Apto Commercial Real Estate Blog

There’s no denying Microsoft Excel revolutionized the way businesses approach data.

Originally launched in 1985, Excel's strong graphics and fast processing speeds helped it beat out Lotus 1-2-3 to become the dominant spreadsheet software by the mid-1990s. For the next decade it helped businesses around the world analyze and present their data more effectively than ever before.

But times have changed.

Given the options available today, Excel simply isn’t the best tool for commercial real estate professionals who need a platform to analyze data, prospect, and help them close deals. Modern customer relationship management (CRM) software, especially those focused specifically on CRE, create new possibilities and give brokers new ways to act on their data.

If you’re thinking about investing in new technology, now is the time. And if you’re still using an outdated spreadsheet, while shortcuts and tricks can help, ultimately you risk falling behind.

When you think about prospecting, is cold calling the first thing that comes to mind?

It is for many brokers, and it’s easy to see why — if you want to find new prospects, you first need to call them, right?

It’s hard to argue with that, and while cold calling does play a role in every prospecting strategy, it shouldn't be your entire strategy. Instead, the best prospecting strategies are rethinking the use of cold calling, transforming it from an end in itself to just one part of a larger approach to securing new business.

From building your market presence to using technology to segment and systematize your efforts, use these three prospecting strategies to move beyond cold calling and make more meaningful relationships in your market.

Did you meet your income goals for 2019?

Commercial real estate brokerage is an inherently risky industry, and it can be difficult to get transparency into your business when you're working through complex deals that can take years to close. Sometimes it probably seems like deals can fall through at the drop of a hat.

It might seem difficult to predict when a deal will come through, but the truth is that you can and should track your pipeline. It is possible to better manage the risk involved and get some level of visibility into your cash flow. After all, if you ran a retail store or restaurant franchise and didn’t have any reporting on the business, how long do you think you'd last?

Do you have prospecting goals? Maybe you set aside an hour each morning to call however many people you can, or perhaps you set a goal of 500 calls a week.

The next question is tougher: Do you ever meet those goals? Let's face it—you're busy, and prospecting isn’t fun. Not only is it not fun, our brains aren’t really wired to feel motivation for a task where the payoff is so far in the future! Any given call might turn into a deal, but even if all goes perfectly, it could be months until you see a paycheck. More often it's years.

Now here's some good news: there's a different, easier way to approach prospecting. Most brokers probably default to increasing call volume when they want to fill their pipeline. But if you break the numbers down a little differently, you can create a strategy that’s a lot less overwhelming and a lot more effective.

Whether it’s keeping track of contacts or using the latest sales tools to win more deals, there’s no question a strong CRM platform benefits every broker. It’s the tech foundation of your business and the first item to check off your CRE tech shopping list.

But once you have an effective CRM in place, what then?

The world of CRE tech is expanding every day, and from marketing tools to virtual reality, it’s easy to feel lost in the mix. To help guide your technology investments, we looked through the key contenders to separate the essential from the optional.

From critical technologies that help you make the most of your data to nice but currently optional technologies like virtual reality, here’s what you need to know to make the most of your technology budget.

If you’ve been in the commercial real estate business for a while, chances are good that you’ve got a large network of repeat clients and referrals keeping you busy. So busy, perhaps, that you may not even remember the last time you actively had to prospect for new deals. You’ve put in years of hard work, and all of it is finally paying off.

But even though you may not need to drum up new business the way you used to when you were starting out, you still need to stay connected to your network on a consistent basis. Are you prospecting? Maybe not with the same hunger as in your early years. But are you talking to more people than ever? Definitely.

As your network has grown, you may have realized that you’re spending even more time on the phone than before. There are simply more people to get back to, more referrals to follow up on, and more longtime clients to stay in touch with.

Join us for a live webinar on Wednesday, Nov. 7 at 1 p.m. CT to see how Apto is driving deal flow more efficiently and effectively for nearly 10,000 commercial real estate brokers.

We’ll show you our latest and greatest features, including: mapping functionality, an interactive deals board, intelligent call lists, integrated CRE news, and enhanced tenant rep functionality.

Here’s a little bit more of a preview about what you’ll see.

Success in commercial real estate is built on great relationships. Some of the best brokers in the field are out there making phone calls, booking lunch dates, meeting new contacts, connecting with old clients, and networking with just about everyone. But behind every warm handshake, cold call, and hot lead is something that often gets overlooked: great data.

It may not be glamorous, but data is what makes things happen. CRE is full of data sets like property specs, financial stats, ownership history, and the number of cold calls you make each day. If you’re doing data right, you see a world of connections, trends, and insights that are invisible to everyone else. If you’re doing it wrong, all you see is a bunch of numbers.

Your data can be extremely powerful if you use it right. But if you’re making any of these 5 common data mistakes, you may actually be doing more harm than good. Here’s what you should know:

Excel spreadsheets. A precise email folder structure in your Outlook. Color-coded post-it notes. Salesforce. A CRE-dedicated technology that stores your data.

Whether you think of it as a CRM or not, every commercial real estate broker has a way to track and manage their prospect and client relationships. That’s what CRM is after all―customer relationship management. It refers to technology that helps you track, manage, and analyze interactions with contacts, whether they're prospective or current clients. It is generally a catchall term for the technology that enables these processes, but you could consider the more basic systems above as CRM (if you’re feeling generous).

5 warning signs that you might need a new system

If you’re comfortable with your income, you feel like you have plenty of time to get your work done, and have never missed a deadline or let a key detail slip, then you probably don’t need to upgrade whatever system you have in place.

But if not, it’s worth exploring if you need a new CRM.

You know that data drives commercial real estate. Contacts, properties, square footage, NOI, comps, listings...the list goes on. Even though relationships are the foundation of your business, data is the at the heart of every new connection, deal, and transaction. If you use it right, you have access to a world of insights and opportunities—and can provide thoughtful guidance to clients at a moments’ notice. If you use it wrong (or not at all) you’re adrift in a sea of numbers.

This month, we asked two top brokers how they make the most of their data. Here’s what we learned: