Control Your Property Enquiry in Commercial Real Estate This Way

In commercial real estate brokerage, many people will approach you on a daily basis about property needs and types, location, inspections, and recent listings. Capturing that enquiry into a database is a critical component of controlling the leads and new business.  Nurture and shape your database personally for that very reason.  Over time that database will be the backbone of your new listings and client contact system.

Every agent should be diligent and focused when it comes to following up any enquiry originating across the telephone, through inspections, and through meetings. Don’t leave any stone unturned when it comes to property enquiry.   Follow-up all levels of enquiry.

Most clients and prospects today will be talking with a number of agents at the same time. Any agent that is slow to respond to any property enquiry will likely lose the benefit of moving the enquiry to the next step. Other agents will take over very quickly with other property listings and opportunities.

Controlling Property Enquiries the Right Way

Here are some ideas to help you stay on track when it comes to taking any property enquiry and controlling the result:

1. On a daily basis monitor the number of calls coming to you. Understand how those calls have reached you, and therefore understand what types of promotional processes are going to be more effective for you personally to build market share and listing enquiry. Over time you can soon see the best marketing strategies to use for the particular property types locally.
2. Every property enquiry should be entered into your database so that you can follow-up appropriately in a number of days, months or weeks as the case may dictate. Trigger follow-up calls in the database and captures all the results of the calls that you make.
3. Get the full contact details of the person that you are talking with before you give out too much information. Are they the real decision maker?  How will you contact them again with other properties as they come onto the market?  Are they being open and honest with you?
4. Keep a list of well-crafted qualifying questions near the telephone or in your marketing folder; you can then use those questions at any time with an inbound enquiry. Those questions should be very specific to your location and property type to help you filter out people that are less genuine and/or potentially time wasting.
5. Some people enquiring about the local property will have little local knowledge when it comes to the location, market rents, sale prices and property availability. Drill down on their knowledge, the facts and the budgets they are working to.  Make sure that they can afford the property they are looking for.  You may need to give them a quick summation of the local property market.
6. Don’t show or inspect too many properties at any one time. Limit the inspections to just 3 or 4 properties so you don’t confuse the prospect in any way.  Confusion leads to lack of decision.
7. Always ask for feedback when a person inspects a property. Give that feedback to your clients as part of a qualifying and conditioning process with your listings.
8. Ask the person about the critical issues that any property needs to satisfy. When it comes to business people you will have special factors to consider such as staff, access, security, storage, customers and much more.  The right questions will help you get to the bottom of the issues and choices.

So the message here is that you should control all your property enquiries personally and follow them through to the very end.  Don’t let other agents move in on the prospect without you fully satisfying the enquiry from your perspective.