Cold Calling Success in Commercial Real Estate Agency

Most commercial real estate agents want to be very successful in the industry.  This can be achieved by commencing a process of cold calling to grow your market share. 

Over time you will get more meetings with the right people and this will lead to better listings. Listings are the ‘lifeblood’ of commercial real estate and the main way you can find and convert listings is through talking to plenty of people.

It is a known fact that the quality of the listings that you create in the industry will help you with growing your database of buyers and tenants.  Over time the client list or database will be a great source of real estate deals and commissions.

I go back to that word ‘quality’ and ask you to think about it somewhat. All property listings are different. Pick and choose listings that are based on what you can see is in demand. Understand what is possible with the property in the target markets of your choice.

Telephone Prospecting Planning

Cold calling is then a matter of strategic focus. Refine the focus on people that you know are real estate targets for you over time. You can choose who you talk to in brokerage and why you should do that.

Call the people that own the properties that you can relate to and want to list at some point; create a target list of properties in your location and use that as a prospecting planner as you make your calls. There is no point in trying to specialise in properties that you do not understand or do not like to work with.

Cold Calling Strategies that Work

So how can you make the cold calling process work for you?  Here are a few ideas:

1. PRACTICE: Start the day with practice.  If you practice your call conversations and dialogue, you will soon improve your conversions of calls to meetings faster than others in your office.  It is the meetings that you create that lead to listings and or deals.
2. PEOPLE: Capture new people into your database.  You can never have too many new people on your list.  When you put new people into the database you will create the churn that you need in the industry.  Your contact pipeline will be fresh and you will not be competing in so many situations where other agents are chasing the same new business.
3. CONSTANT CONTACT: Remain in contact with prospects at least every 90 days.  Eventually, this will do two things.  It will establish you as the real estate professional and committed person that you want to be, and it will help the client remember you when they get to the point of listing or acting on their property needs.  ‘Top of mind’ is really important in our industry.
4. START EARLY: Go to the office to make the calls every morning.  Make your calls before you do anything else.  Do not let meetings and clients distract you from building your business in the call contact process.
5. GET OVER THE CALL RELUCTANCE: Understand that you will have some degree of call reluctance for some days if not weeks.  That being said, the mindset soon changes and you then know how the process will be of benefit to you.
6. CALL PREPARATION: Prepare and research your calls the night before your next working day.  This is really important in the early stages of building your market share and prospect list.
7. DATABASE USE: Track your numbers through a good database.  It is a personal requirement that you enter contact detail into the database.  If you have a computer in front of you as you call this is fairly easy.  When you track your numbers you can see where things are improving and you will take ownership of what you are doing.
8. VOICE PREPARATION: Prepare your voice and dialogue by practice each day.  When you are driving your car, talk through the cold call dialogue.  The more that you can do this, the easier your outbound calls will get.

The main reason some agents find cold calling so tough is that they do not ‘stick it out’ for long enough.  It takes about 3 weeks of deliberate cold call process to break through the barrier and form this valuable habit.