At the commercial real estate agency, your role as an Agent or Sales Manager is quite specific and you need to know it on a case-by-case basis when working with clients and prospects. Their role is to work for their client and solve their particular problem in commercial real estate sales, leasing, or property management.

This approach requires that you understand your customer and their problem or challenge. That is a productive process and should be well considered for today’s market. That will help you win the new business or close that tough deal.

The customer wants to be understood and it is your job to do that. Well-crafted questions will help you get there.

So what problems would customers have? They are usually a combination of problems such as:

• Find a tenant to fill a vacancy
• Find a buyer for the property
• Manage property to improve property performance
• Solve a tenant mix problem so the property can improve rental profitability and occupancy
• Negotiate a lease or sale so that the client’s property challenge is resolved in the best possible way given market conditions.

When you get to the actual problem the customer needs to solve, your sales pitch and presentation are much easier to implement. Your conversions to a positive result also increase.

This is a specific mindset and process that will help you with your real estate agency business. To help you understand your role with any particular client, here are some ideas to implement:

1. Meet the client at the property prior to any property presentation. Ask them to take you around the property and show you the improvements, services and amenities.
2. Find out what the client may know about the area by asking key questions about the property’s performance and availability.
3. Ask them how they came to buy and own the property. Get some history and facts about where the property stands today in clients’ minds. Get the customer talking and opening up about their perception of the market.
4. Use open-ended questions with the client to gain more information from your conversations with the client. Understand how to ‘dig deep’ into key facts and information provided by the customer. Take lots of notes.
5. Given the property and client in question, look at the surrounding area and what may be happening with other local properties, time on the market, listings, competing agents, and prices or rents. Pay particular attention to the local street and property grounds. Look at the history of prices and rents locally.

This simple approach will help you understand your client and therefore tailor your role to the real estate challenge required. Don’t see yourself as just another agent listing the property for any upcoming sale or lease activity. Understand the high value that you can bring to the client and begin to launch yourself towards it. That is your role.