Insights to propel your commercial real estate success in 2024

This week I delivered a workshop on how commercial real estate agents can secure greater success in 2024, and – just in case you missed it – I’ve also recapped the four big trends we covered in this week’s podcast episode.

One insight that hit home is the increasing importance of soft skills. In a moment where everyone is talking about AI and many are wondering how they will be impacted, being more human is your secret weapon. Having higher EQ (emotional intelligence) will set you apart.

Curious about the other three trends? I won't spoil it all here, but they revolve around targeted prospecting, innovative marketing, and building resilience in a dynamic marketplace.

Let's navigate the exciting terrain of 2024 together; join me for episode 169 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership.

Episode transcript:

I just wrapped up a fantastic session, which was called 'How commercial real estate agents will win in 2024'.

Now, if you weren't able to attend this live and free session, I've got some good news for you.

Because right now, I'm going to go on the record. And I'm going to tell you the four things that I think commercial real estate agents need to know need to equip themselves with, need to get ahead of, need to have a strategy for to win in 2024.

Hello, and welcome to Episode 169, of Commercial Real Estate Leadership. My name is Darren Krakowiak.

And well, today's show is the top four trends that commercial real estate agents need to win in 2024.

I can assure you that commercial real estate leaders also need to be on top of these trends, not only for themselves, but also to help their team members help them create a bigger business.

And at this time of the year, we're trying to get those final deals over the line, if you're still working when you hear this and you might not have had any time to really think about how it is that your business is going to continue growing and 2024.

Maybe genuinely, you just don't spend enough time working on your business because you're stuck working in your business.

If that is you, I want to give you a free resource that can start the journey, start the process of you just making a small commitment to spend some time working on your business.

It's by grabbing our free guide for commercial real estate leaders, which is called 'Multiplied growth'. It's available at cresuccess.co/growth

It is absolutely free. And it's the first thing that you can do to make a commitment to work on your business so that it grows more in 2024. Check it out cresuccess.co/growth

Well, in today's episode, I'm going to be sharing the four things that I think commercial real estate agents need to know, need to have a strategy to deal with in order to win in 2024.

And before I present what those four things are, I just want to quickly recap what the four things were that I predicted, that I stated at the same time last year.

So, in December 2022, I delivered this session and I said that the four things that commercial real estate agents need to get ahead of in 2023.

This is what I said in December 2022. The first one was that you need to have processes.

So, you need to be documenting the way that you do things. You need to make sure that they're simplified, and also that they're followed by someone.

And if you have processes, then that's the first step towards getting a virtual assistant.

And when you have a virtual assistant, I can tell you that your clients will be interested in how it is that you work with your virtual assistant.

And then you become more valuable to your clients, not only through the commercial real estate advice that you give them, but also you can help them get their own virtual assistant.

So, I kind of think like that was one which is relevant.

I'm seeing more people in commercial real estate, talk about virtual assistants, I think that it's something that's been more prevalent in residential real estate for a few years.

I think we kind of got that one right, I'm going to give that a tick.

The next one was about data and just the importance of the collection of data, using data, making sure that we've got the best possible software, and that we are using data to our advantage.

And while that's probably not something that just emerged in 2023, it's something that's been accumulating and building over time.

I think it was worth at least putting on the agenda because it's something that people should be increasingly thinking about.

The next one was another one of those, but I don't know if it really went any further in 2023. It was DE&I; Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

I think there's probably some mixed evidence as to whether the world made strides in this area, maybe the industry did a little bit better in that area. So, I mean, that's a half a tick.

And the last one was this idea of leverage. And I talked about content as a way to create more leverage.

And leverage, by the way is when you do one thing, and more things happen as a result of you doing that one thing.

And that's the principle of leveraging finance, but it's also the principle of leveraging business.

I've talked about the four ways that commercial real estate leaders can apply leverage in their business, through people, through money from technology and also from content.

And from the perspective of a commercial real estate agent, I talked about it last year in terms of having a cadence.

So, designing different cadences, different outbound or even to respond to inbound inquiries through different touch points that are designed to get people into meaningful conversations.

Now, the one thing that I missed last year was of course, chatGPT.

I didn't say that artificial intelligence was going to become this big thing. Clearly, it did become a big thing in 2023. So, shame on me for not coming up with that.

But I'm not going to call it a trend for 2024, because it's already here.

One thing I will say, though, is that if you're worried about artificial intelligence, don't be.

Because artificial intelligence is not something that's going to replace you. But you might be replaced by somebody who can use AI better than you can.

Or our competitors, business might perform better than yours if they're able to leverage the benefits of AI.

So, AI will, I think, improve the customer experience by providing, I guess, more customized experiences for them at a lower cost than the current way of doing business.

If you're an individual or a business, and you want to know more about how you can use chatGPT, go to cresuccess.co/chatgpt

For commercial real estate leaders, early next year, I'm going to do an episode about some of the best ways that commercial real estate leaders can leverage chatGPT in their business.

So, let's talk about what these four trends are for 2024 that I spoke about on that workshop that we've just delivered.

The four things that we're talking about are soft skills, targeted prospecting, marketing, and resilience.

