CRM Book

CHAPTER 9
MAKE MORE MONEY IN COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE
Make More Money – REALHOUND, Inc.
®
- 140
Chapter Nine
Increased Market Share and Agent Retention
Increasing Your Value Proposition
The strength of the traditional Broker-Agent business model is the network of
agents formed for greater financial benefit. In this environment, agents
cooperate by sharing and working on each others listings. There are
strengths and synergies gained through greater numbers, and value added to
each individual agent cooperating in the group.
However, just providing a broker with a desk, a few subscription data
sources, and an office full of agents is not enough. A broker needs to
continually add value to the Broker-Agent relationship in order to keep pace
with changes in the industry and foster an atmosphere of cooperation
between the agents and the company. The best way for a brokerage company
to add value is by continually investing in technology that will benefit both
the agent and the company.
The Solution for Increased Market Share and Agent Retention
Ideally, changes made to a broker’s value proposition will benefit both the
broker and the agents working for him. This occurs when the agents and the
broker make more money from their association rather than their
disassociation. For an agent to make more money, he must focus on the
fundamentals of the business by consistently prospecting. An agent cannot
effectively prospect if he does not have the ability to quickly access current
owner, tenant and associated property information.
Most brokerage companies provide access to data subscription services and
let their agents diligently mine those services for data. But merely providing
data services to agents is not enough because these services are inexpensive
and easily obtainable if an agent were to leave his broker. Some additional
problems with subscription data is that there is an over-abundance of
information, most is of poor quality and it is extremely time-consuming for
agents to mine. Therein lies the opportunity for a broker to increase their
value proposition to their agents.
Given a choice, most agents would choose to import their property data on a
regular basis if they knew the information was accurate. So a broker must
reduce the amount of time-consumptive research that each agent does in
order to increase the amount of time that an agent can spend doing the most
productive activity in real estate salesprospecting. From this fundamental
activity springs a pipeline of transactions that leads to increased revenue for
both the agent and the broker.
The broker supplies the CRM software and uniquely researched property
data to his agents so his agents can prospect from the supplied data.
9
“An agent’s time is
always best spent
prospecting and not
doing mundane
time-consumptive
research.”