Manage the Chaos; Secure Your Future

 As commercial real estate brokers, nothing happens until we make it happen. In one sense, that fact makes our business an amazing opportunity. It also creates an epic battle between the short-term and long-term. All too often we expend our best efforts on today’s hottest fires and neglect foundational activities that secure our future. Today I’m covering five of the most important activities we should not procrastinate. These are critical important-but-not-urgent activities that need a regular place in your schedule.

1.      Database – Contact databases, especially those focused on Corporate Services or institutions, age fairly rapidly. Job changes, promotions, mergers, and acquisitions add up over a short period of time and make your prospecting difficult. Relational databases, those that track properties and the people associated with them, age even faster. Every broker needs a system for capturing and integrating changes before they become overwhelming. I recommend a good middle ground is to schedule a once-per-month database update. For thirty days, simply capture all the flyers, screen shots, handwritten notes, comparables, and leases; then one evening or weekend make the updates while binge-watching your favorite show.

2.      Marketing – as I covered in my recent post on branding, marketing is not a one-and-done strategy. Additionally, it doesn’t always yield the immediate results we desire. So it is easy to let it slip in favor of a hotter fire. I recommend that if you aren’t yet marketing on a regular basis, start by getting a professional headshot, updating your company web site bio, and create an All-Star profile on LinkedIn.

3.      Prospecting – this one is obvious but also tricky. If you don’t send your emails and make your calls today, nothing dramatic changes in the short-term. Six months from now, though, you may have a problem. Compounding the issue is the lag-time between effort and reward in brokerage. You can make the best call of your life today, and it still won’t result in money in your pocket for a while.

4.      Skill Development – one of my sons is about to graduate from college. It’s the end of one journey, but not the journey of learning. We can all recognize that learning is easier in school. The path and curriculum are laid out for us. Someone else has decided the critical set of skills and knowledge we need to acquire. After we graduate, though, it is no less important to keep learning. If we don’t, we will find ourselves outdated, way off the cutting edge, and losing business to those who have remained committed to growth. Perhaps the easiest way to start is to read a book. Don’t like reading? Download the Audible app and listen to a book at 1.5x speed. I finished a book last week that way in a few sessions at the gym. Two birds, one stone. Don’t make it hard. Just get started. Once you get a taste for learning and development, you’ll be hooked. And we’ll see each other soon ??.

5.      Client Relationships – few things in this business are as heartbreaking as seeing another broker transact with one of your past clients. To be fair, sometimes a client has legitimate reasons to transact with someone else, and it isn’t anything you did wrong. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the reason. Sometimes we as brokers just weren’t paying attention. We hyper-focused on today’s hottest fire while another broker was taking care of our past clients. The simplest solution to this problem is to make sure you have a specific cadence set in your database against important clients. Take the guesswork out of when and how to reach out.  

Brokers need a sense of urgency around these activities. Countless people in this world pay lip service to wanting to be their own boss. What most fail to realize is that when you are your own boss, you must be a self-starter. Nobody will force you to do these things. If you can be the rare exception, a true self-starter, then there is no limit to what you can accomplish.