Cold calling is a fundamental strategy in commercial real estate prospecting. It involves reaching out to potential clients who may not yet be familiar with your services but could benefit from them. Cold calling has an effectiveness rate of 57.1%, which real estate agents can leverage to reach potential clients and grow their business.
Effective cold calling can help you build a strong client base, establish long-term relationships, and close more deals than ever. Despite the rise of digital communication, the personal touch of a phone call can significantly impact. 57% of consumers prefer to connect via phonecall rather than other medium.
In this blog, we will help you enhance your cold-calling game by giving you our expert tips on the best commercial real estate cold-calling practices. We will cover what you should do before, during, and after the call to maximize the success of this outbound marketing strategy.
Things to Do Before Start Cold Calling
Preparation is the key to successful cold calling. This amazing marketing strategy may never generate a sale if you are not adequately prepared to meet your prospects’ needs and concerns.
Here are our tips for you to get started before doing cold calling that we utilize daily:
1. Gather Prospetâs Property Information and Business Needs
You need to familiarize yourself with your prospect even before picking up the phone to call him. Otherwise, you will be unable to generate a good relationship with them. This will bring miserable results for your cold-calling strategy, despite how much you invest.
So, the first thing you need to do is learn and understand your prospectâs property, its location, current use, and any recent changes and developments. This will help build a property portfolio and business model.
Additionally, you will need to know the ins and outs of the current market trend and grasp your prospect’s challenges. This not only helps tailor your conversation but also demonstrates your professionalism and genuine interest in the next phase of reaching out to your leads.
2. Define Goals Clearly
Defining the goals of your cold calls helps you keep track. Without an established goal, you will face severe difficulties in achieving the benchmark you are looking for.
Cold calling is just one part of a multi-stage sales strategy. So, you should decide what direction you want your leads to send in your sales funnel. Do you want to schedule an appointment? Or are you looking for your leads to sign up for a demo? Keep the accurate goal in mind and design your strategy accordingly.
Also, avoid getting distracted from your original goal. Focus on the CTAs you are trying to achieve, no more or less.
3. Generate Personalized Scripts for Each Lead
As a preparation for your cold calling, generating personalized scripts goes a long way. It helps you build a stable format to reach out to your real estate leads in the most effective way. Your cold-calling success will skyrocket if you can write an effective script.
An example of a cold calling script to introduce your services may look like this:
Calling Agency: Hello, [Mr./Mrs./ Ms.] X, Good [Morning/Evening]. I am Y from Z real estate agency. I can help you [buy/sell] your lovely property in M. Do you have some spare time to discuss further?
With a click in your browser, you can find more effective cold-calling scripts for real estate businesses to handle various situations. Personalize these scripts to fit your target audience and your brand for the best possible results.
Avoid using generic scripts that you find whenever you do a Google search. These scripts have been used a lot and do not generate much conversion. In some scenarios, it may also annoy your prospects and make a bad name for your brand.
While you are writing scripts for commercial real estate cold calling, you will need to mix the best practices with your practical knowledge. When you find the correct balance between these two, you will be able to write high-value scripts to turn your leads into paying customers.
Commercial Real Estate Cold Calling Tips to Adopt During Calls
Now that you have enough knowledge about your prospect and persuasive scripts in your arsenal, itâs time to start the battle. This battle is between you and your competitor to convert a lead into a paying customer through calls.
The question is, what can you do better than your competitors? Here are the tips that work for us.
4. Call at the Right Time
Timing is the key to success in commercial real estate cold-calling. If you can call at the proper moment, you can reach the decision-maker without much difficulty and discuss what they will achieve with your help. On the other hand, reaching at a bad time makes your prospect lose interest in doing business with you.
Research shows that the best times to reach out to real estate prospects are in the late morning between 10 – 11 a.m. and the late afternoon between 4 – 5 p.m. Also, calling during the mid-week generates better results. We have seen better cold-calling results when we reach out to our prospects on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
In general, you need to be aware of your prospect’s mental state when cold-calling. On Mondays and Fridays, your prospects are busy planning their week or weekend. Therefore, they are less likely to discuss business with strangers like you. Also, they are busy doing business during peak hours, and reaching out at that moment can annoy them tremendously.
However, it is better to find the best time to reach out to your prospect yourself. You can achieve this by trial and error and comparing the results of your cold calling strategy. Once you find your sweet spot, you can conduct business more effectively.
5. Asking Open-Ended Questions to Your Prospects
The secret to effectively turning your leads into paying consumers is to engage with them. So, how do you engage with your prospects? Easy, initiate a conversation with them.
