If you are a commercial realtor or are planning on getting into the business there are a lot of different skill sets required to be successful. Some of those may include finance, project management, market knowledge, and the ability to multitask. Those and more are very important skills needed however one often overlooked skill set is sales. To be a successful commercial broker you must be a good sales consultant.
You can be the best finance person capable of producing the nicest spreadsheets, etc, however if you don’t have the ability to prospect and get clients you will never make it in this business. Some people have the natural gift of gab and the sales process comes easy to them, however there are others that must work at the sales process a little harder. The good thing is that sales and the sales process can be learned by anyone with the desire to learn and drive to be successful.
There are many great books and seminars about sales out there and I recommend reading as much as you can to find out what works best for you. In commercial real estate when you are dealing with companies, business owners, and investors, being a cheesy, silver tongued sales person is not the key to success. What does work well is being a good commercial real estate sales consultant. Below is one example of a sales process that can get you started:
1. Communicate to your prospects the way they prefer to be communicated to. This takes a little practice however in time you will be able to match your prospects body movements, posture, rate of speech, and tone.
2. Never show up to a meeting without an established agenda. Too many people show up to meetings without knowing beforehand what each would like to accomplish at the meeting, thus wasting each other’s time.
3. Learn everything you can about the prospects problems. How long they have had them, what they did to try to fix them, how much it cost the company, the impact on them personally, etc.
4. Find out what their budget is and how they plan on funding.
5. Find out the company’s decision making process, who all is involved in this, where in the organization decisions are typically made, etc.
Obviously there a lot of sales methods out there. The important thing is that you learn and use the method that works best for you. You are a commercial real estate broker however your key to success is getting clients. And to get clients you must prospect, thus the importance of following a sales process that works and being a sales consultant.
