Goal Setting for Commercial Leasing Specialists

The process of goal setting in commercial real estate leasing will help you get to the market efficiently and effectively.  Every day you should be looking for landlords to serve, tenants to occupy, and new projects to lease.

The leasing part of the industry can be very rewarding if you focus on quality tenants, and top quality properties.  There are always businesses looking to move.  It directly follows that you should have a daily focus on prospecting activities with the right people.  Lease the better properties and hence achieve greater fees.

In commercial and retail real estate leasing, it is very easy to connect with tenants.  The business telephone book for your town or city will give you a list of businesses to prospect and connect with.  Some of those businesses will be tenants, and others will be owners in occupation.  Either way you should be talking with them.

Every day you can make 40 outbound calls to businesses within the telephone book.  That will take you approximately 2 hours.  So the goal setting process for commercial and retail leasing specialists should focus on the following skills:

1. Establish a benchmark relating to the numbers of outbound calls that you should be doing.  As a bare minimum, that benchmark should be reached every day.  For most brokerages the level of outbound calls relating to leasing should be approximately 40 per day.  From that level of contact, you will not reach that number of people.  You will however have approximately 15 reasonable conversations with people and businesses in property occupancy.  When you connect with those 15 people, you can identify the two or three that qualify for a meeting and ongoing contact.  In other words, you should be creating two or three new meetings per day from your prospecting activities.  On a weekly average, that should convert to at least one or two leasing transactions per week.  It does take time to reach that level of conversion, so practice and diligence will help you get there.
2. Focus on connecting with landlords owning quality properties.  A top quality property will always attract tenant interest.  Whilst a property today with multiple tenants may be fully occupied, a vacancy is likely to occur later in the year.  Keep in close contact with the landlord to help them with the challenges of leasing and the upcoming vacancies.
3. To be successful in commercial and retail leasing, your database will be critical to the traction you require with inspections and conversions.  Make it a priority every day to grow your database with solid leads and tenant opportunities.  When a person is entered into your database, they should become the focus of ongoing contact.  You never know when they will need your services to find another property or another tenant.

It is not hard to become a top leasing agent.  It is simply a matter of diligent focus on tenant contact and prospecting.  Make prospecting a habit in your business day and devote at least 3 hours to the process.