Dont forget about New Business Prospecting in Commercial Real Estate

In commercial real estate brokerage, you simply cannot forget about prospecting through the year and at all times. Every day a degree of personal prospecting should be undertaken within your location and within your specialized property types. A decline or a slowdown in prospecting will create shifts and changes in listing conversions and commission incomes; always remember that fact and adjust your prospecting model for personal improvement.

(N.B. these ideas are also sent out to regularly to our friends in Commercial Real Estate Online Snapshot to help amplify brokerage results…. Get your access here)

What’s Your Plan?

So the message here is that every agent and every broker in commercial real estate today should have a definite and relevant prospecting model that they work to for the location. In most towns or cities, the busiest times of year for the commercial real estate industry are between the months of February and December. Most of the new or recurring business generated across sales and leasing will occur over those 10 months.

What’s Your Indicators?

Look for the property indicators and the changes in your local area. There will be patterns and trends locally that apply to business sentiment, investment, property sales, and property leasing. So you need to look for the trends and then adjust your prospecting strategies as part of that. Track your results and conversions as you prospect steadily and consistently into the location.

Go Local

Here are some ideas to help you improve your prospecting model and motivation:

1. OTHER LISTINGS: Use other competing agent’s listings as triggers for your local area prospecting. When one of your competing agents places a sign on a property and begins marketing that property, you can canvass that particular street for any other owners or businesses that may wish to similarly sell or lease. One new listing in a location can be a trigger for other listings. Ask plenty of questions into the local business community and across all of the local property owners. One local listing can lead to many others. The marketing campaign for one property can be a trigger for others.
2. EVERY DAY: Start prospecting first thing each and every working day. The first 3 hours of your day should be devoted to new business generation; that is exactly what the top agents do. That is the best time where your prospecting activities should be based and activated. Lock it in to your diary so that you are out in your precinct talking to new people, or alternatively making plenty of cold calls during the first 3 hours of each working day. If you adopt this strategy, you will find that other things will not derail or disrupt your business growth strategies. It is very easy to be diverted by other things later in the day when it comes to prospecting.
3. STAY LOCAL: Stick within a location and a property type. Don’t spread your prospecting activities too far afield. Get to know who owns and occupies all the property within a small area; that is why specialization is so important. You can logically and systematically review property ownership street by street and building by building. You can connect with all the business owners locally by business type and by location. That is how you find opportunities as part of a prospecting strategy and commercial real estate initiative.

So there are some simple and yet critical things to consider as you get further traction and momentum in your commercial real estate prospecting model. Don’t let the desperation or the pressures of the property market impact your listing conversions or commissions. Control your market growth and market share over time through deliberate prospecting and personal improvement.

(N.B. these ideas are also sent out to regularly to our friends in Commercial Real Estate Online Snapshot to help amplify brokerage results…. Get your access here)