Commercial Real Estate Brokerage – Highly Skilled Telephone Prospecting Facts

In commercial real estate brokerage, the telephone should be your principal prospecting tool when it comes to generating meetings and new business opportunity.

Every day you can make plenty of new calls into your location to talk to the business leaders and the property owners that may one day need your services.  The telephone is easy to use on a time basis as part of a prospecting model; it is not the only tool to use, but it is the most time and cost effective.

How do you make calls?

Relevance will help you convert more calls to meetings.  Most of the new business that you create will be through those meetings and the establishment of your professional skills at a personal level.  In some cases you will need to know plenty of people for a long period of time before they trust you enough to give you fresh leads and listing opportunities.

The property owners and the business owners that we connect with take time to understand the value of local market coverage and local market knowledge in property.  It takes time for them to trust you, and also takes time for them to remember you at the right time when it comes to property activity.

Your call model?

So let’s get your prospecting model underway so that you can attract more new business over time.  Here are the rules to the process:

1. LONG HAUL: This is not a short term solution. It is a long-term strategy and on that basis real effort and organisation will be required.  Every day you will need to reach into the local area to find new people to talk to.  That will require research and that research cannot be delegated.  You understand your market better than anyone else.  You understand the people that you should be talking to, so get involved with your prospecting activities and new business generation.
2. EXPERIENCED: Most of the clients and customers that we work with are experienced business people. They will generally take your call when it comes to cold call prospecting, however they will shut you down very quickly in the conversation if you are not professional in any way or form.  Professional communication skills will help you grow your relevance and conversational ability.  Understand the things that these clients and customers like to hear when it comes to local property activity and or opportunity.  Information will help you open the door to opportunity.  You can talk about the local property trends, prices, rentals, and recent listings.  Feed these things into your cold calling activities.
3. SEEK FACTS: Ask the right questions at the right time. The people that you are connecting with will share information about property ownership and occupancy, providing you ask the right questions at the right time in the conversation.  Respect the conversation for what it is, and that is an introduction at a professional level.  Practice your call conversations each day so that your conversions will lift over time.
4. WHO ARE THEY?: Connect with the right people. Remember what you are trying to do here. Essentially you are looking to meet with the right people so that you can build that level of trust as the local property specialist.  Commercial real estate is a long term proposition when it comes to new business and opportunity.  The longer you stay in the industry and the more comprehensive your prospecting model, the greater the commissions and listings that you will create.  The industry can be a career for a lifetime.  Your clients can stick with you for a long period of time, and you can generate plenty of new business across sales, leasing, and property management.  Understand the value that you bring to each and every client locally.  Your information and your property knowledge is valuable.
5. LOCATIONAL: Use your local listings as a foundation of conversation. Any listing that you have within a location will be a good reason for you to talk to property investors and business proprietors.  The same strategy also applies when it comes to door knocking and personal prospecting within a street near to the listings that you have currently.  Use your local listings as leverage in building your prospecting model, the number of meeting conversions, and your data base.  A good conversation will allow you to create plenty of information to enter into your database.

So these are simple yet effective things that will help you improve your telephone prospecting activities and results.  Practice the simple things and improve on them each day.

Its up to you!

Build your skills professionally so that you can make more calls every day, generate more meetings, and convert more listings from the meetings that you attend.  Be the expert when it comes to property presentations at any time and on any basis.

Practice your property presentations are ready to go at any time, so that they can support you when the client sends out the right signals in any conversation or meeting regarding property needs or property challenges.

(N.B. these ideas are also sent out to regularly to our friends in Commercial Real Estate Online Snapshot to help amplify brokerage results…. Get your access here)