Cold Calling in Commercial Real Estate

Commercial-real-estate sales and leasing success is built on your ability to constantly connect with prospects and businesses. Whilst this may sound simple and obvious, it is surprising just how many commercial real estate people are very random and unorganised in the process. 

Your success in commercial real estate cold calling depends entirely on your ability to control and focus your actions. No other person can do this but you. Behind the actions that you take, you must have the right attitude to support you, as self doubt will destroy any potential of success. People can see and smell self doubt ‘a mile away’, and no one likes to trust their business to a ‘looser’. If this is part of your current problem then seek out some books on Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) which can help your understand how to change your thinking.

Contact Systems

There is a system and logic to the contact process and the system needs to be practiced every day. Let’s now look at what this is all about.
There are three main reasons for making the cold call or connection in commercial real estate. By definition cold calling will either be in you making the call by telephone or dropping in to a place of business and asking to speak to the person who is in charge of property matters. Either way it does not matter what approach you choose to use as your main contact method, but that you actually do that process consistently each day.
So the three main reasons for the process are as follows –

You want to find out as much detail as possible regards the business with their current and future occupancy needs. This will require your practice as you will be discussing in many instances the terms of the lease occupancy. The things that you need to know and talk about include rental levels, expiry dates, option ability, occupied areas, and needs for expansion or contraction. Asking the right questions is a real craft to be respected.

You need to explore potential situations which trigger the tenants or the business’s requirements to move. This can include a change in product, service, or manufacturing, the takeover or merging with another business, or change of access to market or raw materials.

In discussion with the relative person, you can also seek to understand who the landlord may be for the property and how to access them. It is also likely that the tenant will give you reasonable details of the physical dimensions and functionality of the property. Any property intelligence is good intelligence providing you collate the material for future reference.

So all of this is market intelligence and it will offer you a significant opportunity for new business as time proceeds. As you speak to many more people each and every day, it is very necessary to use a good professional database system to tabulate your results. You need to categorise people and businesses into groups for your future access such as tenants, landlords, industrial, retail, office, leasing, sales needs, purchase needs, ranges of rent level, ranges of price, locations, sizes of property, and the list goes on.

Making the contact work for you

In most instances, you will make many calls and find that most people will be very willing to share information about their future needs. This is the advantage of commercial real estate with the businesses and investors operating therein. Essentially people need to use your services at different times in the property lifecycle and therefore are very open to talking about future possibilities.

When you are making cold calls, you should view your success in the process simply around the amount of information that you can gather. In most instances, the people you speak to will not require your services immediately therefore it is the information that you gather that makes you successful in the call. A successful cold call is simply a call where the recipient shares the information productively and you gathered the information effectively.

The process of walking into a business office and asking to speak to the property decision maker is an acquired skill. It requires real confidence on your part and practice in the process. You need to know clearly why you are walking in to the office and what information you require in your discussions. Many commercial real estate people have found great success in walking through their patch each day and dropping into a number of businesses to talk to the relative manager and or proprietor. The whole process of personal contact also supports your ongoing need to understand property locations. If anything you gain an acute awareness of streets and locations which become a significant advantage to you as you proceed in your job.

The more that you ‘cold call’ on people, the more business you will generate and the more confidence you will achieve. It is confidence that you require in your job and not offensive persistence. Many business proprietors and property investors do not have time for pushy commercial real estate people focused on their own agenda.

The Process of Call Preparation

It pays to approach the contact system from a logical angle and systematic process. This means that you will be choosing properties by location and thoroughly canvassing all the necessary streets which have properties of interest to you. This also means that you will use the business telephone book for your local region to make direct telephone calls to the relative managers or business proprietors. This requires preparation and each evening at the end of your day, you should be tabulating and preparing for the appropriate calls the next day. 

