Ways for Commercial Brokers to Get More Business

If you are new to the business or have never put a plan for business development than this part of the book will be most important for you to study!

First what we do is to identify three high end members of each what we call preferred vendors that we want to work with to assist our clients in other areas of expertise that they need to get the assignment done quickly, smoothly and professionally.

They are in no particular order:

1. Commercial Bankers to assist you with loans and lines of credit, equipment loans, etc.
2. Real Estate Attorney to assist you with any lease document, purchase document, commission agreement, partnerships, LLC’s etc.
3. Accountant/CPA that knows and can assist with lease vs. buy analysis as well as 1031 exchanges and knows the in’s and outs of LLC’s.
4. Insurance agents that know cost of insuring various types of user and investor property
5. Project Manager who can assist you in managing the project once a lease is signed
6. Move Management and manager, can be combined with above to assist the client in organizing and planning the actual move.
7. A mover to do the move
8. Phone vendor/contractor as most clients will want new phone systems on a move
9. furniture vendor/walls systems same as above
10. “IT” person to help with all the new technology and how it will effect any new space or facility the tenant/buyer is going into
11. Wiring and Cabling person to wire all the new technology
12. Architect to put a plan together for their new space or facility
13. Contractor to build out their new space or facility.


Once you have identified the three professionals from each of these areas and that will take sometime and networking to really see who stands out from the others than you want to select who you want to work and network with and who wants to work and network with you!

The next phase of this relationship approach to getting assignments is that you want to give something of value to these professionals and then get them to introduce you to one prospective new client each per month or quarter!

What do you give them of value, introductions as many as possible to your past clients if you have any or ones from your company as well as current introductions? Let them know instead of them having to do a “dog and pony” show that once you have developed this professional vendor preferred vendor relationship than you will personally introduce them to your client(s) when they have a need in there area. If that client has an existing relationship in this area we don’t jam someone else down their throat but rather see if there is any advantage to using this other preferred vendor rather than the clients current relationship. This works extremely well to get you to get them in the door of your clients and past clients and make them feel indebted to you to help you!

Also you offer to give them in their facilities and their friends and clients a “no cost” review of their facilities and leases to see how they stack up with other tenants in their building and submarket. This is giving something of great value to them and you don’t charge them for this. Again you want to meet one prospect or current client of there’s every month for you doing this and have an agreement saying this is what you are going to do.

So you are going to get a potential of 40 plus meeting a month from this way of doing business rather than cold calling with no knowledge of who you are calling? Now if you use costar or another vendor that tracks tenants, lease expirations, etc you can then go thru the lease expiration list with these preferred vendors and see which ones if any they have a relationship with.

Doing business this way has enabled me to service over 30 clients a year without cold calling at all and using a relationship approach we have helped our clients not only get great facilities but made the transition quicker, smoother and much more cost effective! If a client had to find out who to use of all of the above vendors on their own they would spend a minimum of 100 hours interviewing and deciding on whom to use for all of those activities! You will be a hero in their eyes, a valued team member by the other vendors and have put into place a system for life to bring you continued sources of business and future revenue!