This
book is designed to help you make MORE money with less effort in commercial
real estate. Using advanced technology,
support staff and prospecting techniques, you will gain a force multiplier
effect in your business that will propel you to the next level. In other words, it will be easier to make
$600,000 in fees than it was to make the first $400,000. This book will help you transform your real
estate business into a money making machine.
Every
success and failure that you have experienced thus far in your real estate
career (and life in general) can be directly attributed to the daily choices
that you have made along the way. For
ultimately it is you who decides to do this thing or that. It is the compilation of countless choices
that have brought you to your current point in your career today. Now, you have another choice to make. Do you invest your valuable time in to
reading a book about commercial real estate?
Do not discount the knowledge that is contained within this book just
because you only paid twenty-five
dollars for it. On the contrary, reading
this book is going to cost you the most prized possession that you have—your time.
There is only so much time in the day and by judiciously managing
this scarce resource you can positively impact both your finances and your
happiness. This is just one lesson that
is covered in these chapters.
This
book was written to help anyone endeavoring in commercial real estate brokerage
make more money in any market
condition and should be considered a best practices guide to commercial real
estate. Whatever your specialty is in
commercial real estate, you will benefit from the information contained
within. You will learn new techniques
(and reacquaint yourself with some old techniques) that you can use immediately
to grow your business. In fact, I would even challenge you to set a
goal of doubling your personal income over the next 12 months.
If you are an office manager or a seasoned commercial sales veteran who
has decided to pass along your trade to the next generation, please make this
book required reading for your junior agents. There are wonderful prospecting tools and explanations on how to become a
productive agent inside. This book
marries new software technology to proven business development techniques which
will help both new and seasoned agents alike grow their business in an
increasingly competitive and challenging environment.
It
is an unfortunate truth that as you become more successful in this business
some naysayers will be critical and attribute your success to pure luck. They will ignore your long hours of hard work,
personal sacrifices and the disciplined approach that you took to become a
success in commercial real estate. Pay your critics little attention,
because they are the ones that will stagnate in the business.
I
am very passionate about helping commercial real estate professionals make
money. In fact, I am determined to
change the entire commercial real estate industry for the better. I believe that technology should make the commercial
real estate practitioner’s life easier and must never replace or marginalize
their value proposition to the clients that they serve. It is the pursuit of this vision that drives
me and frequently finds me working into the early hours of the morning. This book and the companion software that I
have helped create would mean absolutely nothing to me if I did not truly
believe that they were making a difference in thousands of careers right
now.
Please
share your success stories with me. I am
very curious to see how you utilize this material in your real estate business
and how you have grown your income.
Thank
you,
Dan
Dulin, CEO
ddulin@realhound.com
REALHOUND.com ®
27068 La Paz Rd Ste 637
Aliso Viejo, CA
92656
It was my original intention that this
book was to be written in two parts. The
first part would explain how to use advanced software technology in commercial
real estate brokerage to save you time and increase your income while the
second part would discuss techniques and business strategies for commercial
real estate agents and companies to become more successful in their
businesses. However, as the book
progressed it became obvious to me that the two parts were not separate, since
continued success in commercial real estate is due in part to discovering,
mastering and applying new technological advancements to a practitioner’s real
estate business. In the end the two
parts of the book were integrated into one and it is my belief that the result
is a fluid and concise description of how to use existing technology to grow
your business in any market.
A
brief overview of the technology
RealHound® Live!, the companion
software that is discussed in this book, was developed in collaboration with
some of the best commercial real estate brokers in the country. Prior to the creation of this program, there
truly were no good existing software solutions available for commercial real
estate professionals. You are gaining
the benefit of a business tool that was created at a combined cost of over
eleven million dollars (and growing) in labor, research, equipment and
capital-- all poured into a product that is the absolute best commercial
real estate contact management software in existence today. This book will guide you through the same
processes and will teach you the same system that these top brokers use to
consistently make six, seven and eight figure incomes in commercial real estate
using this software.
The strength of the companion software
is its simplicity. The program was
designed with the novice computer user in mind but is powerful enough to meet
the needs of the most experienced commercial practitioner. It simplifies and automates complicated
commercial real estate processes which increases productivity. You can run the program as a single user, in
a team of networked multi-users, remotely (with or without the internet) or
have a true virtual office. Your company
can actually rebrand the program with their logo and a different name. It allows you to manage your contacts,
properties, escrows, listings, leases, sales, loans, buyer & tenant needs,
prospecting, marketing, and most importantly your time—all from a single
application. You no longer have to toggle
between various databases and different applications in order to run your
business.
RealHound® is the most powerful
commercial real estate software that you can buy. Whether you work alone, have a partner, are a
broker with an office full of agents or have a single assistant, RealHound® is
ideal for sharing data (locally or over the Internet), storing electronic files
(documents), managing transactions, communicating with other members of your
team and granting client access. If you
have a team approach to commercial real estate our software will make you more
money by increasing your team’s capabilities and productivity.
The program greatly simplifies the
prospecting process because you can easily execute cold calls, target your
contacts with direct mail, and identify potential properties for buyers and
spaces for tenants all from within your database. Find missing phone numbers (unlisted and
listed) and addresses right from a contact’s record by simply clicking on BullsEye
or a Smart-Link. If cold calling is a part of your business
plan (and I’m certain that it is), IntelliCall will increase both
your chances of reaching property owners on the phone and getting new business
from them when you do. The Auto
Compare feature gives you instant access to Rental, Sale and For Sale comparables customized for
any property in your database. This
powerful feature lets you analyze a prospect’s properties on-the-fly, making it
a powerful tool to use while you are on the telephone. The program also tracks your marketing
efforts, projects and timelines from start to finish.
Our revolutionary DealFinder
& Tenant
Wizard features will automatically match buyers with sellers and
tenants with available space. You can
even search for and import listings directly from the Internet, match them
against your buyer & tenant needs and share property information with the
real estate community- all from within the program! RealHound®
is the only commercial real estate software that can actually help make you
money.
Your
world is what you believe it to be
Something that the top performers in
commercial real estate all have in common is that they all view themselves
first as business owners, and second as sales, leasing, tenant rep or marketing
experts. Likewise, it is up to you to
develop a positive business mentality.
They know what their business goals are and they take consistent daily
action to attain those goals. If
something does not work they will take a different approach, but they never give up trying. Another commonality of the best performers is
that they all have made a commitment to continuously improve themselves. They read books, take classes, attend
seminars related to their field of expertise and have a business coach. They have written goals, experiment with
technology and new ways of doing business.
They are not afraid to invest in their business and get the best
equipment, software and people to support them.
They understand the concept of leverage
and have hired staff to support their business.
They also know that success in this business depends on daily Prospecting and Controlling the Inventory (through
exclusive representation of sellers, buyers, landlords and tenants).
Finally, if you are a Broker with
independent agents working for you, don’t miss Chapter Ten for a revolutionary
new way to approach agent retention and increase your market share.
If you are currently struggling with
another software program that was half heartedly adapted to support commercial
real estate sales, leasing and tenant representation you are wasting your most
precious asset - your time. RealHound® was purposefully designed for one
industry – commercial real estate. You
can use it straight out of the box without any customization.
Everyone at my company believes that
they are in a partnership with our users and want to help you succeed in your
business by supplying you with the very best commercial real estate software
available. We truly care about your
success in commercial real estate—it’s our passion!
Are you ready to grow your business
and make more money? Great, now let’s
get started!
Download
your free trial of the companion software at www.RealHound.com
Chapter One
Your Success In
Commercial Real Estate Depends On Just One Thing…
-Continuous Prospecting-
Some people will tell you that it is
easy to sell commercial real estate because there are particularly low barriers
to entering the commercial arena as an agent.
They might say something like, “even Bozo the Clown can sell commercial
real estate” or “selling commercial real estate isn’t exactly rocket
science”. And, if we are honest, who
among us has not from time to time thought that one of our competitors exhibited
some clown like attributes? But what
makes Bozo a success while Joe Schmoe washes out of the business? The answer is that daily prospecting
practically guarantees your success in commercial real estate. Consistent prospecting is the
difference between the agents/brokers who truly succeed in the business and
those that only limp along or worse yet fail entirely.