All your decisions on just who you are going to call tomorrow must be made the day before, and at the end of your daily business activity, as this preparation process fast tracks your momentum. In the case of some large businesses, it is of high value to research the company through the Internet and other suitable sources of market intelligence. If the business is very large, it is likely that you will not get through to the decision maker very easily as they will have a number of gatekeepers through which you must proceed. If that is the case, it is best to identify the immediately the name of the personal assistant who works for the manager or proprietor in charge. You can then speak to the personal assistant and explain your requirement to talk to the right person regards property matters. Suggest that you will send a simple e-mail, fax, or letter to them which explains how you can help their business.

Handling the Gatekeepers

If you can send the letter direct to this personal assistant, it is highly likely that the matter will be at least discussed with the person in charge. If there is a relative need or potential interest, then your return phone call to the personal assistant will let you through the gate. 

It is interesting to note and respect, that the personal assistant is a protection tool for the manager in charge. The personal assistant is usually very familiar with talking to other professional businesses and contact people and will comfortably and professionally handle your enquiry. Use this to your advantage, as personal assistants are high value allies in the contact process. If you respect the professional personal assistant for the manager, it is likely that you will achieve the cooperation that you need to get a suitable message to the person in charge.

Face to Face

There is high value in getting a face to face meeting with the person in charge. The more people you meet, the more business you will generate if not today but in the future. Business in commercial real estate is built around personal trust and contact. For this reason, all of the telephone calls you make should be focusing on the potential of a meeting (nothing more). 

It is likely that average businesses change premises each 5 to 7 years or their needs for expansion or contraction will also change during that time. Many commercial agents look back in property activity beyond the last four years knowing that the people and businesses in that activity are likely to do something again soon. This is called the property cycle and it does present to you a significant opportunity.

Just Dropping In?

The telephone is a useful tool to optimise contacts, however the personal ‘call in’ or ‘door knock’ approach is also very useful. It is surprising how many people will come out and see you in such circumstances.
In doing the personal drop in approach these are the best tools to use:

• Apologise for dropping in unannounced – you realise how busy they are.
• Provide your name and company detail.
• Explain that you are selling nothing and you are only gathering information regards the property activity in the area.
• You simply want to ask a few property related questions and you only need a few minutes to do that.
• Ask as to who may be the best person or manager to talk to about property matters.
• When you get to the right person, identify if they are a tenant or an owner occupier. Ask suitable simple questions around their answer.
• Suggest that you are also open to sharing details of other property and rental activity in the area if they have an interest.
• Suggest that you would be happy to keep them briefed on changes in the market if they are interested.
• Seek to speak to them again at regular intervals.

Extending the Property Questions

If the person that you speak to is friendly, interested, and cooperative, you may wish to extend the questions into the following topics:

• Their name and address for future contact.
• Business detail and summary of service or product.
• History of occupancy in that location.
• Details of the lease if they have one.
• Details of the landlord if they have one.
• Details and contact channels for the decision maker.
• Building and property type.
• Amount of space in the property.
• Description of the building.
• Parking needs.
• Staff services and property amenities required and used.
• Delivery needs and access to the right transport systems or corridors.
• Rental paid and rent reviews due.
• Options and the timing of such.
• Essential needs in a property for that business.
• Future property needs and timing of such.

This list can be changed and expanded given the property type that you work on. Importantly all the market and property intelligence that you gather must be entered into your database as soon as possible. Do not assume that the decision maker for the business knows all the answers particularly if they have a head office that may take over such matters.
When you explore lease matters always pay particular attention to these items:

• Lease expiry
• Lease rental
• Need for expansion and change of premises
• Rent increases
• Type of rent (net or gross)
• Name and tenants opinion of the landlord
• Any company plans involving a change or expansion of property
• Clauses of the lease to which the tenant must comply and which may be onerous (such as make good provisions)
• Future company plans.

These points of discussion can be put into some standard form that can be easily completed each time you meet with someone. At the end of each day you then simply enter the data into your database from the completed forms.
Be careful in this questioning process so that you avoid being seen as a census taker. Be professional and connecting, and in doing this you can fill your forms out later if that is appropriate. Good information is the backbone for establishing your success in the industry.

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