Apto Commercial Real Estate Blog

Closing a deal and cashing a commission check is such a good feeling, right? After months—sometimes years—of hard work, all your efforts finally pay off.

If closing a deal is good news, the even better news is that you can easily keep up the momentum and use your recent success to drum up new business. Just think, you have relevant market intel that you can use with other owners in the market. Maybe they’re in a similar position to the deal you just closed.

Leavitt Digital, or LDCRE, is a commercial real estate listing distribution platform, syndicating listings to 900+ news websites around the world. Those websites cover 27 countries, all 50 U.S. states, and 7,100 global cities.

And it now integrates directly with Apto, meaning your listings get way more exposure with no effort on your end.

Consider these two aphorisms: location, location, location and a picture is worth a thousand words. In the world of commercial real estate, the latter communicates the former. It accomplishes this through the time-tested technology―a map.

Fortunately for you, Apto Prospect & Nurture now features an all new mapping tool to help you get more out of your property, listing, and comp data.

Let’s think about the deal lifecycle for a moment.

From the first time you talk to a new prospect to when that check gets cashed, there are dozens of moving parts. And dozens of apps and tools to help with each of those parts.

Well, that number just went down a bit. Apto and Buildout are integrated to make the move from pitch to marketing that much smoother and simpler.

Let’s think about the marketing workflow for a moment.

After months of building a relationship with a new contact, you sign an exclusive rep agreement. You’ve done your homework on the property, capturing details and photos diligently in Apto. Now you can convert that property to a listing and hit the ground running. You need to get the word out to your network, comb through your database for potential tenants, send emails and make calls.

Well, now instead of entering the same property details time and time again across different listing sites, you can dramatically broaden your reach with the click of a button.

A broker I know recently told me that, since adopting a new technology, “cold calls” have become “familiar calls.” That’s because as he churns through his daily prospecting calls, he has details about the contact on the screen in front of him so he can make a quick connection.

Here’s the story he told me:

“I recently called a landlord with a big business park out by the airport. In Prospect & Nurture, I saw right away on the map that there was construction for a distribution center nearby. I was able to reference that right away when we got on the call and ask how it was affecting his tenants. Just knowing what’s going on in the area makes it so much easier to make a connection with a stranger.”

Like many kids growing up in a bucolic yet blue-collar part of the Midwest, I had to exercise my imagination when it came to more glamorous landscapes that featured mountains, oceans, or skyscrapers. Thankfully I had Chicago and its architecture to inspire me and ground my thinking about place.

That imagination turned to vision as I devoured movies and TV shows about places like Beverly Hills, Miami, and New York. The more I saw on the screen, the more I felt I understood, the more I felt some version of those cities’ realities.

The value of your services as a commercial real estate broker lies largely in your relationships—and by extension, the database that keeps them organized. To make meaningful connections with the important people in your market, you have to know who they are, their portfolios, their networks, their past behavior, etc. You have to be an expert on your market and all the properties and people in play.

There is so much information to track, and while there are a lot of data services out there to help you get started, they’re all imperfect. You have to gather and maintain your own data if you want to succeed.

The good news is if you’re diligent about building your database and keeping it up to date, it can pay huge dividends.

As a broker, your relationships are the core of your business. Your CRM handles the organization of these relationships, but leaves something to be desired when it comes to taking action.

Apto Prospect & Nurture has reoriented the broker experience on the actions needed to build relationships and grow your business.

A few years ago, my Honda Civic finally kicked the bucket and it was time yet again to go new car shopping. Some dread the task, but I was excited to put my years of reading Motortrend to work. I headed into the dealership armed with facts and figures, as well as the various opinions of automotive journalists in case the conversation got serious.

A sales guy started chatting me up right away so I threw him some softball question. I was looking to connect―all he had to do was react to what I said and display some semblance of knowledge. He didn’t do either of those things. He just sort of nodded and then started talking about the car in question and various “facts” that I was able to sniff out as falsehoods immediately.

I was out of there. He was out of a sale.

I hope you haven’t done this, or I hope you’ve only done it once. Once is all it takes to learn how important it is to know your product and your customer, and to have all that information on hand when it’s time to connect. Being able to have a smart, meaningful conversation is the key to being an effective salesperson.