Effective Meeting Strategies in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage

Prospect meetings are an essential part of commercial brokerage activity.  It would help if you had plenty of prospect meetings and client connections to grow your real estate business.   

You can and should connect with new people selectively on a regular and ongoing basis to understand their property profile and future property requirements.  

Over the years, it has been said in many different ways that commercial real estate brokerage is largely built around regular client contact and the associated levels of trust. Trust and communication are big parts of the industry; your clients should be at the center of all of that process.

Real Estate Client Trust Index

 Build substantial levels of ‘trust’ with the property people that matter.  For this reason, get to know plenty of people in your location and across the selected property types and/or properties.   Dig deeper into your property market.   Drive your prospecting activities into particular buildings, streets, and client profiles.   Lift your ‘trust index’ with local property people so they can remember you and call you when they need property help.

It is very difficult to win reasonable levels of new commercial property business over the telephone by just using direct cold calling. The phone is useful, but you can do better than making plenty of calls. Create meetings with qualified people; that’s the rule.   

The process of call prospecting is to find the right people that you can help with property matters.  When you find the people, you can create valuable meetings in a relevant way.  That’s how things work in our industry.

Your Client Relationships

 Most of the listings that you create with clients will be from established and ongoing relationships with the right people.  For that very reason, connect with new people and create meetings where you believe there is a genuine and future property need.

 Your prospecting activities are very important to your career when it comes to growth of market share and growth of commission.  Put your prospecting model at the centre of your real estate business.  Talk to new local people each and every day and qualify the people into property interests, locations, and property types; segment them into groups of tenants, investors, property owners, and business leaders.

 Effective Meetings – The Rules

 Here are some rules to help you conduct effective meetings with new real estate prospects.  See if you can add any further detail to the list:

• Ask for and get the appropriate contact detail with all of your prospects so that you can remain in contact into the future with local area property activity and listing information. Today it is very important to get the email and cell phone details of all people that you want to remain in contact with.  Seek their permission to remain in contact.  Tell them why your ongoing contact will be of value to them from a local property perspective.
• Determine the property requirement and the property focus that the prospect or client may have. They may prefer certain locations in your town or city, property types, and or investment activities.  Drill down into selective property information through a questioning process, and use your recent case studies and marketing information to qualify the prospect or the client.  When you understand exactly what they prefer from a property investment perspective, you can hone your comments and future contact activities.  That is where the cell phone and email contact process becomes very important into the future.  Relevancy is the key to attracting the prospects interest and maintaining contact for the long term.
• Be a solution provider as part of your professional property connections and conversations. Always be prepared to offer two or three solutions to a client or prospects property challenge based on relevant and proven local market activity and information.
• Determine the points of key focus and the preferred property outcomes that the client or prospect may have. State and restate your conversational understandings and findings so that the person you are connecting with can fully appreciate your fullest understanding, your professionalism and local area knowledge.
• Always agree to take the next step or stage of action at the end of any meeting with a client or prospect. Tell them exactly what you will do next and how you will connect with them in the future.
• Take notes from your conversations and share information at every meeting. As an industry professional, the information you can provide is valuable and should be shared professionally with the right people. The information you do provide allows the levels of trust to be established over time.

 In closing on this important strategy, be prepared to follow up on every conversation and snippet of information.  Track the progress of all of your meetings and conversations in a database of reasonable capacity and capability.  Split your prospects and clients into categories, timeframes, locations, and financial capabilities.

 If you correctly track the information from your conversations, you will find plenty of real estate opportunities in your location and with the people you know.