Commercial Real Estate Agents – 9 Presentation Tips That Can Win Listings

Commercial real estate is a special class of investment property. It lives and breathes income and price. As a real estate agent, that should be the basis for your listing presentation and to improve your chances of closing on the listing with the seller of the property.

As agents and salespeople, we are up against several other real estate agents in most listing presentations. The seller needs to be convinced of your ability to get the best price for the property and in the timeliest way. That is the best leverage you can use to win the listing.

As part of the pitch in the sales listing presentation, consider this question:

“Just how can the income of the property be used to enhance the price that the seller can get in today’s market?”

To answer the question you really do need to know about the current and future cash flow that comes out of the property. That means reading the lease in detail and with focus on:

  • Income strength
  • Lease term
  • Rent review and option terms
  • Income growth
  • Tenant profile
  • Tenant stability
  • Minimal vacancy threat
  • Lease strength and controls over the tenant
  • Lease protection for the landlord

These points will attract investment buyer interest. Knowing the answers will help you convert the seller’s property to a listing. Show the seller that you really do understand the lease and the value it brings the property in sale.

Not all presentations are simple when it comes to selling commercial property and you can have a number of hurdles to overcome. Importantly you can be prepared for these hurdles if you take the right steps such as:

  1. Comprehensively inspect the property before you meet with the seller. As a result of that inspection be prepared to talk to the property from a detailed perspective.
  2. Take pictures of the property that can be available on a laptop for use in your presentation with the seller if required.
  3. Itemise the strengths and weaknesses of the property today that will be points to handle in the marketing campaign. As part of the listing presentation focus on the strengths and how you intend to use them in the marketing of the property.
  4. Establish the target market that will be ideal for the property promotion. From that target market show how you intend to reach them, and exactly what the requirements are from that target market in today’s terms.
  5. Understand where the competition property is located relative to the subject property and just how the competition property can impact the marketing of the subject property.
  6. Understand the local property history and comparable rents and prices from completed sales and listings for that type of property. Be prepared to use those figures as evidence and argument to support your marketing campaign.
  7. Understand the supply and demand for local property including the threat of new property developments coming up.
  8. Be prepared to talk about return on investment in the current market and how that will impact price to the seller.
  9. Comment on property enquiry of recent time, where it comes from and what they are looking for.

This knowledge will help you find the right points of closure as you present your real estate services to the seller of the property. Local property knowledge and your ability to provide it whilst tapping into the target market will help the seller see that you are the real estate agent of choice to market the property and get the best price.

Planning A Presentation At Your Trade Show Stand? 3 Tips For Success

The actual trade show exhibits that you take to an event are essential, but they’re not the only important things to consider. Before you pack everything up to ship your entire display to the venue, you should fully plan out your presentation. Knowing what message you want to convey and practicing that pitch until it’s perfect are ways to help ensure success. Lastly, make sure that you let attendees know when you’re doing your sales presentation by announcing it via social medial channels like Twitter or Facebook.

Know What Message Your Trade Show Stand Should Convey

If you’re planning on attending an event, it’s important to know what message your trade show stand conveys and tailor your presentations accordingly. Does your exhibit portray your company as a high-energy industry leader? If so, then you’ll need to adjust the energy level of your presentation. A dull, boring presentation won’t further your image of being an exciting industry leader and could harm your reputation.

Practice Your Pitch

You know the joke, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” The answer is simple and you can use it to perfect the pitch of your trade show displays — practice! While some coworkers might feel a little silly doing role playing exercises, these exercises are some of the best ways to know how to deal with customers in a variety of situations.

Many companies make the mistake of not practicing until the night before the event. They think a quick run down will be sufficient enough, however this is a recipe for disaster. Instead, gather everyone around your trade show exhibits when you’re still at the office and have an ongoing training session in the few weeks leading up to the event. Doing this will help ensure that you won’t be at a loss for words when you’re standing in front of your trade show stand with a real life customer.

Promote Your Presentations Using Social Media

Lastly, your presentations won’t be effective if no one knows about them! If you’re planning a presentation at a specific time, use Twitter to let your customers know about it. Consider having a contest or sponsoring a giveaway to encourage customers to follow your company on Twitter or Facebook, however, that’s not enough! Nothing gives a worse impression than an unattended social media account so make sure someone in your office is designated as your ‘social media guru’ and that this person tends to the account at least once a day. If your page is full of customer questions and comments that go unanswered for days at a time, your customers might just wonder what else you’re neglecting.

Simply showing up at an event with your trade show displays isn’t enough if you want to make a big impact at the event. Instead, use these tips to prepare for your presentation. A killer pitch can mean the difference between making a sale and leaving empty handed.

Tips for Your Investor Presentations and Due Diligence Visits

When you create your power points or walk over to the nearby diner or coffee shop for a quick informal chat with an investor, remember the following:

1. Focus and niches are still very much in. Broad brush and shot gun approaches are out.

2. Your strategy needs to relate to your competition. If you differ dramatically you must have a defensible reason for doing things differently and it must be supported by customer validation.

3. Depth in all areas – technology, domain, implementation, business development and recruitment – is required. Miss one and you will have some tough questions to answer.

4. Your sales pipeline needs to be well defined and well presented. Other than strategy and focus, investors need to understand how your cash flow projections tie back to actual proposals sitting in front of customers.

5. You need to maintain a balance in presenting the soul of the firm and your cash generation function.

For us a typical investor visit takes two full days from the entire team. The follow up, if and when it occurs takes another week of serious bandwidth. Will it be worth it? I don’t know.

Conclusion: If you run a business that makes money and has the promise of keeping on making money, finding investors is not difficult. Finding the right color of money with the right term sheet is.