Automated Cold Calling Tips for Commercial Real Estate Agents

In commercial real estate today, the prospecting process that you adopt will help you dominate your territory and convert more listings.  Part of that prospecting process should include cold calling. 

Many commercial agents and salespeople struggle with cold calling. However, that does not have to be the case, provided you commit to the system of contacting people and shift your mindset. 

The reason for making the cold call is simply to see if the person you are calling has a need or an interest related to property and real estate locally today or in the future.

Your Real Estate Prospecting Process

When you establish a significant prospecting model incorporating this concept, you can achieve real momentum in your commercial real estate job and your industry.  When you work on commission as part of your salary, that is is good thing.

It takes about three or four weeks to establish a new habit of prospecting and making cold calls.  Many commercial salespeople don’t make it past week one.  For this very reason, the opportunity is significant for those who can build a habit and create the system.

Prospecting Model for Brokers and Agents

Here are some rules to help you establish the correct prospecting model in your local area.

1. Define your territory so that you can research the right people to contact and the right properties to chase down.  Do not spread yourself too far across your territory in that you will create a lack of focus and then not see where you are progressing.  I go back to the point that the system here is very important.  The system requires you to do the work, track your numbers, and track your results.  If you spread yourself too far, the numbers and results become meaningless.
2. Who are you calling?  In most cases, the easiest people to make contact with are the local business owners or proprietors.  The business telephone book can give you the information you need to get started.  These business people can give you leads and opportunities relating to the property owner or their business.  The local business people also know more about their street and location than you do.  Some of their neighbouring businesses may be seeking relocation, so ask the right questions.
3. Why are you calling?  This is an interesting question, and it needs some explanation.  You should not be making the call for your own purposes.  Shift your mindset so that you are calling to see if the person requires commercial real estate assistance.  When you do this, the calls get much easier and more productive.  The goal of each call should be to establish a conversation.  You can get much more information from the conversation then you can from some sales pitch across the telephone.  If the person you call does not require your assistance, then politely thank them for the conversation and move on to the next person.
4. Set the right time to make the calls.  There will be a certain time of day when the outbound calls create better results.  Determine that time, and factor it into your daily diary.  Creating a habit of making calls is really important.  Make the calls every day as the first priority in your diary.  Please stick to the time that works when it comes to outbound calls.
5. Take notes from every conversation.  Some of those conversations should be entered into your database.  Over time, you can build relationships with the right people and a database will help you with that.
6. Make lots of calls on a daily basis.  If you are using the business telephone book, you should make at least forty calls per day to new people.  That process should take you about 2 or 3 hours.  You will not get through to forty people, but you should speak to at least fifteen and some of those people will be relevant to meet with or call back.  The people that you miss out on talking to today can be called tomorrow, and so on.
7. Keep your numbers so you know how you are proceeding.  The ratios to monitor are calls out, connected calls, and meetings created.  From those meetings, you will be converting business and listings that can be separately monitored.

The cold-calling process does not need to be hard; it just needs to be done. Difficulty diminishes over time. That is perhaps one of the biggest challenges for many salespeople in commercial real estate today. 

What do top salespeople do? They make plenty of calls. Take on the challenge, and make cold calling a significant part of your business model.