Prospecting Rules for Top Commercial Real Estate Agents

Without a doubt, prospecting is the most important tool in your commercial real estate toolbox.  Without a good prospecting model your commissions and listings will flounder.

The ‘golden rule’ to establishing a prospecting model is to make it a daily event.  You cannot look for new business once per week.  When it becomes a central part of your diary on a daily basis, then and only then will you see results.

If life is that simple, why is it that so many commercial real estate salespeople really do not prospect well, if at all?  Most salespeople suffer from a mindset issue that holds them back from making ‘cold’ contact to people that they have not spoken to before.  They just ‘hate’ the process.

When you start anything new, the process does take time to ‘settle down’ and gain momentum.  Setting new habits over old habits that you have established over the years is quite difficult.  Persistence will however get you through if you set up your model of prospecting.

Here are some rules to help you get a good prospecting model together:

1. From the very start make sure that the prospecting time in your diary is the same time every day.  So often salespeople break this rule and a habit of prospecting is not created.  It is best to do the process in the morning first thing before anything else takes over.
2. You will need a simple script to use as part of making cold calls.  The simple script should be an ‘opener’ to a conversation.  It should not be a pitch for new business; a conversation is what you want when you reach new people.
3. Start your contacting model with local businesses.  They are easy to find and approach.  You can use the business telephone book to help you here.  Those businesses will tell you a lot about the local area and be a great source of market intelligence.  In some cases they will tell you who owns the property.
4. Define your boundaries and your streets.  In this way you will know the ‘priority zones’ where you think the main properties are located.  Opportunity starts to show itself when you focus and dig into a zone to extract all of the local information.  Systems like this are really important.
5. Use a good database that is easy to use and backed up to the internet.  So much work today occurs out in the field.  You need to get to your database from a mobile telephone or laptop computer in the field.

Our industry is built on established ‘face to face’ relationships.  Getting in front of the right people is a big part of building your market share.  Remember, you are a self-promoter of your experience and relevance to the prospects that you talk to.

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