Highly Selective Direct Marketing in Commercial Real Estate Converts More Enquiry

For all sorts of reasons, many commercial real estate agents struggle with direct marketing.  In most cases they will do the simplest form of this direct marketing and then stop at that level.   Unfortunately they then miss out on all the opportunities that can evolve if only they had taken a few more steps in the process.

Commercial real estate is an individual practice, and most, if not all, of your quality listings and clients will come from personal relationships and connections.  The better that you know people, the easier it is to win new business.  Most real estate agents should know several hundred prospects, including tenants, landlords, solicitors, accountants, and developers.

Build New Relationships

It takes time to build these relationships, and for that reason, personal effort is required in directly marketing yourself to your prospects on a daily basis. This requires skill, consistency, and persistence. These three simple words are so understandable and yet overlooked when it comes to real estate agents taking time to build their database of contacts. 

Given that most agents don’t do the processes very well or regularly enough, it does ‘leave the door wide open’ for those agents who do get their act together in personal marketing and prospecting.

The Direct Approach

Here are some ideas on direct marketing that can significantly help your commission and listing results.

1: General Marketing but Followup

At the most superficial level, this process of marketing is sending a letter or email directly to a selected person.  That is where most agents stop.  Not following up is the greatest reason for poor results from any contact campaign or marketing effort.  If you send an email or letter, you must make a telephone call to follow up on the first message sent. 

The ‘success hit rate’ on sending a letter or email is about 1% or 2%.  It is noted that letters work better than emails today, simply because letters are less common.  When you make a follow-up telephone call to the people to whom you sent the initial correspondence, the ‘success rate’ in getting a meeting is about 5% to 10%.  Personal skills in making the call will have a big impact here.  Practice is required to help you improve your ‘follow-up’ processes.

2: Telephone Connects to Meetings

In the commercial real estate industry, the object of making the call is to see if the prospect will meet with you.  If you look at the chain of events, the letter sells your telephone call, and the telephone call sells the meeting.  When you get to the meeting, you can sell your services.   Some agents try to shorten the process by using a letter to ‘sell their services’; that is where everything goes wrong (and nothing much happens). 

Our real estate industry is built on relationships and trust.  You cannot do any of that without a meeting.   If you send out a letter to ‘sell your services’ and do nothing else in follow-up, you are wasting your precious time and money.  You will not win much business that way.

3: Building Relevance

You can also use another real estate prospecting process called ‘response compression’. It involves contacting a prospect several times over a given time frame to build your relevance and image. With that relevant approach and response, you can have more meetings. 

It has been found that most prospects take about 3 or 4 approaches before agreeing to a meeting with you.  If you use the ‘response compression’ process, you can contact those people once per month over six months.  If you do so with relevance, there is a reasonable chance of getting a meeting.

Organised and Systemised

As you can see from this strategy, you really do need to stay organized and systemised. Having a ‘system’ for your prospecting will help you stay on track and focused on the right people.

Get to know your market and the people you should be talking to. Start the connection process with these prospect targets and build relationships. Over time, you will build a great business for yourself. Remember that relationships are a key part of our industry.