clients. That’s why they don’t have time to jump from CRM to their email inboxes to check the letters. Therefore, it is necessary to integrate their inboxes into their CRMs.
Email integration is a tool for brokers that saves their time and increases efficiency in managing the lead flow throughout the day.
A well-designed CRM loads details about each contact, which is especially helpful when you’re on the go and don’t have time to dig through your inbox messages before responding. Thanks to this integration, all the important information about the sender is presented on the account profile in CRM.
Tools for Branded Reports and Brochures
What can stand you out as a successful commercial real estate agent among others? Branded reports, flyers, and brochures, of course.
Utilizing branded templates is a real estate agent must-have tool. Investing in that means investing in a personal brand that increases customer loyalty. Moreover, you are to win more listings and close more deals in the long run.
Composer is one of the tools for brokers you need. It helps to generate branded CRE brochures, property tour books, availability, lease, activity reports, owner’s reports within a few clicks.
Geo Mapping Tools to Search for Properties
CRE professionals are always in a process of searching. I’ve already described a tool for lead generation, so it’s time to briefly discuss commercial real estate research tools.
There are resources like ZoomInfo, Reonomy, or LoopNet you can rely on. But, Ascendix Search is focused solely on commercial real estate. The platform provides search capabilities for properties in your Salesforce from multiple locations by drawing geometric shapes on a map. Brokers and agents can convert the lists of required properties to a map to showcase the best properties to clients.
Perform a geomapping search, follow/unfollow your Records in bulk, and much more. Request a demo.
Access to Sales and Lease Comps Analytics
In commercial real estate, sales and lease comparables – “comps” – are essential documents. Sales comps provide brokers with market cap rates, price per square foot, price per unit of properties recently sold, etc. Leasing comps help analyze and predict current market trends in lease rates, terms, occupancy compared with similar properties in the area.
Access to sales and lease comps is one of the most vital commercial real estate resources among landlords, lenders, brokers, and appraisers.
To get the maximum value of this data, you need a solution that stores and organizes options for data details. Consider AscedixRE CRM as a repository platform where you can handle all the valuable data about your contacts, properties, opportunities, availabilities, and leads.
“ Perfect CRM for my company
After several months of reviewing numerous CRM solutions, I was introduced to AscendixRE and instantly knew this was the perfect CRM for my company. AscendixRE has helped us in deal tracking as well as client/lender databasing. The team at AscendixRE understood our business and our needs and was able to tailor the CRM for our specific needs. More importantly, the team at AscendixRE is made up of true professionals who are thoughtful, helpful, and efficient. Their turnaround times and ability to problem solve really allowed us to make a seamless transition. They were available to answer questions and make adjustments as we were learning the software. I highly recommend AscendixRE to all real estate professionals. ”
Document Generation
The commercial real estate industry is full of various documents: from contracts and reports to specifications and agreements. However, generating these documents or being without them slows down your progress on a deal.
Document-generation tools for brokers ensure these situations never occur. It is also another one of those CRE tools (along with email integration) that you can integrate with a solid CRM, making it easier to manage the documents associated with each deal in your pipeline.
As you may assume from this article, there are several answers to the question: “How to succeed in commercial real estate?”
Use these tips as a roadmap and persist in implementing them week after week. If you do, it won’t be long before you become a successful commercial real estate broker.
In case you need assistance in CRE tools and want to have a trustworthy informational resource, read the case studies or contact our managers.
Kateryna creates engaging content about Salesforce consulting, Ascendix products, and CRM best practices for the commercial real estate industry and legal services. Her articles provide readers with relevant data, stats, business tricks and overviews of new industry trends and CRM updates.
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