Highly Effective Tenant Prospecting Tips in Commercial Real Estate

In commercial real estate today all agents and brokers should have a specific prospecting model that drills into a location for enquiry and opportunity.  The rule here is that the location should be precise and defined.  Don’t spread yourself too far across a large area when it comes to prospecting for new business and enquiry.  Concentrate your efforts into a zone.

The rule certainly applies when it comes to commercial real estate leasing and finding tenants to occupy vacancies.  Most tenants, be they commercial or retail, will seek to move premises locally.  So why will tenants need to move location?  They may have certain pressures of expansion or contraction to address, but the customer base is still likely to be local.  On that basis they will be looking for premises within locations that they can understand.

Focus Down to an Area

When you specialise your prospecting efforts into an area and within a property type, you will find a lot more of those tenants to help and relocate over time.

Here are some ideas to help you put together a highly organized tenant prospecting model for your location:

1. ZONES: Determine your primary prospecting zone and your secondary prospecting zone. Most of your new business should come out of the primary zone.  You will need about 2000 properties within that zone to make things work.  You will need to know all of the property ownerships, business locations, and new property developments within that zone.
2. STREETS: Split the primary zone up into streets and buildings. Understand the priority buildings and the priority precincts where most businesses like to locate.  Within this priority zone of focus, break up the streets and buildings into levels of high focus and ordinary focus.  You will then know where most of your attention should be directed.
3. LARGER BUSINESSES: Identify the bigger businesses within your prospecting zone, and then research the right people or the business leaders in each company or corporation to talk to. Over time and through your prospecting activities, you will need to know their property preferences and occupancy issues.  You will need to build a strong professional presence as the ‘go to person’ when it comes to local property.
4. PROPERTY OWNERSHIPS: Street by street, and building by building, work through the property ownership records for the location, and the tenants and businesses in occupation. Make a direct approach at a personal level to the right people in each business, and or property ownership.  A telephone call leading to a meeting should be your target as part of that prospecting model.

So there are four simple things for you to do here.  This is a highly organized prospecting model that will produce results providing you commit to the systematic coverage of your location and your primary zone of prospecting.

Get to know the people locally that have something to do with commercial property, and you will find the new business both in leasing and sales.  When you control the listing stock, you control the enquiry and attract commissions over time.  Focus on finding the listings, and everything else will come to you far more easily.

Work the location and the primary zone of new business.  You could say that this overall strategy requires high levels of personal organization and professional focus.  That is the way things should be when it comes to achieving results in commercial real estate brokerage today.

(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)