Three Ways to Scale Your GCI in Commercial Real Estate

Our last blog was dedicated to newbies, so now let’s go to the other end of the spectrum and discuss how experienced professionals can take their production to even greater heights.

I’ve got three powerful commercial real estate agency scaling strategies that can significantly increase your production to levels that you may not have thought were possible. 💪

Here's what it’s all about:

🔒 Scaling Strategy 1: Platform - Streamline Your Work with Technology

Learn how to leverage the right tools, from CRM systems to social media management, to achieve scalability and enhanced productivity. Embrace the power of technology and watch your results soar! 🚀

🔄 Scaling Strategy 2: Process - Optimize Your Workflow

Discover the art of delegating, outsourcing, and automating repetitive tasks. By focusing on dollar-productive activities that align with your expertise, you'll increase job satisfaction, motivation and overall productivity. 💼

👥 Scaling Strategy 3: People - Build Your Dream Team for Growth

Hiring an assistant is a game-changer. They'll handle market research, lead identification, and more, giving you the freedom to pursue new opportunities. As your productivity increases, you should then hire an associate to handle transactions and maintain a steady flow of new opportunities. 🤝

Remember, scalability is within your grasp when you start working in a way that can incorporate the right platform, process, and people into your business.

For the full run down of practical insights and actionable advice to enhance your productivity in commercial real estate, join me for episode 143 of CRE Success: The Podcast

Episode transcript:

On this week's show, I'm going to share three secrets to scaling your production as a commercial real estate agent.

And not one of these three secrets involves hustling.

In fact, I'm going to tell you what the three secrets are right now.

The first one is platform. The second one is process. And the third one is people.

They all start with P. Platform, Process and People.

Now I do have to give you a disclaimer right now, just because you create leverage, and you use these tools to scale your production.

That doesn't mean that you abdicate responsibility for the results that you produce, but by using these three things, the platform, the process, and the people, you can get your production to a far higher level than you could on your own.

That's what we're talking about in today's episode.

Hello, and welcome to episode 143 of CRE Success: The Podcast. My name is Darren Krakowiak. I help commercial real estate leaders to develop their people and to grow their business.

I hope you're enjoying the show. If it's the first time that you have tuned, in welcome, and I hope you enjoy it going forward.

And if you've listened to past episodes, well, I hope you've enjoyed what we put out there so far.

If you have and you want to pay it forward, and let us know that you do, please leave us a rating or a review wherever you consume this content.

If you're wondering what you can do to help us out, if we've helped you out with what we're producing each and every week for free, that's the way you can do it.

A quick rating or review would mean a lot today. And I would really appreciate hearing what you think of the show.

So today we're talking about the secrets of scaling as a commercial real estate agent. Scaling your production beyond what you can do on your own. 

And I mentioned at the top of the show, there are three ways to do this. There is the platform that you have, the processes that you put in place, and also the people that you have join you to help you scale your production.

And I just want to quickly run through these three areas to explain what they are.

And perhaps some of them you're already using, which is helping you do more than you could do on your own.

And perhaps others, they're things that you're not comfortable doing it or you're not perhaps at that point.

I want to just give you some ideas about why these things matters and things that you can do now before you're perhaps ready to take that bigger step of maybe employing a person.

And what the benefits might be if you are ready, but you're hesitant to take that next step of investing the time to create processes in particular, and also investing the big outlay of employing a person.

Now, the first one is platform. And I think most of us in commercial real estate have some kind of technology platform that we are utilizing.

So, I won't spend too much time on this.

Some of the key areas that you need to be focusing on and making sure that you've got whatever it is that is going to help you do more and be more efficient is your CRM.

Also, however you get content out to people through ATMs for example.

And also, how you're managing your social media. So, you're scheduling and you're repurposing, the way you manage your time, the calendar that you use is also part of your platform.

In fact, your PC, your laptop is part of your platform. 

So, making sure that you're competent at using technology and that you're able to leverage the platform is the first step to ultimately achieving more scale as a commercial real estate agent.

Next place I want to go is process. Now processes are about you, documenting how you do things. 

