How to win more commercial real estate listings in a slower market?

CRE Success Principle: Most agents focus on generating more opportunities when market activity drops, but the smarter move is to win a higher percentage of the ones already in your pipeline.

If you want more listings, personalise the conversation, ask what matters most before you present, anticipate their concerns, and remove every trace of “cookie cutter” from your proposal.

When market activity slows, most people try to generate more leads.

I believe the smarter move is to improve your conversion rate.

If there are fewer opportunities in the marketplace, you need to win a higher percentage of the ones you already have.

Personalise Every Presentation

In today’s market, clients have different concerns. That means your listing presentation cannot be generic. Before presenting, ask what matters most to them right now. Tailor your proposal to their priorities and remove any irrelevant material. Specificity builds trust.

Reduce Uncertainty with Authority

When uncertainty rises, your role is to reduce it. Be armed with current market intelligence. Share what is working now, not just what worked before. Provide perspective without being argumentative. Position yourself as the calm, informed expert.

Lead the Next Step

At the end of every meeting, clearly summarise what was discussed and agreed. Then recommend the next step and ask, “How does that sound?” If a decision is not made, schedule the next meeting immediately. Do not leave the loop open.

Strengthen Credibility Between Meetings

Provide references from satisfied clients who are willing to speak on your behalf. Social proof accelerates decisions.

If you want to win more commercial real estate listings and increase your conversion rate, episode 259 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership breaks this down step by step.

Episode transcript:

When there are less opportunities in the marketplace because market activity has slowed down, the best way that you can maintain or hopefully improve your production levels, grow your income, is to increase your conversion rates.

So, on today's episode of the show, we're talking about five ways that you can win more listings in today's market.

Lead better, grow faster, and stress less with commercial real estate leadership. Hello, my name is Darren Krakowiak. We're up to episode 259.

This is the final episode in our four-part series we've been covering on pipeline, prospecting and production power, and today we're focusing on the conversion side of your pipeline.

And I've got five tactical tips for you, which is all about how to win more commercial real estate listings.

We're going to talk about ways to build more trust, ways to win more listings in the marketplace, tactical ways that you can personalize conversations, reduce uncertainty, lock in the next meeting, and also strengthen your credibility so you convert prospects into signed opportunities faster and more consistently.

I think this episode is going to really help you. I think it's a great fourth and final installment in this series, and I hope you enjoy it.

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So today we're talking about five ways that you can increase the likelihood that you are going to win the listings, the opportunities, the projects, the assignments that you are going after.

This is relevant for agents. It's also relevant for property managers and anyone who is looking to win work in commercial real estate.

And if you're a commercial real estate leader and you've got concerns about your ability to continue to grow your revenue in the current market conditions, then taking some time to spend with your team to help them increase their win rate is going to be a very good use of your time.

And a couple of my clients are doing that at the moment, so I thought that this was a topic that is relevant for many people in the industry right now.

And the tips I've got for you today are quite tactical. I guess some of them, I want to get beyond just, you know, making sure you are prepared and rehearsed and arriving on time and all of that, but talk about things that I think are especially relevant in the current market conditions.

So, let's get right into it.

I think, number one is about personalization of what we are presenting.

So, when markets are quite buoyant, we probably don't spend as much time preparing the presentations that we are providing to prospective clients. And maybe we don't have as much time, but also there isn't as much need because it's a lot of the same.

I think in today's marketplace there are more nuances. There are different clients concerned about different things, so I think we want to make sure that the presentations that we're providing the prospects meet their specific expectations.

And a thing that you can do to ensure that you do that is just to have a quick conversation with them before you pitch, before you provide that listing presentation, before you send through the proposal.

And rather than just providing the cookie-cutter agenda, the cookie-cutter contents that you always provide, you can say, “Hey, this is typically what we provide, but is there anything else that you're looking for at this stage that is going to help you make the right decision?”

And they may tell you something which, even if they were going to tell you at the time when you present, it might be better to hear it then, so you can prepare the best possible response.

I think also, if we're going to spend more time on the contents of presentations, we have got more opportunity to make sure that there aren't remnants of previous presentation materials in there.

So, making sure that the comparables and all the other information are relevant to that property, and there aren't remnants, I guess, of previous opportunities in that pitch deck. So, make sure it's all relevant and specific to that opportunity.

