Why Telephone Canvassing is Essential in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage

In commercial real estate brokerage, you need clients and lots of them.  Over time the greater the number of people that you know, the more leads and opportunities are available for you to act on.

(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)

Perhaps the word ‘know’ here should be emphasized and explained.  To actually ‘know’ a client or a prospect, you really should understand their property situation comprehensively, and they should trust you as an industry ‘expert’.  That relationship takes time to develop.

Key Questions to Ask

Look at your database as it exists at the moment.   Consider these questions:

• Are you highly regarded by the people in your VIP database?
• Would they refer friends to you when property issues arise?
• How do you stand out as real and relevant to those clients now?
• Would they say that you are the ‘industry expert’ that they trust?
• Do they know you as a property specialist for your location?

You can see why relationships are just so important in our industry.  The variety, depth, and strength of your relationships will drive better business for you.  You can use the telephone to build your client contact list and your prospect database.

Making this Work

Telephone canvassing is part of that.  Here are ways that you can make that work in your brokerage business:

1. Cost effective – Today you can make many calls for very little cost. As part of that you can track your numbers of calls made, to leads identified.  Over time you should see those numbers improve.  Be aware of your time and its importance to the prospecting process.  This doesn’t say that you should only make prospecting calls to find clients; it is one of a number of strategies that should be happening every day in your business career.
2. Regular and routine – Set aside time to make calls every day. Make a good number of calls to new people and also existing people.  In that way you are building relationships over time and eventually converting more meetings.
3. Target meetings – From the calls made set yourself some targets relating to meetings with new people. It is realistic that you create 2 new meetings with new people each day, Monday to Friday.  Put yourself in front of people; that’s what the business is all about.
4. Script development – What you say really does matter. Most of the people that we talk to in our industry are experienced in business and or investment, so the prospecting dialogue you use should be refined through practice and relevance.
5. Target specific groups – Make calls to groups of people, local businesses, and people in particular locations. Over time you can increase conversions simply by concentrating your call list and hence your conversation relevance.

So the message here is quite simple.  Get your call prospecting started and refine it over time.  That’s how you build your real estate business opportunities around you.

(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)