There are two highly effective ways of
prospecting in commercial real estate, cold calling and direct mail. There is a system to each method that you
must master and practice regularly to ensure steady annual growth of your
income. Cold calling and direct mail can
work independently from one another, but when used in conjunction with each
other they create a powerful lead generating machine that practically
guarantees your success. Most commercial
real estate agents favor one method over the other and the most popular method
is also the least effective in a competitive market; direct mail. You must use both methods to have the
greatest impact in your market.
You cannot effectively prospect if you
do not know what your target market is or who your real prospects are. As simple as this principle sounds, I am
surprised to find that many agents still overlook this basic rule. The most successful commercial real estate
agents know what their target market is and have compiled their own integrated CRM (Contact Relationship
Management) /property database. This
data is meticulously maintained because it is essential to the continued
success of the agent’s business.
Cold calling is the most effective
method of generating new business and it is also the undertaking most dreaded
by commercial agents. But let’s put this
highly productive activity into perspective-- you will simply make a lot more
money by calling owners and tenants in your market than by not calling
them. Think of it in terms of
probability, there is an excellent chance that there are property owners in
your market that want to buy or sell real estate right now regardless of
whether the market is good or bad.
Somebody wants to lease space and there are property owners who are
thinking about changing their leasing agent.
Consistent telephone calls to property owners and tenants in your market
will help you anticipate their needs and keep you ahead of your competition
(Cold Calling techniques and other helpful calling tools are covered in detail
in a later chapter).
You should contact every property
owner (or major tenant) who is in your target market at least once per quarter
(every 3 months).
TIP: To determine how many
calls you need to make on a daily basis to reach your goal, divide the number
of owners and tenants in your target market by work weeks in the quarter
(typically 12 weeks) and finally divide the resulting number by the number of
workdays in the week. You now know how
many calls you need to make per work day to reach every owner (or tenant) in
your target market quarterly.
If
you realize that there is NO possible way to reach everyone on your list in a
three month reoccurring cycle, then you have too many prospects on your call
list. Cut your list down to a more
manageable level. A good rule of thumb
is that one person can effectively contact 700 to 900 prospects by telephone
per quarter. Remember, your goal is to
talk to a live body who can make real estate decisions and not just mindlessly
dial the telephone.
Dedicate at least two consecutive
hours each work day to cold calling.
Schedule your cold call time during the week, alternating the days that
calls are made in the morning and afternoons.
Don’t let anything distract you from making your daily calls. Remember that calls come first and EVERYTHING
else comes after that.
To avoid unnecessary distraction,
alert your staff that you are not to be disturbed while making your calls. The first couple of calls tend to be a little
awkward, but you will get into a rhythm that will make each subsequent call
easier. If you allow yourself to become
distracted, you run the risk of never finding your rhythm or finishing your
daily call quota.
Each call must be tracked and a brief
synopsis of the conversation saved in the prospect’s contact record for future
reference. Both buyer and tenant needs
should be recorded for future reference.
Every conversation that you have with a single prospect builds on the
previous conversations and it becomes easier to talk to that contact over time. RealHound simplifies the entire cold calling
process which reduces your anxiety and allows you to make more effective
calls. Like most things, the more calls
you make the better you will become.
In a healthy real estate business,
prospecting is a continuous process
that is done in parallel with every other daily activity in that business and,
when done correctly, can be characterized by smooth steady growth of a
practitioner’s income. By contrast,
sporadic prospecting results in income peaks and troughs which are also known
as porpoising (yes, like a dolphin).
This hair-raising experience can be avoided with consistent daily
prospecting and will greatly reduce your anxiety and increase your faith that
you will always make money in Commercial Real Estate.
Would you believe it if I told you
that there is a magic recipe for sending out mailers? Well, it’s true and I’m going to share it
with you now. Mailers are expensive in
comparison to cold calls but if done correctly they will more than pay for
themselves. If you approach mailers
incorrectly you will be wasting your money on print costs, postage and, more
importantly, your valuable time.
When done correctly you can expect a
350% (or more) return on your investment.
In other words, for every dollar you spend on mailers you should get 3.5
dollars in return. However, if you are
just starting your direct mail campaign, your results will not be
immediate. It takes approximately six
months for your prospects to recognize your name and want to call you.
A successful
mailing campaign has these five critical elements: regular contact intervals,
accessibility of the message, simplicity of design, a call to action and a
take-away (which is a
compelling reason for the recipient to call you). Unless you are sending out a newsletter or a
targeted letter, you should always mail postcards only to the prospects in your
target market. Postcards are the least
expensive mailer that you can possibly send and they are also the most
effective. They are more likely to be
read because the recipient does not need to open an envelope to receive the
message. A simple glance at your well
designed postcard gets your message across quickly.
.
Maintaining regular contact intervals with your prospects is the first key
component to a successful direct mail marketing campaign. If you are just beginning your mailing campaign,
it is important that you brand yourself and your services in the minds of your
prospects. In order to do this, your
initial mailings to your target market must be once a week for four weeks. After the first four weeks, you will send a
mailer out every two weeks for the rest of your career. Like anything worthwhile, a successful
marketing campaign takes time and mailers can take anywhere from 3 to 6 months
to become truly effective. If you fail
to send mailers out for more than 6 weeks you run the risk of having your
prospects forget who you are which will force you to start your mailing
campaign over again from scratch. A
record of each mailer sent and the results it received get entered into each
recipient’s contact record (RealHound® does this with just a push of a button).
Each marketing piece should have a
consistent message that can be as simple as “Your commercial real estate sales
expert”, “Your office & industrial property sales specialist”, “Exclusively
representing the interests of tenants”, “Your full service commercial real
estate expert” or “Your commercial real estate sales & leasing
expert”. A successful message will
clearly state what you service you have to offer.
Another component to a successful
mailing campaign is to have a compelling reason for your prospects to call
you. Offering something for “free” or a
take-away is the most persuasive reason for the recipient to contact you. Some of the best freebies that you can offer
are: property valuations, market rent surveys, lease analysis, market trend
reports and sales surveys. When your
phone rings in response to a mailer it is your responsibility to flush out a
prospect’s need and assess their motivation.
TIP: If a property owner calls you to take you up on your
offer for a free valuation of their property; they are thinking about selling
it. Make
sure that you personally meet them as soon as possible.
This will further your branding
initiatives and allow you to begin to develop a more personal relationship with
your prospect.
The overall appearance of your
marketing materials is very important.
If you do not have sufficient experience designing marketing materials,
then leave the design work to the professionals. There are many companies that can design and
even mail your marketing materials for you.
Their services are generally affordable and will save you a tremendous
amount of time. More marketing
information will be discussed in detail in a later chapter.
And what about email? Well, it is cheaper than direct mail but most
unsolicited messages wind-up in the recipient’s junk folder.
Your contact and property database is
truly the foundation of your success.
Think about it. Without knowing
who owns the real estate or leases space in your target market, how can you
effectively prospect?
Successful agents all have databases
that contain property data, corresponding ownership, lease data and tenant
information. Internet sharing
capabilities, ease of use and functionality are extremely important aspects of
an effective database. Their data is
unique and not dependant on third party data providers. Every change of ownership and major lease is
verified against multiple sources including the Buyer and Seller (calling them
to talk about the transaction is a great way to pick up new business). Leases are verified with the leasing broker,
landlord and the tenant. Successful
agents know who they have talked to, met with and who is receiving their
marketing materials.
Unsuccessful agents do not have a
database at all, try to use Outlook for the task or have a hodge-podge
collection of dysfunctional data that was imported and never verified. Their contact records contain so many informational
gaps that they would have better luck prospecting blind folded from a
metropolitan phone book.
Without an accurate contact and property database, effective
prospecting is not possible. If you
cannot effectively prospect, you cannot maximize your business opportunities. If you are not maximizing your business
opportunities- your real estate business will stagnate. This is evident in the business models of
many “Old-timers” in the business because they only work with a handful of
clients. As their clients transition out
of the business and are not adequately replaced- their incomes start to
stagnate.
Caution: There are no
shortcuts to creating and maintaining a property and contact database. Some people only want to import data in to
their database without ever questioning and verifying the quality of the
data. If you decide to take this
approach toward maintaining your database, it can cost you hundreds of
thousands of dollars each year in lost fees.
Effective methods of maintaining your database are discussed in a later
chapter.
The top performers in commercial real
estate invest in technology that works FOR them and not against them. RealHound® is the ONLY Commercial Real
Estate software that is specifically designed to help you prospect. It is the only software that leverages your
time by making the daily processes in commercial real estate
simpler. It manages your contacts,
properties, cold calls, listings, escrows, projects, buyers and tenants. It is designed specifically to meet the needs
of a growing real estate business, to keep you organized and it is extremely
EASY to use. It is the only software
that can actually help make you money.
