Commercial real estate is an easier property market segment to work in because it is built around logic and not emotion. Most of the prospecting calls and meetings you make are with people that are ‘business savvy’, and know real needs and solutions when they see them.
The emotion seen with owners in residential property is not a problem in commercial real estate however you do need to know what you are talking about given that commercial is a complex investment property type and the property owners are usually very aware of what is going on. For this reason, and to all the newcomers to the industry, you must know your product very well and be able to talk to it from many angles. Without this many property owners will discount your relevance to them.
Get Your Head and Thinking Straight
B2B cold calling is an essential part of daily activities in commercial real estate however it frequently fails because most salespeople sound like they are making a cold call. Here are two essential rules of cold calling success in commercial real estate:
It is the ‘how you do it’ that really matters to the call conversions to appointments.What you ‘think about’ in doing the regular call process also is a critical part of the method.Change the Name – and you will change the results you get
‘Cold calling’ implies something less than ‘warm’ and pleasant. To solve this problem, I prefer to think of it as ‘Call Direct’. It is a more positive mental image than anything that is ‘cold’! To be successful in making these calls, you must sell the process to yourself and believe that you are good at it.
When calling a prospect in commercial real estate, most salespeople are trying to ‘get’ something from someone. They are trying to ‘get’ an appointment or ‘get’ a listing. The fact of the call is that no one wants to ‘give’ something to someone they do not know, like, trust and respect. This is why most commercial salespeople fail miserably at this process.
But ‘getting’ is not the purpose of ‘call direct’. ‘Call direct’ is a discarding or disqualifying process. It is just like panning for gold or digging for diamonds. You have to turn over a lot of dirt before you find the gems. If you do not understand or accept this principle, then you will become frustrated and think that your efforts are not working. You will give in far too easily (this is what most people do and they therefore struggle to achieve great levels of listings and transactions).
Your objective in ‘call direct’ is to disqualify as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. That eliminates the time and money wasted in sending literature or seeing people who will never use your services, and it stops the fruitless follow-up calls that lead nowhere but to frustration.
You only have 30-45 seconds to deliver a specific and compelling reason for the person on the other end of the telephone to ‘want’ to continue the conversation. Skip the small talk and get right to the point. Be a ‘top performer’ in the call process.
You will be most effective when your 30-45 seconds causes the prospect to identify a real estate related problem in their mind that you can help them fix. People will talk to you if you shed light on a problem they need to have fixed; only for that reason.
Problems in commercial real estate typically focus around loss of rent, tenant problems, wasted time, inefficiencies in returns, competition pressures, disposal needs, functioning of the property, age of the asset, or repositioning etc.
If the prospect (not you) identifies something that is having negative ramifications on their property performance (a problem) AND they are serious about getting rid of that problem, then you ‘may’ have a possible reason to continue.
If there is a possible fit between you, then you can set an appointment to explore the possibilities of helping that prospect in some way get rid of that problem. There is no point in setting up an appointment simply because the other person lets you do so. You must determine that they are relevant to you, they are the decision makers, and that they have an interest in what you are talking about.
Protect your time by qualifying the correct people over the telephone before you make that appointment. There are a lot of prospects out there who think that they are the ‘decision maker’, and in reality are nowhere near those that are. Think like a ‘top performer’ and protect your time; it is the most important resource that you have.
Comments are closed.