Build an Empire with Commercial Real Estate Prospecting

When it comes to your career in commercial real estate, nothing will fast track your results faster than a good prospecting model.  This then says that a prospecting model should be established into your daily business activities.

Prospecting for new business is quite a specific task and very specialized.  It should be regarded as something that requires practice and directed effort.  It takes about 2 or 3 hours each and every day to develop a good solid prospecting model.

This should also say that prospecting should be undertaken before anything else is done within the commercial real estate office.  If all salespeople within a commercial real estate agency did this, the volume of listings and the quality of enquiry would be far higher in just about all cases.  That will make the market share for the office more significant.

Quality listings and quality properties produce good enquiry.  It’s in tougher markets like this that we have today that we need a solid enquiry base coming from qualified prospects.  This is where your database will become highly important as part of your business activities.

Here are some ideas to help you with your prospecting activities and system.

1. Determine a specific territory of prospecting.  That will contain the necessary numbers of properties and businesses that will produce the required commission that you want.  Make sure that the historic activity in the area has been significant and will remain so into the known future.
2. Get to know all the local property owners of significant and important properties in your territory.  It does take time to identify property ownership structures and particular property owners; that being said, it still needs to be done and should be merged into your prospecting model.  Tackling property owner at a time is a good strategy to adopt in growing this market share as part of your prospecting system.
3. The local businesses and business community will provide a significant volume of enquiry for you.  They will tell you so much about the local area and also of their property requirements.  In many cases they may own the property in which they are located.  They could also be tenants and on that basis they will require further leasing assistance at a later time.  Currently they may provide you with details of the landlord for any direct enquiry and networking.
4. Go through the old sales records in your local region.  On average, most commercial and retail property will change hands in every 5 to 7 years.  That being said, the cycle can be a good source of future listing opportunity.  You simply need to identify the right people who have purchased or sold commercial real estate about four or five years ago.  They will again be entering the property industry in some way or form quite soon.
5. Older lease transactions may still be current with business tenants.  They will however soon be reaching the end of the lease and require assistance in locating another property.  Every business in your local area should be entered into your database for the opportunity that it provides.  That being said, the tenants of today are also requiring local property market information.  You can be the expert to provide that.

To make your prospecting model work, a process of constant contact should occur.  The commercial real estate industry is built around trust and personal connection.

The first approach to a prospect, property investor, or business proprietor should be the simple beginning of a long-term relationship.  Over time you should be establishing meetings with those people and opening the door with property assistance at the right time.  Those being said do not forget about property referrals and referral relationships that exist with people that you already know.  Top agents do this all the time.