Power Moves
1) Daily prospecting is the key to making a lot
of money in commercial real estate.
Devote two hours of everyday to prospecting on the telephone. Do nothing else during this scheduled time
and make sure that you do not entertain any interruptions. Record your call results for each contact
reached in their respective contact record.
Your goal with each phone call is to talk to the real estate decision
maker and meet that person. People do
business with people they know.
2) Send mailers out on a regular basis to every
owner or tenant who is in your target market.
Your mailers must have a consistent message and should compel the
recipient to call you. Don’t forget to
offer some service for “free” or a take-away.
Most people find it difficult to resist free offers. Record every mailer sent in each recipients
contact record. The secret to a
successful direct mail campaign is to send out your mailer at regular
intervals. This will further reinforce
your branding efforts.
Email blasts tend to get ignored and left
unopened in the recipient’s spam box.
3) Your database is the foundation of your
success. Successful agents all have
databases that contain property data, corresponding ownership, tenant
information and lease information. Without
this critical information, effective prospecting is not possible. If you are currently struggling with
another software program that was half heartedly adapted to support commercial
real estate sales, you are wasting your most precious asset - your time. RealHound® will be a different experience for
you because it was specifically design for commercial real estate by the TOP
practitioners in the industry.
In any given group from any industry,
the highest paid and most highly recognized people are those that consistently
outperform their peers. To these victors
go the lion’s share of the reward. This phenomenon is known as the Law of the Vital Few or the Pareto
Principle. But what really makes these
Vital Few so successful while the rest of the group can barely achieve
mediocrity? The thing that truly
separates these people from the crowd is an unwavering dedication to achieve
the maximum results for the amount of time and effort invested into their
endeavors. This is recognized in our
society as a commitment to excellence.
There is no magic or innate talent to
being one of The Vital Few; it is not
an exclusive club and the essentials can be learned by anyone who really wants
to be excessively rewarded for their efforts.
You are probably wondering about fairness to one’s fellow man but I am
pleased to tell you that this system is perfectly fair. Everyone has a choice to have, to do or to be
anything that they want. The real
question is whether or not they will decide to take the action necessary to
achieve their desired outcomes. This
speaks volumes about an individual’s motivation and has nothing to do with the
question of fairness.
So what is the common characteristic
shared by the most successful commercial real estate agents? They execute the fundamentals of the business
very well by getting the maximum results out of the time and effort spent at a
task. They prospect, control inventory
and leverage their time--- and so
must you!
The Pareto Principal (which is also
known as The 80/20 Rule or the Law of the Vital Few) was named after the Italian
economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed at the turn of the 19th
century that 80% of Italy’s
property wealth was held by just 20% of the country’s population. But the man responsible for further refining
this idea in respect to the arena of commerce was the great business thinker,
Dr. Joseph Juran, who named this principle after Pareto. Dr. Juran suggested that most outcomes of any
given situation are the result of only a few causes.
The Pareto Principle states that 20%
of actions accounts for 80% of the outcomes in any phenomena. The value of this principle to you and your
commercial real estate business is this- your focus should be on the 20% of the
actions that really matter. This does
not mean that the other 80% can be ignored entirely. It simply means that you must choose to put
most of your attention on the top 20% of all activities that will yield you the
most results in your business.
Most commercial sales agents
misallocate their time to the 80% lowest yielding activities in their business,
instead of focusing more closely on the productive 20%. Conversely, the most successful commercial
sales agents, The Vital Few, focus on
the top 20% and delegate the other 80% of lower yielding activities to others
on their team.
Some argue that the 80/20 rule should
really be the 90/10 rule (10% of causes result in 90% of outcomes) or the
80/10/10 rule, in which case, 10% of causes yield 80% of outcomes and the
remaining 10% of causes yield no measureable outcomes whatsoever. The percentages are purely conceptual and may
be different as long as the total equals 100%.
Think about the validity of the 80/20
rule to the following applications:
- 20% of the commercial sales
people in your office generate 80% of the company’s revenues-- which means that 80% of sales people
generate just 20% of the company’s revenues,
- 20% of workers do 80% of the
work-- which means that 80% of your workforce does just 20% of the work,
- 20% of all Brokerage companies
control 80% of the market-- which means that 80% of all Brokerage
companies control just 20% of the market.
- 20% of Buyers & Tenants
you talk to will do a deal and 80% will not-- which means that 80% of
all potential buyers and Tenants will be a waste of your time.
- 80% of a goal is achieved in
the last 20% of the remaining time before the goal deadline.
This concept also applies to negative
results:
- 20% of your clients will
create 80% of your problems,
- 20% of inaction can ruin 80%
of what has been accomplished,
- 20% of your workforce take 80%
of the cumulative sick days at your office,
- 20% of your workers account
for 80% of the tardiness in your office.
Try to avoid the misallocation of your
resources to the unproductive 80% in your business. Some examples of this type of resource
misallocation are:
- 80% of a company’s sales
revenues are produced by just 20% of a company’s sales force, but 80%
of a company’s resources go into making just 20% of its revenue or
supporting the other 80% of the sales force.
- 80% of your marketing
resources are spent creating just 20% of your sales leads.
Warning:
Do not assume that you can rid
yourself of the unproductive 80%. The
80% gets redistributed as the size of the population changes. Instead, use this information as a tool to
spot inefficiency and to better manage resources within your business.
The Pareto Principal teaches us to
allocate scarce resources (capital, labor and time) in the pursuit of the most
effective use of those resources.
Streamline your actions to obtain the maximum results for the amount of
resources invested into your endeavors and watch your business grow!
Have you ever stopped to consider the
value of your time in a scenario where you accomplish everything by yourself
with no outside assistance? This would
mean that closing a real estate deal would have the same time value as buying a
roll of stamps. In other words, the
highest and most productive use of your time has the exact same value as the
least productive use of your time.
Using the Pareto Principal where 20%
of your efforts create 80% of your income, the True Value of your time is the value of your time when you are at
your most productive. You must increase
the TOTAL value of your time by using leverage and delegating certain
activities to hired staff that do not require your special talents so that you
can focus on the top 20% of the money making activities in your business.
Example:
Let’s suppose that you make $350,000 per year, work 50 weeks per year
and 40 hours each week adding up to a total of 2,000 hours worked per
year. Your unleveraged time is worth
$175/hour ($350,000 income/2,000 work hours).
However, just 20% of your time was spent on activities that generated
80% of your income. Using the 80/20
rule, you are only at your peak productivity for 400 hours/year and have
misallocated 1,600 hour to activities that only produced 20% of your
income. Therefore, the true value of your
time is when you are at your peak productivity or in this example $700/hour
($350,000 x 80% of your income= $280,000/400 hours=$700/hour). Your
non-productive time is worth only $44/hour ($350,000 x 20% of your
income=$70,000/1,600=$44/hour).
What this means is that you should
hire someone to manage and complete the tasks that are a misallocation of your
talents (the least productive of use of your time). You can hire them in a fulltime position, pay
them up to $44/hour and still expect to come out ahead on the arrangement as
long as you discipline yourself to focus on your top 20% and let your employee
complete those tasks that are a misallocation of your time.
Reminder:
There are many different people in
this world that you can hire at many different pay rates. Make sure that your new hire(s) is fairly
compensated so you can minimize employee turnover. You goal is to hire competent people and keep
them for many years. Don’t just hire
people to fill an immediate need without thought to the future. Carefully screen your prospective employees
for the skill sets necessary and willingness to perform the job.
Caution:
The cost of a bad hire could set
you back months in achieving your financial goals. Do not take the hiring process lightly. Do not hire people just because they need a
job. If you decide to hire family
members or friends, think about the consequences on your relationship if things
to go badly. Take it from the
Author—hamburgers and hotdogs might not be the only thing getting roasted at
the family BBQ after you fire a family member who was not pulling their weight
in the business.
Your goal after delegating your low
yielding tasks to your staff is to focus exclusively on the highest yielding
activities in your business (prospecting, deal making, etc). Imagine what your income would be if instead
of spending 400 hours a year on your most productive tasks, you spent 1,000
hours a year maximizing those opportunities.
To use the numbers from our previous example, your income would increase
from $350,000 to $656,250 per year after paying out $87,500 in
salaries. Yes, you are going to make a
lot more money.
