Get on the Cutting Edge with Sales Calls in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
In commercial real estate it is common to make sales calls. Some of those calls will be to people that you have spoken to before and others will be to new people. It can be said that ‘new people’ are always required to help you build your pipeline of opportunity in the brokerage. When you overlook the need to contact new people, problems soon develop with a slowing market and loss of market share.
So the message is that making a sales call is a big part of the real estate business and a very important part. The whole thing gets a lot easier when you have a system of sales calling that you can stick to. Here are some ideas to help you develop a ‘cutting edge’ to the calls that you make:
- Break your sales territory up into zones and streets. On a street by street basis you can then logically research the property owners and the major businesses. Make direct contact with those people. Find out what they are doing currently with property. Will they need to change any of that and if so when?
- Make lots of calls and as part of that process do not attempt to make a pitch or a sale over the telephone. Simply find out if the person has a current or future interest in commercial real estate and if you can help them in any way. Create a conversation in the call; that should be the goal of making calls. Gather information from making the calls.
- A simple call script will help you get traction and momentum in making calls. Over time the script will fall away and your conversation will be professional. You will not then need a script.
- Qualify before you establish a meeting. Don’t waste your time with people that really do not have an interest but are politely offering you the opportunity to meet. Protect your time so meetings only occur with people that you know will have an interest to hear more about market conditions, or recent sales and leasing activity.
- Spend at least 2 hours on the telephone making calls every day. That should be the number one priority in your diary.
- Call reluctance is a common problem for most real estate people, so do not worry about it; deal with it by making more calls. Soon you will find that you are getting some results and then you can move ahead with more momentum. A few meetings will soon give you some ‘call confidence’.
- Ask for referrals when possible. When a client or prospect trusts you, the referral opportunity opens up significantly. It is a lot easier to win new business from a referral than make 25 cold calls. In other words you must do both.
So they are the simple rules to making ‘sales calls’. Track your progress with a good database that keeps you on track with dates and information. Take ‘ownership’ of the database activities in your office; it is the strength of your business and overall gateway to market growth in commercial real estate brokerage.