In any sales job you must have a good prospecting model. Commercial real estate sales and leasing is no different. The prospecting model in the commercial real estate industry is however quite special to the type of property you work around and the clients that you deal with. The database that you create has to capture property investment detail such as area, property type, price range, rent levels, special property needs, and location detail. The database you use should be versatile enough to do that.

It’s worth expanding on this prospecting point so that you can construct the prospecting model that works for you. You have to have leads and lots of them to make money in commercial real estate. It’s not really the office that you work for that actually matters, although it will have some minor impact. The real results that you get in the industry come from one activity that you and only you control; it’s called prospecting.

Those people that start up in the industry do not really ‘get it’ for some time. They think that business ‘walks in the door’ of the office. Only a small amount of business will come to you in that way. In fact the more you sit in the office, the less successful you will be. I tell many new people to the industry to spend no more than 2 hours a day in the office, and the rest of your time in your market.

So what should you do ‘in your market’ each day? Here are a few main activities that are obligatory.

1. Get a map of the streets that contain the property listings that you are interested in. Check out the good properties in the street and note them on the map. Any properties of note should be tracked down as to who owns them.
2. Walk the streets each day, entering the businesses and asking to speak to the business owner or General Manager. Leave your business card if the right person is not available. Do at least 10 businesses per day. What you are looking to do here is introduce yourself but more particularly find out if the business is a tenant or an owner of the property. This is invaluable market intelligence.
3. The golden rule of prospecting contact in commercial real estate is for you to make direct contact with the people that are qualified prospects at least every 90 days. This cycle does not stop. You should be doing at least 5 of those every day over a 90 day period. When you do your numbers this indicates that you should be working at least 300 qualified prospects.
4. Suspects are the other people you contact and they are approached simply to see if they should become prospects in your group of 300.
5. Send at least 5 letters a day to people that you know own the best properties in your area. Always follow up these letters with a telephone call.
6. When you have made a sale or a lease in an area, make contact with the nearby owners with a letter telling them of the success. Always follow up those letters with a telephone call.
7. Meet the tenants or occupiers of any neighboring properties that are adjacent to things that you have listed for sale or for lease.
8. When a sign board goes up on a property through another agency, make sure you personally canvass the other properties adjacent and near to those listings. Most property owners would rather compete through another real estate agent should they want to also list their property for sale or for lease.
9. Look for vacant property, as this is always a reason to contact the owner to see if they want to sell or lease the property. A vacancy is usually a landlord ‘pain’ factor that requires relief.
10. Check out the local planning authority each month to see if any new developments or rezoning applications are going through. The local planning authority is most likely located at the local council and they usually have minutes that are available for public scrutiny.
11. Work the investment cycle of buy, lease, and sell in your area. Property investors will usually buy a property, hold it for 5 years (on average), lease it during that period, and then position themselves for another purchase or sale. This then says that you can work out the best listing opportunities from the lists of properties in your area that were purchased about 4 to 5 years ago.
12. Create a great database from your enquiries for other properties. A carefully constructed and executed property sale or leasing campaign will always leave you with many leads for other property opportunities. One good property marketing campaign will leave you with well qualified contacts that you can shape up for future opportunity.
13. Make lots of calls each day. The telephone has to be your friend so get used to using it. Sure you will make lots of calls to suspects and most of them will say ‘no’ to your offering. The best way to make lots of calls in commercial real estate is simply to use the ‘Yellow Pages’ of businesses in your area. A carefully crafted telephone conversation will identify whether the business is a tenant, a property owner, or a property buyer. All of these categories offer opportunity.
14. Monitor the ‘time on market’ of other agents listings. Not only will these be a source of listings later for you, but the ‘time on market’ will give you an idea of what is selling or leasing and what is not. Avoid overpriced listings at all costs unless you believe the property owner will bring their price down.
15. Check out all ‘for sale by owner’ listings. They may not sell or could be a later source of listing for you when the property owner has given up trying to do the job themselves.
16. Business owners will tell you a lot about the area and the neighboring properties. You just need to ask the questions. Taking to business owners every day will help you build your resources for listing opportunity.
17. Strengthen relationships through constant 90 day contact with all your prospects. Create lots of qualified prospects through sifting through lists and direct telephone calls to suspects.

You may look at the list and say that it is obvious; surprisingly most commercial real estate people do very little of what is on the list. Why is that? They simply lack the personal focus and do not follow through each and every day. If you follow the rules in commercial real estate, you will become very successful. Commissions will flow toward you and you will be the agent of choice.