It is only fair to mention that you
will never completely achieve your goal of exclusively focusing on the top 20%
of productive tasks. As your business
grows, so will the demands on your time.
You will always be evaluating what the most productive activities are
and delegating the rest to hired staff.
Some agents have hired professional drivers to chauffeur them to and
from the office so they can maximize their productive time. Others have hired off-shore virtual
assistants to do database entry and upkeep.
What tasks could you delegate right now to become more productive in
your own business?
Your time is very valuable. Do not squander it on unproductive meetings,
unqualified buyers & Tenants, web browsing, unmotivated sellers,
substandard software or just hanging around the water cooler.
In order to
master the three fundamentals of a successful commercial real estate business,
you must understand these concepts and make them part of your core business
focus.
1) Prospecting: Prospecting is the life blood of a successful
commercial real estate career. You MUST prospect on a daily basis by
telephone and send direct mail to your farm weekly. It doesn’t matter what else is happening in
your business—prospect first and handle problems later.
Your
prospecting goal is to
getting a face-to-face meeting with every qualified person that to speak to on
the telephone. Build and foster long
term personal (but within the bounds
of professional) relationships with your clients because people like doing
business with people that they know.
2) Controlling Inventory: Commercial real estate is a business of
control. You either have control or you have nothing. Your goal is to be your clients’ exclusive representation
as a listing agent, buyer’s representative or tenant representative. This
is called controlling the inventory and the concept extends beyond properties
to include people that you represent (both buyers and tenants).
The purpose of getting control is not
to generate offers on listings or drive all over town with your clients but to
close transactions—always work toward this end goal. Make sure that your clients’ are motivated,
qualified and their expectations are properly managed. Agents that Control the Inventory get paid
when their exclusively represented clients (sellers, buyers & Tenants)
close deals.
3)
Leverage: Hire employees to help leverage your time and
increase productivity (don’t be afraid to explore the possibility of hiring off-shore
labor to maintain your database if you are on a budget). The
Pareto Principle states that 20% of actions account for 80% of the outcomes in
any phenomena. This does not mean that
the other 80% can be ignored entirely.
Successful agents focus primarily on the 20% of actions that maximize
results, such as prospecting and deal making.
Assign hired staff deal with the other 80% of actions that yield minimal
results. Using leverage effectively
allows you to grow your business. As an
agent’s business grows so should their level of staffing. Remember, each hire should be based on true need and not ego.
4)
Control
Your Focus: What you focus on you get. Ask yourself this question at least 3 times a
day: I am working on my top 20% or have
I gotten myself sidetracked? If you are
caught up in a diversion, shift your focus back to your top 20%. If you are like most people, you will catch
yourself drifting a few times a day.
How did the Pharaohs build their
pyramids? Nobody is sure how it was done
exactly, but we can safely assume that the Pharaohs who ruled Egypt did not
carve or carry any of the stone blocks used in the construction of the pyramids
up the ramps! This is a fantastic metaphor
for the use of a workforce to achieve leverage in your real estate business.
You can accomplish much more by instructing and directing a workforce of others
than you can do on your own.
There are typically five stages of
leveraged growth in commercial real estate.
While it is not necessary for every agent to grow their business to
stage five (or beyond), most commercial agents are comfortable at stage two or
three. However, without the proper amount of leverage in your business it is
practically impossible to maintain a high income and balance in your personal
life.
When you add staff their job
responsibilities should include everything that can be delegated that is not
part of your top 20% of productive activities (remember that your key
activities are prospecting and deal making). This allows you to leverage your
time. Pay everyone on your staff a competitive salary with bonuses to keep them
motivated to help you achieve your goals.
Your first hire should always be an assistant and do remember that you
get what you pay for. Junior agents
should be paid a small salary and be commissioned to start. As their skill set develops their position
should evolve to be 100% commissioned.
You will have to make a commitment to
train your workforce. Train and retain
the first two members of your team and then they will train all future new
hires. Have your staff document their
job duties and the steps to accomplish those tasks so those skills can be
passed to the next generation.
The key concept behind leverage is not
to work harder or work less, but to work smarter and focus on your top 20% (but
working less is always a nice perk too!)
Stage One: Sole Practitioner with No Leverage
Gross Fees: $50,000 - $300,000
Prospecting comes before anything
else. Database maintenance should always
be done after you have prospected for the day.
Stage Two: One Staff Member
Gross Fees: $300,000-$700,000
Database:
Assistant maintains and checks new availabilities against the Buyer and Tenant
Needs
Stage Three: Two Staff Members
Gross Fees: $700,000-$1,700,000
Database: Team maintains
Note: One variation of this model
would to have a junior agent handling Buyer & Tenant Representation.
Stage Four: Three Staff Members
Gross Fees: $1,700,000-$3,000,000
Database: Team maintains
Stage Five: Five Staff Members
Gross Fees: $3,000,000-PLUS
Database: Team maintains
The foundation of all the business
models illustrated above is the agent’s database. Consider your database to be
your very own gold mine that, if maintained properly, will yield you a
tremendous personal fortune. Successful
agents all have databases that contain property data, corresponding ownership,
tenant data, available space, For Sale and lease information. Their data is
unique and not solely dependent on third party data providers. Every change of
ownership is verified against multiple sources including the Buyer, Seller and
brokers. Newly lease space is verified
with the tenant, landlord (what a great way to pickup new business) and
brokers. Depending on their target market, they track ownership, properties for
sale, Buyers, transfers of ownership (Sales), rents, tenants, leases, new
construction and properties taken out-of-service. They know who they have talked
to, met with and who is receiving marketing materials. Without this
critical information, effective prospecting is not possible. If you cannot
effectively prospect, you cannot maximize new business opportunities. If you are not maximizing new business
opportunities your income will decrease.
A successful database is scalable to
an agent’s business, meaning that as the agent’s business grows, so their
technology must grow with them. Networking capabilities, ease of use and
functionality are extremely important functions of an agent’s database. The top
performers in commercial real estate invest in technology that works for them
and not against them.
RealHound® is the ONLY Commercial Real
Estate software that is specifically designed for commercial real estate. RealHound® greatly enhances your ability to Prospect, which in turn leads to new
business opportunities (listings, buyer & tenant rep). It is also the only software that gives you
the advantage of leverage by making the daily processes in
commercial real estate simpler which saves you time and makes your team more
productive. It automatically matches
buyers with sellers and tenants with available space. You can search the Internet for listings and
import newly discovered property data into your database with a click of a
button! It manages your contacts, properties,
listings, escrows timelines, property photos, documents, projects, buyers and
tenants. It can be scaled in order to
meet the needs of a growing business, keeps you organized, can communicate data
over the Internet and it is extremely EASY to use.
The agent business plan is a critical
component to maximizing your revenues for the year. It is nothing more than a
document containing goals and milestones for your personal real estate
business. Without clearly defining your business goals you run the risk of
getting distracted and falling short of your desired outcomes.
The key elements of a successful agent
business plan are:
Simplicity:
One or two pages max
Revenue
Goals: How much do you want to make and how many
deals do you need to do it?
Why
Statement: Why MUST
you accomplish this plan?
Target
Market/focus: Define
your target market and personal focus (top 20%)
Transaction
Velocity: Does the deal velocity in your market support
your revenue goals? Judging from prior
years, is it possible to make your revenue goal?
Staff,
Equipment & technology: Do you have the proper resources to pull it
off?
Prospecting:
How much daily telephone time will you commit to reach your revenue
goal? How many new prospects will you
meet with per week? How many and how
often will you send out mailers?
Budget:
What is your budget?
Review
the top goals in your business plan daily and your entire business plan
monthly. Make adjustments to your
approach until you achieve your desired results.
It seems that I am always asked how
RealHound® can best be used to really beat the competition and gain market
share. My reply is always the same—use Ants. Now you’re probably thinking that
I couldn’t possibly be referring to the little insect, but I am. You will not
literally dump a box of ants on to your competition’s doorstep to drive them
out, but you will use your study of the insect to accomplish the same thing.
Ants are amazing creatures. There are
species of ants in South America that can clear an entire forest when they are
hunting. By sheer numbers they can take down larger more powerful prey. When
they have a collective goal, they are fearless. All creatures big and small
flee from them.
So too will your competition flee from
you. Your market is your forest and your potential clients are your prey. Cover
your market exactly as described in this book and you will drive your
competitors from your business forest.