And, as I've said, AI is a thing. But I'm not saying it's one of the four things because we already know all about it.

So why soft skills? I think soft skills is important, or people skills in more general, because the ability to be more human and real is going to be increasingly important, and the reason why you exist in a world where artificial intelligence can do more things.

So, emotional intelligence is going to be something which can make you easier to deal with.

And it's going to make you more attractive to your clients. And it's going to help you serve your clients more.

And I think, in some ways, you're also able to use artificial intelligence better if you have better people skills.

Because if you tell chatGPT to do something, and it doesn't do it right, it's probably because you didn't ask it in the right way. And I think it's the same with people, right?

If you communicate with a person and your message doesn't get across, because you didn't communicate it correctly, then there is some responsibility on you to change the way that you communicate.

So, your soft skills, the way that you communicate with people is going to become more important in 2024, compared to how it is now, because of the fact that artificial intelligence can do more of the repetitive and data driven tasks that commercial real estate agents were doing.

And the way that they added value in the past was by doing those things, well, artificial intelligence can do more of those things. And they will do more of those things in 2024.

Particularly as more of as in the industry, learn how it's used, and the companies that we work for, and also the software providers that service the industry provide us with more solutions to help make that happen.

The next trend, the next thing to get ahead of is targeted prospecting. So, I've always talked about consistent, persistent and proactive as the three principles of prospecting.

I think being targeted is going to be increasingly important in 2024.

I'm not going to go too deep on this one in today's episode, because I'm going to do a special episode about how you can create your very own dream. 100 list of clients for yourself, for your business. And just a little preview of what this is.

The point is, rather than trying to talk to 100 new people every week, we decide, these are the 100 prospects that we want to do business with.

And if we can win the majority of them that would have a material impact on our business.

So rather than trying with one prospect, and then never getting back to them, or just parking them for three months, we actually just keep going.

And we say that these are the top 100 prospects that we want to do business with.

So, I'll talk you through that strategy a bit more in an episode, which is coming up in early 2024.

The next trend to get ahead of is marketing. So marketing is important.

We all know that we need to market ourselves and from our personal branding perspective, but also that we need to market the properties that we are trying to lease and sell for our clients.

And the thing that good marketing does is that it makes sales either easier or unnecessary.

Because if your marketing is so good, then the sale that comes afterwards that process is made much easier by the fact that your marketing has done a lot of the heavy lifting.

And I think that in 2024 you need to provide marketing which is more innovative.

You need to get better at marketing to educate your vendors and educate buyers about the way that the market is in 2024 versus how it was in the past.

And I think that if you're good at marketing, you're going to be better equipped to handle more challenging market conditions.

And the so what are the how to do this, I think it's just making sure that we're leveraging all of those free channels.

And one of the ones that I see people underutilizing, apart from social media, which are bang on about a bit is email marketing.

So, I've got clients that are sitting on databases of 10, 20, 30, 40 thousand emails in their database, where are we leveraging those to their full extent.

I think sometimes people get scared, they think, "Well, if I send too many emails and people are going to unsubscribe."

Well, they're going to unsubscribe anyway, if you don't send them so often. I think if you send emails more often, they're more likely to expect them, and you'll be able to build a relationship with them through those emails.

So, I think marketing is important one. The last one I want to mention is resilience.

And resilience is going to be more important in 2024 because of the increasing uncertainty that exists in the marketplace, and in the economy, and in society more generally, right?

There are big elections that are due next year, definitely in the US, and probably in the UK, or maybe it could be early 2025.

And there's going to be more economic insecurities from greater inequality, and the rising cost of living and the expectation will be for governments to do something.

And that's going to put pressure on some of our clients who are seeing as the people who should be paying more tax in order to address some of these in equalities. Interest rates, uncertain where they will go.

Wars in Europe and the Middle East, what is going to happen? There’re tensions in the South, China Sea, and so on, and so forth.

And I think the way that we can deal with resilience is just making sure that we are mindful about where we put our attention, because you are where you put your attention.

But the other thing that you can do is also to make better personal choices.

And it's nearly four years since I stopped drinking alcohol, which was an excellent personal choice for me.

And while I don't say that alcohol is this evil thing that everyone should stop, there might be one thing which perhaps you should think about, and look at the way that it's impacting your life, and that eliminating it.

Or maybe it's the opposite. And it's something that you need to start doing.

If you started eating healthier, if you started having a better relationship with your spouse or with your kids, if you started exercising, for example, then that would have a materially positive impact on your personal life and also on your business.

Because as we spoke about in a recent episode, the challenges that you face in your business are often just a manifestation of the issues that are going on in your personal life.

So, a way to deal with this resilience with these challenging environments is just to make better personal choices.

That is our episode for today. Just sharing the four things that I believe are going to be important in 2024.

Just to quickly recap what they are; it's soft skills, it's targeted prospecting, it’s marketing, and resilience.

Coming up next week, it's an episode that I do every single year.

It's the book recommendations, the books that I recommend that you read while you're on the break, so make sure you do come back for that one.

For now, thank you so much for listening, and I will speak to you soon.