Making Cold Calls in Commercial Real Estate

If you have chosen commercial real estate as your career, you will soon understand the high value of having a database and many clients. Unfortunately, at the start of your career, you will have few people to talk to and, in most cases, absolutely no market share to work with. 

This means that you need to take action quickly to build your profile as a top commercial real estate agent and your business base.

Commercial real estate agency is built on the good relationships that you create with key people in defined territories.  The more comfortable you are with prospecting and cold calling, the easier it will be for you to make inroads into your territory and build your market share.  At the start of your career, this is a significant issue of high importance.  Your skill set needs to improve in cold call prospecting.

Telephone Prospecting Problems

Many salespeople hate the cold-calling process for several different reasons. Here are some of the most common ones:

• They do not like the discipline required to research the market and find the people to call daily.
• They do not like the rejection factor of making telephone calls to people you have not met before.
• They don’t know what to say in any meaningful and professional way.
• They lack the discipline to improve the process and their telephone call conversions.

The fact is that an ongoing call contact program can radically improve your client base and your list of prospects as a commercial real estate agent.  Yes, it does mean you will be uncomfortable with the call contact system until you have learned how to handle the mindset and the process successfully. That being said, there is still a massive opportunity here for you, providing you practice and build your skill set in telephone conversation.

Rules of Contacting Clients

To help you start making many cold calls successfully, here are some rules that can be adapted to your location and your agency.

1. Each evening, you should prepare a list of people to contact the next day. When you have no contacts and people to call, start with a list of local businesses throughout the region. You then make business-to-business contact calls from the local telephone book.  You will speak to the business owner, the business proprietor, the manager, or the person in charge about their property needs and location. They will own the property or lease it, and either way you want to talk to them about their future property needs. Given that they are local businesses, they can also share information with you regarding the local area and what is going on with neighbouring businesses. It simply comes down to the questions that you ask. Create a conversation; that’s what call prospecting is all about.
2. Understand how the ‘do not call’ process works with telephone calls to individuals, and follow the laws and legislation. Fortunately, we make many calls ‘business to business’ and so can talk to businesses daily. This is generally more productive than telephoning individuals. Business owners will tell you so much when you ask the right questions.
3. Systemize your processes, your dialogue, and the records that you keep.  Get a simple database programme to help you with the information you gather. Daily, you should be calling approximately 40 to 50 telephone numbers inside 3 hours. You will not get through to that number of people, however you should reach approximately 15 to 20 people. From that small group of people, you should be creating one or two new meetings with new people.  When you undertake this process daily, two new meetings with new people will help you significantly build your client base and future opportunities in the local area.
4. It has been proven that a repeat call process to the same people at least once every 90 days will allow you to improve your conversions to meetings. Many people will not let you meet with them on the first telephone call. For this reason, the repeat call process and strategy will help you immensely.  That’s why you need a database.

Daily practice will significantly improve everything you do in call contact. Your discipline and mindset will also improve when it comes to making cold calls. The commercial real estate industry does not need to be difficult or challenging; it is simply up to you and the things you do every day.