A couple of years ago when the real estate market was edging its peak, my
local newspaper ran an article predicting the market would continue to
climb. I remember the article quoting a
major commercial brokerage firm proclaiming that the traditional real estate
market cycle was dead and that there was not going to be a “bust“ to this
market’s “boom”. Time has obviously
proven that statement wrong. The real
estate market cycle is here to stay; it is as unavoidable as the law of
gravity. If what goes up must come down,
the question is how can you avoid becoming the next victim of a market
downturn?
Even during a market downturn, the fundamental truth about commercial
real estate is that the demand will never completely dissipate. Sure, the players and economics may change,
but the real estate itself must always be owned, managed and leased by someone
– which in turn creates demand for your expert services. In a downturn, your client could be a doctor
one day or a bank that foreclosed on a property the next. Always market your services to the people who
can say “yes” to your fee.
All market cycles have identifiable characteristics that are easy to spot
if you know what to look for. For
example, in an up market excess demand for commercial real estate services can
be satisfied by amateurs but in a market downturn that demand shifts quickly to
a dependence on the expert real estate advisor.
The expert always gets busier and makes the most money in a down
market. And the amateurs… well, let’s
just say that they get an education paid for by the market cycle scholarship
fund!
We are now on the verge of the largest transfer of wealth in modern
history where the prepared commercial real estate practitioner stands to
directly benefit. Let me emphasize that
preparedness is the key. Do you have the
skill sets needed to be an expert advisor to your clients in their time of
need? Have you incorporated the latest
real estate technologies into your business?
If not, you must make an immediate change to your business plan while
you still have time.
An expert advisor understands the mechanics behind commercial real estate
and the forces at work in the marketplace.
If you do not know the difference between a CAP rate and an interest
rate (yes, it is a trick question), I recommend that you attend several classes
offered by:
|
CCIM
Institute
Toll Free: 800-621-7027
|
|
Society
of Industrial and Office REALTORS ®
|
|
www.ccim.com
|
|
Phone: 202.449.8200
|
|
|
|
www.sior.com
|
Both organizations have a spectacular reputation in the industry and offer
professional designations that will distinguish you from your competition. When it comes to technology, you must use an
integrated CRM (Contact Relationship Management) and property database software
system in your daily business. I am sure
you know the one that I would recommend!
Power Moves
1)
The
most successful commercial real estate agents all execute the fundamentals of
the business very well by getting the maximum results out of the efforts spent
on a task. They prospect, control
inventory, leverage their time and focus to achieve peak productivity.
2)
The
foundation of your business is your database.
Consider your database to be your very own gold mine that, if maintained
properly, will yield you a tremendous personal fortune.
3)
Leverage
is the key to growing your business each and every year. You are now familiar with the Pareto Principal, the principle that
states that a mere 20% of your actions accounts for 80% of your results. Commercial sales people consistently
misallocate their time to the 80% lowest yielding activities in their
business. The most successful sales
people focus on just their top 20% and delegate the other 80% of their low
yielding activities to hired staff.
4)
Using
the Pareto Principal, 20% of your efforts create 80% of your income; you can
estimate the True Value of your time
as the value of your time when you are at your most productive. You must increase the TOTAL value of your
time by using leverage and delegating those activities that do not require your
special talents to hired staff so you can focus on the top 20% of money making
activities.
5)
Without
the proper amount of leverage in your business it is practically impossible to
maintain a high income and still achieve balance in your personal life. The key concept behind leverage is not to
work harder, but to work smarter and focus on your top 20% high yield activities.
6)
Always
prepare an annual business plan to keep you focus on your business outcomes for
the year and review it regularly.
7)
Use
Ants to beat your competition!
8) Don’t be a
victim of a down market cycle! Be
Prepared.
As a real estate
professional, the data that you have accumulated about the real estate market
is your stock and trade. If you do not
track information about the marketplace, your value proposition to your clients
is greatly diminished. A key component
to accomplishing this ginvolves collecting, verifying and warehousing all
property related market data that impacts your business and having it at your
fingertips when you need it. If you sell
apartments and industrial buildings then collect data about those property
types in your trade area. If you lease
retail space, collect information on retail properties, owners, leases and
tenants. Tenant reps will focus on
companies and their lease data. Property
information is a commodity these days.
Most of the information you need to build your database can be found
using online public databases, purchased from a third party, uncoverd with a
quick property visit or a phone call.
There are only two
ways to warehouse all of your data- the easy way and the hard way. The easy way is to use the companion
software, RealHound®. The hard way is to
use anything else. When you choose to
use RealHound® your data is stored in the most advanced database that you can
buy for commercial real estate. It
organizes your market data so you can retrieve it quickly and logically. It has a powerful customer relationship
management (CRM) component that helps you develop and maintain client
relationships by tying their contact records directly to the real estate that
they are related to. It will also match
buyer & tenant needs to available properties/space in your database or on
the Internet. This powerful tool will
save you a tremendous amount of time and can make you a ton of money.
The key to any
database is to keep the information current.
Even if you have already created a database that has information that is
relevant to your specialty in commercial real estate (such as ownership,
tenants, phone numbers, property data, property photos, sales comparables,
properties “For Sale”, rental data, and lease data) and have also created a
farm area/target market, you should still review this chapter to learn new
ideas that will increase the effectiveness of your database upkeep.
As a successful real
estate practitioner, you will need to track information related to your
specialty which could include: owners, tenants, leases, properties for sale,
buyers, transfers of ownership (sales), rents, new construction and properties
taken out-of-service. Most of your (or
your team’s) database efforts will be spent keeping this information current
and recording the conversations that you have with your prospects in their
respective contact records. Consider
your database to be your very own goldmine that, if maintained properly, will
yield you a tremendous personal fortune.
Your goal for creating
a database is to have at least 700 properties with corresponding ownership,
owner phone numbers, owner addresses and property photographs. Leasing specialists and tenant
representatives will add lease and tenant contacts to their database. In addition to the 700 properties mentioned
above tenant representatives should have at least 500 tenants with phone
numbers and addresses in their database.
You will use 3rd party data services, public records, interviews with
other brokers and your own personal research to complete and maintain your
database.
Title companies are a good source of
basic property and ownership data.
Contact your local title representative for more details. Public records are another excellent source of
free data. (RealHound.com ®
is currently exploring the possibility of having this sort of data mining
ability automatically integrated into the program, so stay tuned for further
details!)
There are a number of subscription
services in every metropolitan area that will sell you property data. Use your favorite internet search engine to
locate relevant data providers in your area.
Caution: It is occupational
suicide to exclusively use a single
third party data source as your database because that makes you no better than
the guy down the street who is doing the exact same thing. There are a few agents in every market that
try to prospect from a single third party database without having built their own
personal database. Traditionally, these agents do poorly in the business and don’t last
through a full market cycle.
RealHound® has a very powerful import
mechanism, but most subscription data contains errors and/or have license
restrictions that limit your ability to use their data. Therefore, we do not recommend that you
import data directly into RealHound® from those sources but rather manually
enter and maintain your own data.
Rental data can be obtained from
vendors such as Realfacts® in select markets, but you should augmented the
information obtained from them with a personal phone call to their respective
property owners and/or their property managers because an owner rental survey
is a great reason to call prospects in your market.
Input your information into a new
database. Data can be imported or input manually into RealHound. Anything that can put into an Excel
spreadsheet can be imported into the program by mapping the data fields or by
using the Easy Import Wizard. If you
choose to key in your data by hand, we recommend that you start inputting your
data on the Property Overview screen.
With RealHound® you have the
possibility of storing an unlimited number of properties and contacts in your database. A farm
is a subset of properties or contacts in your database that you are continually
prospecting for business. Your farm
could be determined by such factors as geographic area, property size, tenant
type or property type.
If you are operating as an individual
agent with over 1,200 properties or contacts in your farm, you will not be as
effective in personally contacting all of the prospects in your target market
and you will have to slim down the size of your targeted group.
Conversely if you have a large
multi-agent team, your team will be able to effectively handle a larger volume
of prospects based upon the number of members on the team. As a general rule you should have at least
700 properties in your farm with a minimum of 500 individual owners or tenants
per agent on your team. Your goal is to
contact every prospect in your farm area at least once a quarter to secure a
face-to-face meeting. Owners with properties
(or Tenants) that are outside of your farm but are in your property database
can be targeted with direct mail.
