Social Media and Prospecting Tips for Commercial Real Estate Brokers
The commercial real estate brokerage industry has become socially aware. The traditional ways of networking and contacting clients have changed and expanded. We now have many client contact solutions to consider and use. That can be a good and a bad thing depending on how you have your clients under control and documented for contact.
To simplify things, it can be said that we have both online and offline social alternatives in commercial real estate. Here are some ideas to illustrate the process:
- The personal contact process is still an important part of commercial real estate brokerage. Getting in front of the right people at the right time will remain important and relevant to market share. A top agent will spend a good part of the day contacting more people directly and filling their pipeline with new contacts.
- Social media has now given us some extra alternatives to use when it comes to client contact. It can be said that there are so many tools to use that it is impractical to use all of them. I would tend to agree. Choose the ones that work for you and use a few of them.
- Computer technology has allowed us to be more automated in the contact process. The ‘database’ strategy has helped us with tracking progress and contact activities.
So a top agent should get involved with their client base on all three levels. This will require a degree of personal skill and commitment to keep the system moving ahead every day. Consistency and relevance are the ‘keys’ to the process.
It is very difficult to ‘outsource’ the requirements of client contact. I have heard of agents trying to achieve it, but very few succeed in doing so. The problems of ‘call reluctance’ are major hurdles for some agents to overcome; those that do rise to the top of the industry faster in all respects.
You cannot take yourself away from your database and client contact process; that’s the fact. Prospecting is and will forever be a critical part of an agent’s day. I would go so far as to say that any client that is contacted by an ‘assistant’ of the agent will soon detach from the database. Clients are not just ‘numbers’ in a list; they want to be spoken to and respected by the agent. They want to be remembered.