So, you are able to delegate, outsource or automate some of the repetitive tasks that are outside of your zone of genius. 

These are all the things that have to be done that perhaps would be better done by somebody else if you had somebody else to do them.

Or better yet, if you're able to outsource them or better yet automate them, do that so they're no longer taking up your time so you can focus more on those dollar productive things.

Let me talk about what the zone of genius is things that are inside and outside your zone of genius.

I think your zone of genius is whatever you better at anyone else that doing that is also dollar productive for you to do inside your business.

So, these are the things that the market will pay you good money to do.

That's not below your paygrade, you can check out episode 60 of the show, if you want to know how to calculate your paygrade in commercial real estate.

These are things that you're good at doing that you enjoy doing.

And ultimately, by doing more of these things that will keep you motivated, it will drive up your job satisfaction. 

And you'll be perfectly happy to be focused on these things, and to have somebody or something else doing all of the other things that need to be done, but don't necessarily have to be done by you.

So, maximizing your own productivity through the platform that you use and the processes that you have in place are the things that all of us can be doing at any time, before it is time to start hiring people.

I think before you start hiring people, you probably need to be at a certain level of production.

That level will depend on what's going on in your marketplace, the cost of labor, etc.

But assuming that you're close to or at that point. And if you're close to that point, I'd recommend pushing the button and going maybe just a little bit before you need to rather than waiting until you absolutely have to hire another person.

Because you're busting at the seams and you're not able to handle all of the opportunities that are coming away.

The first person that I would hire as a commercial real estate agent is an assistant.

And I'd be looking for an assistant who can enable you to spend more time inside what we defined just earlier as your zone of genius.

So, your assistant should be doing all of the things that don't have to be done by you that you can get their support with.

Researching the market, identifying leads, creating campaign materials, managing the database, managing your time and your calendar, liaising between you and third parties in the transaction such as lawyers, everyone who is involved with arranging the marketing for listings, property managers on the listings that you're running, invoicing.

All of these things should be handled by your assistant.

I just want you to stop and imagine how much more time you would have to go after new business, if you had somebody who was able to handle all of those things that you're currently doing, that you can't automate, or outsource right now.

And what would that mean for your production if you had somebody else, to support you with a lot of those things.

Now, once you do start hiring people, if you have the platform and the processes already in place, it will quickly be time to hire more people.

Because before too long, the first hire that you put in place will make you so much more productive, that the second hire will be alone before you know it.

So, if the first hire is an assistant, I believe that the second hire, most likely for most people that should come next is an associate.

This is a person who can help you process all of the listings that you have one and do things like inspections and manage the buyers and manage inquiry and manage the less ease and generate more leads for you as well.

While they're working the listing, they're also identifying leads that come back to you, so then you can make sure that you are continuing to be fed new opportunities, even though you're not in every single place where lead generation typically occurs.

So just a reminder here, we're talking about platform, we're talking about process, and we're talking about people.

And I want to share with you right now, a new private mentoring program that I have just started.

What we're doing is we're coaching high performing commercial real estate agents on three main areas, on prospecting, on converting and also on exhilarating.

And I'm going to accept a small number of people into this pilot program to take them through all of the main areas of prospecting, which includes looking at inbound leads, outbound leads, and referrals, and repeat business.

Also looking at converting business, so that's looking at your win rate, looking at how you're closing out deals, and also how you can produce bigger fees.

And then we're going to look at the exhilaration, so creating leverage.

And we really just started to touch on some of those areas today with the processes, the people and the platform.

So, this is taking you from specialising through to producing and ultimately to leading in your marketplace. 

And if you would like more information about this program, I invite you to send me an email.

Just put into the subject line: Private

And send the email to[email protected]

And that will let me know that you're interested in our private mentoring program and we can speak a little bit more about what your goals and objectives are and if you're a good fit and if I'm a good fit to help you.

So, if that sounds like something you're interested in finding out more about, just put 'Private' in the subject line of an email and send it to [email protected] and we can find out if we're a good match.

That's our episode for today. Thank you so much for listening and I will speak to you soon.