Identify a target market to become
your farm. Your
target market, your farm, will become a group of properties or tenants that you
will continuously prospect for business and become an expert on. Some criteria that you can use to select
your target market are: property size, geographic location, property type,
tenant type, city or county. When you
have selected your farm save it as a Property
Group and give it a name that is easily recognizable to you, or simply call
it “my farm”. If you are working as a
tenant rep you will also need to save your tenant contacts as a Contact Group.
In the past researching owner and
tenant contact data was laborious, time consuming work. In many cases the information that you were
able to glean about a property owner was only partially complete or no longer
current. Finding accurate contact
information for each prospect in your database is critical to your success, but
that doesn’t mean that it should take you all day to find. That’s why we created BullsEye and
Smart-Links and integrated them into the program.
BullsEye searches ten different
pay-per-use databases across the Internet to find information missing from your
contacts, and it is fast! It is an
affordable pay-per-use service that is available to all of our users. We have secured prepaid bulk pricing with the
largest information providers in the country and pass their services along to
you at a nominal cost. The benefit to
you is that you can now find a prospect’s published and, in many cases,
unpublished telephone number for as low as 75 cents right from a contact’s
record. That’s less than a call to
directory assistance!
To use BullsEye, go to a contact
record that needs to be researched.
Simply select the BullsEye icon on the menu bar for the missing
data. Click the accept data button to
save the information in your contact’s record (if the search results are blank,
there is no charge). It’s that simple.
Reminder: Some people do not want to be
contacted by phone, fax or email and it may be unlawful for you to do so. It is your responsibility to determine the
legality of your actions, so please use RealHound® in accordance with all
Federal, State and local laws.
Smart-Links are preset connections
from your RealHound® database to some of the more useful websites on the
Internet. When you use a Smart-link,
information about a contact or property is automatically sent to the
corresponding website and information is retrieved without manually entering
data on the website.
RealHound®’s most popular Smart-Links
are to ZoomInfo® and 411.com. The
411.com Smart-Link is represented by a red “4” icon next to the contact name on
the Companies & Contacts tab. To use
this Smart-Link, select a contact record and press the red “4” icon. 411.com will automatically lookup a contact’s
phone number from the internet free of charge.
ZoomInfo® can be found under the Smart-link menu. A ZoomInfo® Internet report pulls available
information on the selected contact that includes company information, related
articles that the contact is quoted in, address, education and phone numbers. Narrow down your results by selecting a state
or other qualifier on the ZoomInfo® webpage.
Smart-Links can also be completely
customized to send information from your RealHound® database to your favorite
websites with a click of a button. One
use for a customized Smart-Link would be to send property information from your
database to your county assessor’s website.
You can create your own Smart-Links under the File Menu>
Administration> Settings…> Custom Add-Ins tab.
Once you have input your property data
into RealHound® you will need to photograph each property in your farm. Not only does having property photos in your
database give you a tremendous advantage when you are on the telephone with
property owners or tenant, it also gives you the ability to quickly generate
reports with photographs and distribute those reports on a moment’s notice
instead of driving all over town to take pictures.
TIP:
Even
if you are a seasoned pro in commercial real estate there is still tremendous
value in “driving the real estate” in your farm area. Buildings and neighborhoods change over
time. If a building has fallen into
disrepair the owner might be in trouble and may need to sell. Tenants might want to relocate from a tired
shopping center. You should be on top of
the situation to seize such an opportunity.
Try to drive to each building in your farm at least once every three
years.
The best way to accomplish
photographing your entire property database is with a digital camera, laptop computer,
Microsoft Streets and Trips (the newest version sold with a GPS receiver) and a
driving buddy. Start by exporting your
property addresses from RealHound® into an Excel spreadsheet and import that
spreadsheet into Microsoft Streets and Trips on your laptop. Map the properties and select optimized
route. Plug in the GPS and drive to each
property. The passenger navigates and
the driver safely keeps their eyes on the road.
Reminder: Using
your car’s navigational system to guide you to a large number of properties is
probably not the best use of your time (Yes, someone did ask the
question). It takes a considerably
longer amount of time to key each property into your car’s navigational system
than it does to use your laptop to map out all the properties at once.
Take at least four digital photos of
each property using the medium quality setting on your camera. This should give
sufficient resolution and detail without maxing out your camera’s memory media.
The first shot of every building should be of the property address or monument
sign. This will give you a reference point to discern one property from another
when you download your photos to your computer. Other things that you should consider
photographing include: the view from the front sidewalk, HVAC system, parking
lot, amenities, property directory, tenant signage, and different building
angles.
Make sure that at least one photo is
good enough to be used on a marketing brochure or on a postcard. This will save
you time in the future when you are trying to complete a report; you will not
need to run across town to take a picture. Don’t forget to take notes about
each property that you photograph. When you get back to the office, download
your photos to your computer. Next, locate your photos on your computer and put
each property’s 
photos into individual folders. Name
each folder with the corresponding property’s street address (EXAMPLE: 123 N
Camelback Rd). Import your pictures and
record your notes into RealHound®. The Photo import button is located under the
picture frame on the Property Overview tab on the Property section. The program
will automatically organize and optimize your photos.
The two main classifications
of properties that are “For Sale” are FSBO (for sale by owner) and Exclusively
listed. Internet listing services, your competitors’ websites and your local
newspaper are great sources for finding properties that are “For Sale”. Check
these resources often for changes that affect your market. Input the offering
data on the Property Overview screen in the offering section and change the
“For Sale:” dropdown box to Yes.
Type “FSBO” in the status field if the property is For Sale by Owner or type
“Listed”, if the property is Listed (this field is customizable to fit the way
you work). Double click or go to the “Offering” tab if you need to enter more
information about the offering. Do this for every property that is For Sale in
your farm. Update this information on a weekly basis.
Reminder:
You
may also import newly listed properties from the Internet from within the
program.
As you talk to property owners in your
target market, it will not be uncommon for you to run across owners who tell
you that they will sell only if the price is right. These owners are price
motivated and are difficult to convert to listings. If they will not list their
property with you, you should still consider their property for sale. Change the “For Sale” dropdown box to Yes and type “FSBO” into the status
field. Enter in the Listing Price, CAP and as much relevant data as you can in
the offering section on the property overview screen as you can. FSBO’s are
notorious for selling their properties at below market prices. Tracking this type of data will let you
quickly find owners who will consider an offer if you are working as a Buyer’s
Representative or when using the
Buyer needs portion of RealHound®.
Warning: Working with property owners that are price
motivated and refuse to exclusively list their properties can be hazardous to
your wallet! If you bring a property
owner a offer, make sure that you have a signed commission agreement from your
both your buyer and the property owner. Many times the buyer will make sure that
the seller pays the commission for fear of being left on the hook for your fee.
Even with a commission agreement you still might have to fight for your fee.
If leasing or tenant representation are part of your business plan, you
must collect and store tenant information and lease data in your database. Some people will take a shortcut and
exclusively rely on third party data providers for this valuable information. (If you are one of these people, please step
into my common sense corner for a moment.
If you were the leasing broker
in a transaction and you were asked
to provide the lease details to a company that was going to make the
information available to everybody on the planet, how accurate would your reporting
be? The same holds true for the
landlords. Do you think they want every
broker in town chasing their tenants at renewal time?)
Tenants can be easily located at any building
address through the internet. Google
Maps™ will list the majority of the tenants at a given location by property
address. 
To lookup
tenants automatically within RealHound®, select your property and from the
Smart-Links menu select Tenants from Google Maps.
One of the best ways to drum up tenant representation opportunities and
get valuable lease data is to go and physically “knock on doors”. Pick an office building or a shopping center
and go to each suite. Ask to talk with
the business owner and always have something to offer such as a competitive
lease analysis, lease audit or market survey.
Make sure that you talk to them about their business goals and expansion
plans.
Reviewing a tenant’s lease can help both you and the tenant. Is the tenant being charged correctly for
common area maintenance (CAM
charges)? Is the square footage in the
space accurately reflected on the lease?
You would be amazed at what you can find in some leases when you start
digging around. One word of caution— if
your investigation uncovers certain items which impact a landlord’s pocketbook
you will get crossed off of that particular landlord’s holiday gift list. You should also consider charging a fee for
any amount that you happen to save the tenant.
If you are not fortunate enough to obtain a copy of a tenant’s lease, at
least ask them about their rate, lease expiration date, renewal options and
purchase option dates. Record these
critical details in your database for future reference.