Brokering commercial mortgages certainly can have its perks. It is generally viewed as a very prestigious profession and brokers get to deal with highly sophisticated borrowers on most of their transactions. The income potential is truly uncapped as well as some of the seasoned commercial brokers bring home over 7 figures. This is without having a lot of fixed expenses or a large support staff to manage. It’s no wonder that so many residential brokers are entering the market as their side of the business is still taking the brunt of the capital market woes.

However this is a tough and competitive business and one should not fool themselves that it will be a cake walk. Rather new commercial brokers need to be prepared and need to know exactly what they are doing. One of the main differences we hear from residential brokers is the lack of conformity from one lender to the next, in both process and underwriting guidelines. Also, the lack of broker protection is alarming to many newbie’s as they learn that many banks will not accept deals from brokers or allow them to get paid on the settlement statements. Rather some banks will expect brokers to get paid outside of close and directly from the borrower.

New commercial loan brokers have to become very efficient in all aspects of the business but especially in pre screening deals. Every time you work on a loan you are investing your time into it and if it has a low (or no) probability of closing you will quickly be hard pressed. It is so easy to work on un-fundable deals. Often the borrower has been through the “wringer” and will be very willing and pleasant to work with. All along they are playing poker with you and not telling you that they’ve been to 10 other banks and 3 other brokers and no one can get it done. So in protecting themselves they will waste your time. So, the successful broker will collect the whole package, sit down with it for 20 minutes and make a couple of decisions 1. Can I get this done? 2. If yes, do I want to work on this deal.

The most complicated part of prescreening loan requests is being able to extract all income out of the borrower’s tax returns that can be used to service the proposed mortgage. A lot has been written about calculating DCR (divide the NOI by the debt service) but how do you really get to the NOI. This is often more complicated on owner occupied transaction than on investment deals. This goes beyond just adding back depreciation or interest. The broker has to be very good at reviewing the entire set of tax returns, which on most owner occupant deals is a combination of personal, business and the real estate entities returns.

It’s important to remember that most deals get deigned due to lack of sufficient income.

The other major part of this is after the broker has a good understanding of the borrowers loan request, they need to know which bank or lender to take it to. Again this goes beyond just the banks matrix or published guidelines. The broker needs to know what the bank really likes. The last thing you want is the phone call from the bank, 3 months into the deal, that underwriting has canned the deal for BS, random reasons. And, unfortunately, this does happen all the time. Again you need to really know what the lenders appetite is and what they are really funding so you avoid this and get paid for all of your hard work.

If you operate a business, regardless of whether it is a family business or a multi-national Corporation, you’re likely going to want to hold regular business meetings. This can really help you to regain the focus on your business and to make sure that things are moving along as expected. There may also be specific needs for these meetings that need to be considered as well. Of course, any successful meeting with your business is going to require careful planning on your part. Here are some things that you can do in order to make sure that your meeting is as successful as possible.

One of the most important things that you can do is to prepare properly by setting goals for the meeting. This should be done, even before the overall structure of the meeting is designed. In some cases, there are going to be some serious goals that need to be discussed, including some that are going to affect the business for many years. These should be discussed first, making sure that the focus is directed to that information. You should also set smaller goals for the meeting as well, perhaps asking yourself questions such as, what do I expect to get from this meeting and what should I accomplish?

If you’re going to be having the business meeting at another location, it’s very important for you to view that location in advance. Consider the fact that you’re going to want the attention of everyone that is at the meeting to be as focused as possible. If you choose an area that is cramped or perhaps too dark, it is likely that people’s attention is going to wander considerably. Take a little and turned to tour the area and to choose something that is going to be right for everyone involved.

Regardless of whether you are going to be all in the same location or if you’re going to be holding the meeting virtually, it may be necessary for you to have the sound and light system set up properly. In some cases, this can be done using your own equipment but in other cases, very specific types of AV integration may be necessary. Look for a company that is able to hire out their AV services and to provide you with the equipment you need to get up and running properly. Be sure that you keep the number of that company available as well, it is likely that you are going to be able to use them in your everyday office needs as well.

Finally, make sure that you keep the budget in mind when you are preparing for any type of meeting. Of course, the budget should not be the make or break a deal but it should be sufficient in order to provide you with everything necessary to get those individuals under one roof. Once you have things set up properly, you can begin planning for the meeting even further by sending out regular information, including reminders about the meeting and what is going to be discussed.