Prospecting Solutions for Commercial Real Estate Brokers

The commercial property market is a challenge at the best of times.  There are plenty of things to do when it comes to commercial brokerage and agency.  Each and every day a certain number of hours should be devoted to the prospecting process.  That activity will be at a personal level for any agent or broker.

It stands to reason that a good broker will have a successful prospecting model to encourage new clients and listings in a regular way.  The earlier that agents and brokers move towards this planning process and its implementation, the faster they move up the ranks of the market with listings and commissions.

Here are some tips to help you with the prospecting process that should be applied to office, industrial, or retail property.  Given your local market conditions, you can add to the list as appropriate:

1. Understand the activities of the market over the last two or three years.  As the market been attracting activity or has it been contracting?  It is best to work within a market that has growth and opportunity.  It is best to work with property types that have a future.
2. Many brokerages employ agents on the assumption that the agents will bring in the required new sales and leasing business.  Certainly that is the case to a degree; it should however be observed that a good real estate brokerage will have generic marketing strategies and material to help the agents with their daily prospecting activities.  An agent or a broker with little or no support from their principal will struggle.
3. It is critical that a broker or an agent get signboards into their territory as soon as possible.  Those signboards should be on exclusive listings.  Signboard presence will always help local market profile and encourage inbound telephone calls.  On that basis you can build your database.
4. The Internet today offers significant opportunity when it comes to business profile and property marketing.  Every brokerage or agency should have a substantial business website to promote sales and leasing listings.  The brokerage should always be updating the website with the latest technology tools to capture inbound enquiries.  A database portal is part of that process.
5. Set aside 2 hours per day to contact new people through the local area.  The easiest way to do that is through a consistent and professional cold calling process.  When you have connected with a number of people across the telephone, you can move out into the marketplace and door knock a number of businesses and property owners.  Personal contact in our market today is really important.
6. Every new property listing will give you an opportunity to talk to many other property owners and businesses in the same location.  Every successful transaction will give you further reasons to connect with the market place.  Use your existing listings and exclusive listings to connect with the property market.

In looking at these activities, it is easy to see that the involvement of the agent or broker at a personal level is critical.  Momentum is required every day to establish a good prospecting model to convert more listings and commissions.