Reminder: Do not
plan on meeting and greeting tenants while you are photographing your
properties for your database. If you did
this, you would never finish this essential activity of getting your database
photos!
You can import REA 8, 9.x, Act 6, Act 2005-2007 and
any type of data that you can view using Excel.
From the File menu, select the Import/Export… option and Import…. Select the import option that best
accomplishes your goal.
Data
can be easily imported into the program without complicated field mapping using
the Easy Import Wizard. The Easy Import
Wizard works by copying data from one Excel spreadsheet and pasting that data
into the correct columns in another Excel spreadsheet that is created by the
Easy Import Wizard. After all of the
data has been pasted into the newly created spreadsheet, the Easy Import Wizard
will automatically bring the data into the program.
Warning: Always
backup your original database before you attempt to import any new data into
it. There is always a chance that you
will corrupt your original database with any new data import, in which case,
you will be thankful that you took the time to backup. From the File
menu, select Backup Agent…
Using the Import Wizard
1)
From
the File menu, select the Import/Export… option and Import… option.
2)
From
the Import Agreement window.
a)
Click
the Backup Now button to make a
backup of your current database. If you
happen to adulterate your current database with your newly imported data, you
will be very thankful that you took the time to backup.
b)
Read
the Notice and, if you agree to the terms contained therein, select the “Agree to only import data that I am
properly licensed to import or that I own” radio button.
c)
Confirm
your agreement to the terms in the Notice
by typing Yes in the box provided.
d)
Click
on the Next button to continue.
3)
Click
the Easy Import Wizard button to
start the Import Wizard.
4)
From
the Import Wizard Screen select the type of data that you wish to import. If you want to import property data, select
the Properties and Contacts radio
button. If your spreadsheet contains
strictly contact data, select the Contacts
Only radio button.
5)
Enter
a name for the spreadsheet that you will paste your data into.
6)
Click
the Create Excel File button to
create the new spreadsheet.
If
you selected a file name that already exists you will get a message similar to this
screenshot. Select Yes ONLY if you are sure
you want to ERASE the original file and replace it with a new file with the
same name.
7)
Open
the spreadsheet that contains the data you wish to import into the
program. The new Excel file you just
created in Step 6 and the data file you wish to pull data from will now both be
open.
If
you are importing Property data, start pasting your data in the cell marked
“Enter Data Here”. It is extremely important that you have the correct Property Type
listed for each property being imported.
Only those properties that have valid RealHound® Property Types will
import correctly. Use Excel’s Find and Replace functions to change invalid types. Valid types include: Apartment, Office,
Industrial, Retail, Land, Storage, Hotel, Casino, Condo, Mobile Home and
Single-Family.
If
you are only importing Contact data, don’t forget to clear the contents from
Cell A2 and start pasting your data in the columns for contact data.
In the
following example we will import Property and Owner Contact information. Select the first column of data (be mindful
not to copy the field header), hold down the Ctrl key and press the C
key. This will copy the selected data to your clipboard. In our example we will select the Company field.
In
the spreadsheet created by the Easy Import Wizard, find the equivalent field
name (in this case, it is Owner Company) and select the cell immediately below
the name. With the receiving cell
selected, press and hold the Ctrl
key while pressing the V key. This will paste the contents of the clipboard
in that column starting at the selected cell.
Alternatively,
you could right click on the receiving cell then select Paste.
8)
Continue
to copy the data from the original data file and pasting it into the
appropriate columns in the new data file created by the Easy Import
Wizard. If your data source has
"123 N Anywhere St", you would simply paste it into the Property Address Full field. If
your data source has two "123" and "N Anywhere St" address
fields, you would paste the data into the Property
Address Street Number and Property
Address Street fields.
9)
After
all of the property and contact data has been pasted into the new spreadsheet, Save the changes and Close Excel completely.
10) Return to the open Import Wizard window. Click the Import Excel File button to start the import process.
11) From the Import Status window, select the
options that best meet your import goals.
Once you have selected your import options click the Start button.
From
this point forward don’t touch your
computer, allow it to finish and it will automatically return to the
RealHound® database screen. A data
import is one of the most computer resource intensive processes that you can
ever do and it can take a long time depending on the number of records. If Windows Task Manager states that the
program is “Not Responding” this is perfectly normal. Just let it run.
12) After the import completes, click the Tune-Up Database button from the main
login screen or your newly imported data will not show correctly in your
database.
A
truly unique feature of the program is the data management suite called Data
Doctor. Data Doctor allows you to
globally change the data in your database and perform duplicate checking on
your data. There are over 75 data
management and cleansing features in this section of the program.
Warning: Always,
Always, ALWAYS backup your original database before you attempt to use any
feature in Data Doctor. There is
significant chance that you will corrupt your entire database using Data
Doctor, in which case, you will be thankful that you took the time to backup.
Data
Doctor is not for everyone and was specifically designed for your database
administrator and IT professionals.
Using Data Doctor
1) From the File menu, select Administration
and then Data Doctor…
2) Find and run the data management
feature that you wish to use.
Partial Data Doctor feature list
|
Transfer
and update field values
|
Phone description update
|
Set default records
|
|
Duplicate checking with merge and delete functions
|
Setup users
|
Data Clean up & optimization
|
|
Switch data between fields
|
Data Purging
|
Execute SQL Statements
|
|
Advance field splitting
|
Direct edit of Contact table
|
Global Replace
|
|
Clean & Update Contact data
|
Direct edit of Property table
|
File Sucker (photos & File)
|
|
Clean & Update property data
|
Direct edit of unit mix table
|
Reset GUIDs
|
|
Standardize documents folders
|
Direct edit of sales table
|
Direct edit of activity table
|
Power Moves
1)
As
a real estate practitioner, the data that you have on the real estate market is
your stock and trade. Without local
market knowledge, your value proposition to your clients is greatly diminished. You must distinguish yourself from your
competition. To accomplish this you must
collect and verify all property related market data that impacts your
business. You or your team should do
your own data input, research and data verification. Maintain professional relationships with your
peers so they are willing to share information about their transactions with
you. Prospecting from an accurate well
maintained property and contact database will make you a lot of money.
2)
It
is occupational suicide to exclusively use a third party data source as your
database because you have no control over the information. There are a few agents in every market that
try to prospect from these online databases without having built their own
personal database. Traditionally, these
agents do poorly in the business and don’t last through a full market
cycle.
3)
Identify
a target market to become your farm. You
should have at least 700 properties in your farm with a minimum of 500
corresponding owners per agent on your team.
Tenant representatives should have at least 500 tenants. Your goal is to contact every prospect in
your farm at least once per quarter.
Owners and tenants that are outside of your farm but are still in your
database can be targeted with direct mail.
4)
Save
your farm properties as a property Group and give it a name such as “my
farm”. Tenant representatives can save
their prospects as a contact Group.
Alternatively, if you have linked all of your tenants to the properties
that they have leased under the “Leases” tab, you should save the properties in
a property Group.
Saving your farm as a Group will save
you time when you are prospecting and need to query your prospects at a
moment’s notice.
Chapter Four
What goes where and
why should you care?
-The Contact, Today
and Property Screens-
RealHound® is divided into three main
sections: Property, Today and Contact sections.
The Contact section is where you will spend most of your time in the
program. Each of these main sections is
broken down further into other related components.
Reminder: First
time users of RealHound® may find the multiple Sections with numerous tabs and
a seeming sea of endless fields slightly intimidating. However, you have the ability to hide tabs
and fields so you can customize the look of the program. As your confidence grows, you can turn on or
off areas of the program that you may or may not want to use. To take advantage of this feature go to:
File>User Interface… to turn on or off program Tabs or File>Administration>Settings…>Field
Visibility to hide fields in the database.
The first tab in the Contact section
is the Companies & Contacts tab. The
Contact Screen displays a contact’s primary information, history of property ownership,
related contacts, group membership, leases and history of activities relating
to the contact. Everything that is mission
critical to successful communication with your clients is displayed on this one
tab. You can also send emails,
generate letters and schedule activities with your contacts without leaving
this screen. The Companies &
Contacts tab’s screen is broken down into the following components:
Contact information: The top half of the screen contains
information about your Contact. Always
try to enter in as much relevant data as possible. You never know when you will need to reach
your client at some obscure location that they gave you the telephone number to
months ago.
