Commercial Real Estate Agents – Networking Local Businesses for Real Market Opportunity

When you work in a commercial real estate agency you can get a lot of valuable information from the local business owners.  For this reason they should feature in your cold calling efforts every day.

Many agents will focus on just property owners as part of their networking process for new business; whilst that in fine, the reality is that the process is hard and slow.  It takes a lot of time to find the right property owners and chase them down for a conversation.  I am not saying that you should not do it; I am just saying that you should mix it up a bit and add the local business owners into the networking process.

Talking to new people every day is part of building your business and your market share.  When you do this regularly you will find that the property market and opportunities within it will open up for you.

How do you do it?

So how do you get to these local business owners?  The easiest process is in using the local business telephone book.  You can also door knock the businesses locally on a street by street basis.  Either way the process is easy.

Many commercial real estate salespeople tend to analyse the process of networking far too quickly and critically.  They think that they should get results from just talking to just a few people.  That is not the case.  On average, you do need to talk to perhaps 40 people to get one opportunity.  For this very reason, the networking process should be a daily event and continue throughout the year.  Keep yourself organised as you speak to new people; gather any leads and information into your database.

Not interested?

Many of the people that you talk to will not be interested in commercial real estate. For this reason, you should simply be asking a few questions to see if they have a need or a future interest in commercial or retail property.  There will always be plenty of business owners and property owners to talk to providing you get yourself organised and talk to lots of new people.

Commercial real estate is a specialised part of the property industry.  Landlords, tenants, and business proprietors will need your assistance from time to time providing you show them your relevance and provide local market knowledge.

When you establish the initial connection with new people, and have satisfactorily qualified them as relevant to you, keep the contact open so they can find you when the commercial real estate need arises.  You should be networking all of your contacts at least once every 90 days.  That is the secret to building market share.

Through this connecting and networking strategy, the following information will help you with future business opportunities.

1. The business owners will tell you what is going on in the local area.  They will likely know the intentions of some of their neighbouring businesses when it comes to property activity.  They will also have observed changes and pressures that exist with their neighbouring businesses.  Asking the right questions will help you here.
2. Some of those business owners will be tenants in occupancy.  For this reason they will one day require potential relocation and or market information relating to rental and leases.  Building a relationship over time with these people will help you tap into that opportunity when the need arises.
3. Some of those business owners may share information with you regards the landlord that owns the property in which they are located.  That can then short circuit the process of finding the property owner.
4. Some businesses today will own the property in which they are located.  Over time they can have pressures of occupancy, expansion, contraction, or relocation.  They may also consider a sale and leaseback strategy.  You can help with all of these things.  It is simply a matter of building the right relationship.

Sometimes we tend to complicate the networking and cold calling process.  It is not hard or difficult, it is simply a system.  When you understand that, and develop your own processes within the system, you can create massive opportunity in your local property market.