Commercial Real Estate Contact Systems and CRM Processes

When it comes to running a commercial real estate office, the database system that you use is a significant source of opportunity providing the correct detail is entered and captured at the right time.  This is a personal process that should be the responsibility for every salesperson within the business.   Here are some ideas from our Newsletter for Commercial Real Estate Agents.

A question always arises as to who should own the data in the database when the sales person leaves the business.  It is best to deal with this question as part of the salespersons employment agreement.  There is an argument that the data belongs to the real estate office given that they are employing the salesperson and paying some form of retainer.  When the salesperson is working on commission only, then the factors of data ownership can be different. As a secondary strategy here, it is best to provide the sales people within your business with a mobile phone.  When the sales person leaves the business, the mobile phone is retained for future usage.

So let’s assume that you have the mobile phone issue under control and that you have a suitable database program to capture the enquiries that come in to your office.

Here are some tips for running a contact system in commercial real estate sales and leasing.

1. Integrate an e-mail contact system into the database usage.  The emails system should be able to contact anyone in the database individually or as part of a mass broadcast.  The emails system should be able to track the openings of each email by each individual subscriber.

2. Make sure that you are contacting each person in the database at least every 90 days.  This is a personal approach that should be done on the basis of a telephone call or a meeting.  It has been proven that the 90 day contact process is highly effective for new business opportunity.  If you go beyond the 90 day process and contact your prospects less frequently, it is apparent and has been evidenced that they tend to forget about you and your business.  Constant contact in a systemised way is very efficient.

3. The results of every meeting and telephone discussion with every prospect should be entered into the database by the relative salesperson.  This allows others within the office to be aware of the current status of the prospect.

4. Each salesperson and leasing executive within the office should be targeting at least 25 new people to talk to every day.  Whilst this initially seems difficult, the reality is far easier.  It is simply a matter of using the business telephone book for your local area and adopting a process of talking to tenants and business owners.  They will tell you so much in regards to the local area, the property, and their occupancy.  They will sometimes tell you the name of the landlord.

This simple list can be added to given the attributes of your property market and the property types that you work with.  The best real estate offices have up to date and comprehensively maintained databases.  You can get more tips for commercial real estate agents at our website http://www.commercial-realestate-training.com/ or you can subscribe to our newsletter here.