Engage your leads by sharing more of their problems and asking questions about your services. When you ask open-ended questions like, âWhy are you considering selling your property?â or, âHow soon are you looking to sell?â These questions will encourage your leads to open up and discuss their pain points.
With these questions, you can better understand the challenges your prospects face and share insights on how you fit in solving these problems. Therefore, you can successfully build a relationship with your clients and build rapport for your real estate agency.
6. Handle Objections Like a Pro
As a rule of thumb, your prospects will always have objections, and you will always have to be prepared to tackle them. When researching your prospect, you must determine the common objections they can throw at you. This will help you better prepare to handle those objections.
Make sure to have effective cold-calling scripts to handle common concerns of your prospect, like budget constraints, timing issues, or skepticism about your services. Also, if you find any special objections your prospect might have, be prepared to handle them as well.
Practice these responses before you pick up the phone for better preparation. Find out personalized solutions to answer any concerns your leads might have. This will demonstrate your expertise and help you handle objections confidently.
7. Ensure Your Service Directly Benefit Your Prospect and Explain How
Your prospect will always have the final say if they are ready to sell their real estate property through you or not. You can only get a positive response when you successfully convince them that your service is the best option they can find.
So, once you have discussed the services you offer, you need to include how these services can help in solving their specific needs. Show them what values you bring to the table and offer them concrete examples or past incidents to demonstrate your expertise.
Once your prospect feels they can trust you with their property, you can lead them to the next step of your sales funnel.
Activities After Your Commercial Real Estate Cold Calling
Once you have talked with your leads via call, you need to conduct several activities to strengthen and enhance this strategy. You need to figure out what is working and what isnât. Also, you need to follow up accordingly to enhance the chance of your success.
Here are our tips to make your cold-calling measures more effective:
8. If the Call Went Well
If your conversation with the prospect went well, they should agree to complete the desired action, such as filling out forms, attending in-person meetings, or doing anything else related to their real estate. Congratulations, you now have a warm lead who is ready to take the journey through your sales funnel.
Point out the things that went well during the call and note them down. If you have made any promises to your lead, fulfill them and direct them to the next steps. If your prospect agrees to an in-person meeting, confirm it via email and thank them for adopting your services.
In general, make your prospect feel welcome without annoying them. You can use these insights for your future cold calls to gain better success.
9. If the Call Did Not Go Well
It is natural for a call not to go well most of the time. In such cases, you can do nothing but take notes of the objections and feedback that come with the call. This will allow you to improve your future calls.
Most importantly, do not get frustrated if a call does not go well. It will impact your performance and influence your other calls. If a prospect denies your services, thank them for their time and try to make an appointment for a future meeting at a later date.
10. Track Results and Learn from Mistakes
Tracking results and rearranging strategies go a long way to enhancing cold-calling success. However, many real estate companies fail here miserably. The primary reason for this failure is not having a proper system to track these cold-calling results.
As a real estate cold caller, you need to maintain an extensive log of your calls, including details about each prospect, call outcome, and any follow-up actions. You can leverage CRM tools and other digital data storage to manage these data effectively.
Review these data regularly to identify patterns, successes, and areas for improvement. This will help you generate better scripts for cold calling and make better conversions.
11. Providing Additional Information Promised During Calls
When you are conducting real estate business through cold calling, it is normal to offer additional information that you promise to deliver. And to successfully convert your lead into paying customers, you need to follow up on your promise.
Prompt following up on your promise helps build your rapport and build trust with your leads. This also upholds your tendency to commit and enhances your brand value.
12. Follow Up
Consistency is another important part of converting your cold calls into deals. If you do not follow up on your promise, you can never lend to a prospect and convert them anyway. A solid follow-up strategy will enhance your bottom line while boosting your business reputation.
You should have a proper schedule to conduct follow-ups with your commercial real estate prospects who showed interest but did not commit immediately. Keep them informed of new opportunities and market trends to peak their interest. This can help you generate better conversion rates in the long run.
Conclusion
Commercial real estate cold calling can be challenging. However, with great risks come great rewards. The abovementioned tips can greatly help your real estate agency achieve better results. You can also consult our commercial real estate cold-calling experts for a thorough run-down.
Make sure to thoroughly research your prospects and adequately prepare before calling them. Once you are familiar with their needs and pain points, call them and engage in an effective conversation. Address their concerns and objections to lead them to the initial goal of your cold calling.
Once your prospects agree to conduct the desired action, follow up periodically to keep them engaged with your agency. If you are not an expert in cold calling and need professional help, you can easily reach out to our cold-calling agency. We have the expatriates and capabilities to handle your needs and generate a better bottom line for your real estate agency.
