6 Key Factors in Commercial Real Estate Prospecting

The commercial real estate prospecting process is critical to your growth of market share when it comes to a career in agency or brokerage.  That being said, the prospecting process is largely overlooked or side-tracked by most agents on a daily basis.  There are many other things to distract them from the networking requirements of the industry.

If you are looking to create more listings and commissions for yourself personally, you can only do that from a dedicated prospecting system and model.  Most agents come to the industry with established habits that are of little benefit to building market share.  If you want to rise to the top of your industry, you really do need to establish some new habits and some definite contact processes.

Here are six special processes that will help you with your prospecting and networking model:

1. A cold calling process should be incorporated into your daily diary and business activities.  You will require specialized skills and dialogue improvement if you want to convert more calls to meetings.  Set some targets to make calls every day to new people that you have not spoken to before.  Practice your dialogue.
2. The local business community will provide you with lots of local information and leads.  Contact 20 businesses per day to see what their property requirements are.  It really doesn’t matter if they own or lease the premises that they occupy; you can help them in many ways.
3. Local property owners and investors should be researched and contacted.  That being said, the process takes time and effort; some property owners are really difficult to identify.  Set a target of contacting 2 new property owners per day 5 days per week.
4. All of the contacts, meetings, conversations, and calls that you make to relevant property people should be tracked.  Your database should be something that you manage and grow as part of your end of day activities.  Do not delegate the process to anyone else.  Take ownership of your database and its accuracy.
5. Ask for referrals from the people that you mark contact with and those clients that you have served.  There will be others that can be reached from every positive client relationship.  Ask the referral questions at the right time.
6. Treat your prospecting time as your most important appointment for the day.  Everything else ranks a clear second on the list.  Get your prospecting done and stick to the process.

When you are prospecting, do not take rejection personally.  Many people that you attempt to connect with will not have a need or an interest in what you have to say.  When that happens, simply take steps to move on to the next call and contact.  There are lots of people to talk to so why let one ‘bad contact’ dominate your thoughts or actions?