6 Essential Elements of Commercial Real Estate Broker Prospecting

Some agents and brokers in commercial real estate take too long to understand the importance of new business prospecting. They overlook the process until business gets a bit ‘desperate’.  When things get busy, or clients become demanding, the first thing to be delegated by agents to the bottom of the action list for the day will usually be commercial real estate prospecting. That of course is an amazing weakness in the business, and yet it is so common as a problem.  (NB – you can get plenty of commercial real estate prospecting tips right here)

Fresh Listing Stock

Just about everything we do in brokerage today relies on listing stock and properties. You need plenty of new listings to sustain your momentum towards your business targets and commissions for the year. Your business plan should incorporate a comprehensive and consistent new business program. The program should be tuned to the target market, the location, and the ideal client types for your town or city.

So, the message here is that you should do your prospecting every day as a priority regardless of anything else that is happening in your diary, with your listings, and with your clients. When you look over the last few days and consider the actions and the results at you have achieved.  It is highly likely that direct prospecting was not a regular event in your diary, and may have only occurred once or twice over the last week.

A Prospecting Model

Given these facts, a prospecting model must have a prime place in your business plan, and thereby you have some ongoing work to do. If commercial property commissions and listings are important to you for the future, then you will need to refine your prospecting plan directly and efficiently for the advantages that exist in your town or city.

Here are some ideas to help you establish a direct and efficient prospecting model for your targeted clients and properties:

1. Research – understand the buildings, the property owners, the investors, and your location comprehensively. Hone down into the streets, the buildings, and the land ownership records. Get to know the people owning the prime properties and the businesses in high value locations. The high-quality people should feature in your database as VIPs.
2. Create Lists – given that you really do need to know a lot of people for your location and your property specialty, the lists that you create are valuable, and the commissions that you require will be in those lists. Software programs will help you keep your information under control and allow you to tap into the right facts and people when situations allow.
3. Use the Telephone – at the start of every day make at least 40 outbound telephone calls to business owners and local property investors. Use the telephone book business pages, and your database for that. You will not connect with more than approximately 15 to 20 people in making those calls. You can however build some relevant conversations and identify some future property lead or opportunity. The people that you cannot connect to today, will be the calls of tomorrow. Through persistence and consistency, you can build real momentum in your prospecting model.
4. Track Your Progress – establish a tracking system relating to outbound calls, inbound inquiries, meeting opportunities, and listing conversions. In tracking your progress, you will be able to see how you are improving, and you can also improve or remove the weaknesses of the process.
5. Build Your Momentum – it is critical that should momentum improves and increases over time. Prospecting and networking are things that require commitment daily. Understand exactly what you need to do to reach out to new people, and then start the process. Don’t allow any diversions or demands of other people to interfere with your prospecting model.
6. Set Targets and Create Conversations – call targets will help you keep up the momentum of outbound calls. Simple calls can convert to property conversations. From a valuable and qualified property conversation, a meeting can occur. Understand the pipeline of communication, and make sure that your business is suitably placed to improve on the pipeline over time. Build relationships at each opportunity, and then grow your real estate business accordingly.

If you have chosen commercial real estate brokerage as your career, then your prospecting model should be at the top of the list when it comes to daily duties and activities. No matter how busy you are with clients, transactions, and existing listings, your real estate prospecting model should occur each and every day; no excuses.