In commercial real estate brokerage, what do your customers look like, where are they located, and what do they want from you? Why would they contact you? They are interesting questions; when you know the answers, you have the central focus of your prospecting model.
One of the biggest mistakes in commercial real estate is for an agent or a broker to prospect generically over a large area with little focus. The prospecting message then becomes clouded and non-specific. A message of that type will have little attraction to the target audience of local property investors and business owners. So it is clear that a few decisions need to be made regards the clients and prospects that you want to work with. I like to call it a ‘customer commonality’ process.
To get some direction with your customer focus and prospecting model, consider the following ideas and topics. See how they can be merged into your client contact systems:
- The best prospecting model involves personal follow up and contact. Anything that you send out by way of correspondence, marketing, or brochures, needs to be followed up with a telephone call. It directly follows that your letters sent and brochures dispatched should be in suitable numbers for new personal contact and follow through. The process should be repeated every 30 or 60 days.
- Understand the activities in the market today. What pressures are occurring on property owners and business leaders? Where can you offer the best levels of assistance and professional service? In a town or a city, there are likely to be a number of answers to these questions. For that reason you should consider separate prospecting models and messages for different market segments and different market locations.
- Review your area geographically so that you can split your prospecting efforts up into groups of buildings, groups of properties, and types of people. This then helps you significantly with the marketing message and central prospecting concept. It is quite clear that a generic prospecting letter is of little use and is highly likely to be put into the rubbish bin rather quickly. To lessen this chance of any failure factor, make your marketing messages quite specific and of interest and value to the person that you are connecting with. Provide some information regards the market, recent listings, prices, rentals, or industry changes. Whilst keeping the letter or the correspondence simple, a few dot points will capture the interest of the reader.
- When you break your customer base up into a number of market segments, you will see that there are common factors and leads to be exploited. They may be associated with market trends, property activity, regional changes, and transport issues, property zoning, and planning matters. When something happens regionally that can have impact on property owners and occupants, you have an opportunity to make direct contact with your database in a relevant and real way. That’s what professional prospecting is all about.
In saying all of these things, it is wise for you to focus on a particular property type within a location. In that way you can relate specifically and accurately to the variations in price, rental, market interest, and the supply of new stock. The commercial real estate industry is not difficult; however it does require specific focus and property speciality.
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