The second thing I want you to do to increase your win rate is to make sure that you are armed with as much information as possible.

So, when there is uncertainty in the market, our job is to reduce that uncertainty by being providers of information.

And if we're able to anticipate questions, know the market, share what's working now, so not just what works generally, but what is specifically working now, because some people may have doubts about going to market now because of everything else that they're hearing.

If we can provide information that reassures them that this is what is working now and we can help make that happen, then I think we're able to provide a counter-narrative to what it is that they might be hearing.

But also, we can do that in a way which positions us as an expert, also without being argumentative, right?

I think your job, when we are in a sales conversation, when we're overcoming objections, is just to present relevant information in a way that helps people make the best decision. And sometimes that includes providing information which shifts their perspective.

So, making sure we've got the authority and also the information to provide that perspective is something that's really important in today's marketplace.

Number three is to clearly summarize what we have discussed at the end of the presentation, at the end of the discussion, at the end of the sales meeting, at the conclusion of the listing presentation, and asking for confirmation and agreement on what was discussed and agreed to ensure that everyone is on the same page.

And then we can also state what the next steps are.

And a nice phrase that I like to use is, and you might've heard this one before, is: “At this stage of the process, our clients typically do this,” or, “This is what we would expect to happen next,” or, “This is what I'd recommend that we do now base on what you've told me.”

And then asking them, “How does that sound?” So, we want to lead the prospect towards giving us the work.

Number four in my list is to schedule the next meeting.

One mistake that I see some people making, it's a mistake that I used to make, is saying, okay, we didn't actually, we made the recommendation about what the next step is. Maybe they didn't take it. Maybe our recommendation was to sign the authority and they weren't ready to do that.

And we think, okay, well then, we need to have another meeting, another conversation, or I need to follow up once you've had a chance to consider it.

And then we say, “Well, when's a good time for us to follow up? How much time do you need? A week? Okay, great. I'll call you next Tuesday.”

That's okay, but I reckon a better way to make sure that we are not chasing somebody, that we're positioning ourselves as more of a prize and someone who is not just chasing after work, is to just schedule the next meeting.

If a final decision wasn't made at that meeting, then we schedule in the next meeting and we say, “Okay, if you need a week, then let's schedule in a call. Let's have a meeting. I'll come and see you on Tuesday at two o'clock, three o'clock. Would that be okay for you?”

And then we are locking in the time and the date in each of our calendars. And we're also, I guess, pre-framing that next meeting as the time and the date on when we will make a decision on what we recommended as the next right thing to do.

So, we're creating the environment where we are going to achieve the progress that we were hoping to have achieved in that current meeting if we didn't get there.

And the fifth thing that I would recommend doing is making sure that if we've got another meeting locked in, we don't need to be chasing them between now and then, but we might just provide one thing in between now and then for them to, one, trigger a reminder that this is something that they need to be considering, and two, to increase the likelihood that they're going to make a decision, which is, I guess, the decision that we are looking for them to move forward and also to work with us.

And one thing that I like to do, or I've been doing more recently, is providing a list of existing clients who are willing to speak to prospective clients about working with me.

And a little tip I'll give you here is that I've been, if you listen to this podcast, you'll see that there have been some clients that I've interviewed on the podcast.

There were a couple of clients who I asked to interview on the podcast who said, “Look, that's not really for me,” but actually one of them even volunteered.

And the other one who didn't, I asked them and they said yes. They said, “Look, I don't really want to be interviewed on your podcast. That's not for me, but I'd be happy to speak to any clients or any prospective clients that are looking to work with you to provide you with a reference check.”

So if you've got some clients who really don't want to be on film or don't want to provide a testimonial, but you know are happy and that's something that they could do to support you, and then even the ones that have provided the podcasts, (maybe you're not doing a podcast), but you know the testimonial or whatever it is that you've done to collect those case studies and testimonials, and they're also happy to speak with people, I think when you provide a prospective client a list of names, numbers, and emails of happy clients that you have served in the past, that only provides the positive reinforcement that working with you will be a good decision that they can be comfortable with.

So that's just a little mini masterclass on five ways that you can get more listings, more authorities, more projects in today's marketplace.

So hopefully it's a little bit more specific to the market, and it overcomes a little bit of the uncertainty that exists in the marketplace.

That's our episode for today. Thank you so much for listening, and I will speak to you soon.