When it comes to commercial real estate agency as a career, the only thing that really matters in your business model is your prospect list. The more comprehensive and relevant your personal prospect list, the better the opportunities you will have as a real estate agent. Opportunities are many things to many salespeople however in commercial property sales and leasing, the list of opportunities are something like this:
- More business owners seeking to relocate or expand premises
- More tenants looking to leave their current premises
- Buyers seeking to purchase new property in your area
- More property owners wanting to invest
- More investors seeking to change their property ownership or portfolio
- More owner occupiers seeking to start business in a new location
Many agents ask me as to how many prospects they should have. Whilst the answer is relevant to your market and property speciality, generally the answer is in excess of 300 prospects. Ideally the number should be 600. These people are prospects that you can relate to and will take your call. They know you as a property expert and recognise that you are a local property expert.
Do you tick these boxes? Do these prospect list criteria fit your current database and prospecting system? If not, you have some work to do.
There are only two ways to build a prospect list fast. That is by making cold calls every day and then by getting out into your territory to meet property owners and occupiers. As simple as these issues seem, they take a lot of personal work and consistency. Many salespeople do not do either of these things very well; that is simply because they get distracted or prefer to do other things.
So this then opens the door for the agents and salespeople that have the discipline to make the calls and meet the people. Add to this a great database system and you have the permanent solution for building your real estate business.
In saying that you need a database, far too many salespeople spend a large amount of time on selecting the right database program or software. The facts indicate that you do not need a complex database or system. You need something simple that you can use easily each and every day.
Importantly your first database should be simple enough to transport and export data from. When you get to the day where you want to move your database to a special program that you have just purchased, the ability to export data will be critical. So many agents have been frustrated by this very fact. When you start your database system, make sure that the program lets you export your data in some common format to other programs. When in doubt seek expert help.
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