Database Tips for Commercial Real Estate Agents Today

Local business owners are a distinct opportunity for commercial real estate agents and brokers. Those local business owners know the area and the activities of other property occupants and tenants.  Get facts and input from those people for your database.

To a degree, they will know the local area far better than you as the property agent.  So use local business people as sources of property change and information. The knowledge they share about the local area is invaluable.

To build your pipeline of opportunity and a good database, at least half of your prospecting efforts (time) should focus on the proprietors of those local businesses. 

Data to Capture

Ask them questions.  This is the type of information they can give you:

• An idea of those other local businesses that are looking to change occupancy or location
• Requirements for expansion or contraction are subject to current business activities.
• Details of the landlord for the property if it is leased
• They will tell you about any instability or discomfort with the landlord.
• A good history of the area so you can understand how things are changing

How to Make Consistent Contact

So how can you make contact here, and why should they listen to you? To answer the first part of the question, the best contact method is by telephone to arrange a suitable meeting. In other words, you should make many cold calls to the local business community. 

Set yourself a benchmark of 40 calls a day to the business community. In making 40 calls, you should achieve at least two meetings.  You won’t talk to 40 people: but you should reach at least 20 in the set time frames.

Providing Valuable Detail

In making contact with these business people, providing some form of relevance and interest to them is essential. That can be through one or more of the following strategies:

• Create a simple brochure of local property information on a single paper. This double-sided single piece of paper can be copied conveniently when you require more of them to take with you as part of your prospecting efforts.
• Creating an Email newsletter to send to your prospects and clients regularly. You should get their approval to receive such information as part of that process. The frequency of the e-mail newsletter is open for some debate, although fortnightly seems to be very successful for most commercial agents and realtors.
• Create a blog online to talk about local property activity and property information. Ensure the blog is specifically relevant to a property type and location. This information from the blogging process will increase your Internet profile as a property specialist. You should blog at a frequency of once daily, if possible. Anything less than posting a blog once a week will be a waste of time.
• Create a social media platform with different contact processes that can be easily activated and utilized with property listings and local property information. Use the social media platform at least once a day.

There is always an opportunity in the local area for you to tap into as a commercial real estate specialist. Build your real estate systems and push your system forward each day into the marketplace.