TIP: If
you are just getting started with RealHound® and you think you might be missing
some of your contact records, click the ALL
button on top of the screen on the menu bar.
You should
enter in each contact record’s contact Type field. The field should explain the major role that
the contact plays in your market (some examples are: Owner, Tenant, Owner/user,
Investor, Lender, Manager, Developer, Appraiser, etc).
Lookup box: Located
on the top right-hand side of the screen, the Lookup box is a quick way to find
contacts in your database. Our lookup
box is patterned after the lookup box commonly found on your favorite internet
search engines. Type in all or part of a contact’s name or company name and
press the Enter key. The program will pull up every matching
record. You can also locate a contact by
typing in a portion of their phone number, address, or fax number. The Lookup box is intelligent, meaning that
it will automatically search for variants of the name you type in the lookup
field. For example, if you type in
“Richard” it will pull up all Richards and Ricks. “Bill” will yield William and Billy, etc.
Below the Lookup box is the “What:”
drop down list. Use this feature to Narrow Down your search results within
the currently selected records, exclusively search the Contact or Company
fields, etc. When you have completed
your search, return the “What:” drop down to the ALL. This will refresh your
search criteria to all records for your next search.
TIP:
To quickly jump your cursor to the Lookup box from
anywhere in the program and set the lookup to ALL, press the Ctrl + J keys.
To set the lookup to just last name press the Ctrl + L keys.
Contact Groups: This is a useful feature that allows
you to group contacts together by some relevant relationship. For example: you could create a group named
“Retail Brokers” and designate every active broker in your database as a member
of this group.
Some other useful contact groupings
include:
- Contacts for whom you have
completed a proposal
- Contacts without a phone number
- Contacts that need to be called
on a regular basis
- Contacts with whom you have met
- Contacts for whom you have
prepared a proposal and need to follow-up with them on a regular basis
TIP:
There are two types of groups that you can use in
RealHound®, Property Groups and Contact Groups.
You should NOT group your Farm by owners using a Contact Group because
property ownership perpetually changes.
Instead, you should use a Property Group, because, while the ownership
will change, the property is not going anywhere and will always be in your
farm. Property Groups are most effective
for grouping properties with a similar location and/or physical
characteristics. Another convenient use
for groups is to save a particular list of contacts or properties that you will
need to work with at some future point in time such as rent comparables or
tenant types.
Related Contacts radio button: This feature allows you to link
related contacts to one another for quick reference and easy access. To go to a related contact’s record, just
double click on the grey box next to the contact’s name.
Entering related contacts is
easy. Next to the asterisk, Click on the
Contact Search button, enter the new related contact in the search box and
click the Select button. Once you have selected the related contact,
the contact’s name and company will appear in the list. Next, in the box below the related contact’s
name and company, select the relationship to the main contact or type in the
relationship. If the particular relationship
is not on the list, RealHound® will automatically create a link between the two
contacts and prompt you for the return relationship. For example:
If the contact record that you are working with has an assistant, you
will enter in the assistant’s name and define their relationship as “Employee”
or “Assistant”. RealHound® will ask you
to define the return relationship and you will enter in “Employer” or
“Boss”. To query the related contacts,
click the Goto button next to the
Related Contacts radio button and RealHound® will look up those records for
you. Click the Goto button if you want to send all of the related contacts a
letter or email.
Company radio
button: This feature allows you to
automatically view all of the contact records that are related to your current
contact record by company name. Contacts
that share the EXACT company name
will automatically link to your current contact record just by selecting the Company radio button. To query the related contacts in the same company, click the Goto button next to the Company radio button and RealHound® will
look up those records for you. You would
click the Goto button if you wanted
to send all of the related contacts in the same company a letter or email.
History/Task/Other Radio Buttons:
Select “History” or
“Other” and the information displayed in the box below these settings
changes. With “Other” selected the
program displays more contact fields and other customizable fields. When “History” is selected, every note,
logged call, email, letter, scanned or attached document is displayed in date
order. To filter activities go to the
“Show Type:” drop down box and select the type of activity that you only want
the program to display.
Tip: To
customize fields in your database select the File
Menu>Administration>Settings…> Custom Fields tab
Related Properties: Displays all properties, leases, sales
and linked properties that are related to the selected contact. This feature is
discussed in detail in another section of this book.
At the bottom of the Companies and
Contacts screen, there are a series of buttons that function as follows:
New Contact: Creates a
new contact record. Note that you CANNOT
create a new contact record from the Edit menu.
Copy Contact: Creates a new contact record and
populates the record with the same company name, address and phone numbers as
the currently selected contact.
Drop Contact: Drops the current contact from the
list of contacts displayed and advances you to the next contact record.
Task: Allows you to schedule a Call, Meeting
or To Do task with
the current contact at some future point in time. Scheduled activities will appear on your
calendar.
Note: Creates a new note into the contact
history record.
Call: Creates note about a call you made to
or received from the selected contact in the contact history record.
Cold Call: This button is covered in detail in
another section.
Attach: Allows you to attach different types
of files to the contact record such as a marketing package, MS Word document or
PDF file. These files are stored in the
contact’s document folder.
Documents: An innovative way to store and view any
electronic file associated with the current contact record. Files can be cut,
copied, dragged or pasted into the folder that pops up when you click the Documents
button. You will never lose an electronic file again!!
Mail/Email Merge: You can create & modify templates or
create mail merges and email merges for your selected contacts. Follow the simple onscreen steps.
New Doc : This function gives you the ability to
use custom templates to generate different types of correspondence to the
selected contact. This is where you
would access your favorite fax cover sheet, letter formats, LOI’s and memos
that have been created as templates. The
program will perform a mail merge with the selected contact’s information,
generate the appropriate document and save the file in the Contact’s Documents
folder.
Email: To create a new email, double click on a
contact’s email address or click the email icon.
Tip:
To
move backward and forward on the historical list of contacts that have been
viewed, click the Back or Next buttons.
History tab: This tab is
an expanded view of the History box which is located on the Companies &
Contacts tab. From this tab you can edit
notes, activity and visibility. You can also view and attach links to the
notes.
Buyers & Tenant Needs tab: This tab is where you will input
every property or space requirement that an individual contact tells you that
they are searching for in the market.
This tab allows you to search for a matching “For Sale” property or “For
Lease” space in your database and can help you make a lot of money.
If your client tells you that they are
looking for either a strip center for under $5,000,000 or an apartment building
for under $50,000/unit, you will enter both pieces of information by using two
different saved requirements, but both will be entered on this tab. To enter a new “Needs” entry, type a name in
the blank description box and click once outside the box to activate the
remaining portion of the screen.
TIP:
When entering in Buyer needs you
should always enter in the following items: Price Range, Down Payment Range,
Expiration date, Deal Probability, and whether the buyer is in a 1031 Exchange
(if he is, you should include his nomination date).
The Deal Probability field is your own
personal assessment of the contact’s motivation. This field will help you remember which
people in your database are truly motivated when you are reviewing their
Buyer/Tenant Needs in the future. Deal
Probability is expressed as a percentage and should always be used.
Details should be kept to the Comments
box or you will narrow the search results by having too many limiting
parameters. In other words, you could
skip over properties that your client might want to buy! Click the Show Matched button automatically find available properties. Don’t
forget to click the search Internet button!
The difference between entering a
Buyer need and a Tenant need is very subtle.
You must be conscience of selecting the correct “Need Type” so the
proper property availabilities can be searched and matched to the recorded
needs.
Tenant needs (For Lease Need Type)
should have an expiration date, Deal Probability, Available SF and rate
information. Details should be kept to
the Comments box.
Caution:
Only use the Type and Sub-type
fields if you have been diligently entering in this information on your
available spaces or you will severely limit the number of matches that you will
get on available spaces.
Cold Calls & Call Lists tab: The Cold Calls tab (see later Chapter
for full details) is an extremely useful tool that allows you to narrow a list
of contacts that you wish to call by filtering out those contacts for which you
do not have phone numbers, you have previously called, are on a do not call
list or have left a message for in the past.
The program will then generate your call list using Intellicall,
a sophisticated algorithm that greatly increases the probabilities that you
will contact prospects who are in need of your services. Using this feature makes it virtually
impossible for you to skip a call to prospects in your database.
Marketing tab: The Marketing screen contains a list of marketing
materials sent to, properties shown and offers written by the selected contact.
List tab: This
tab allows you to view your selected contacts in a summary view and add or drop
contact records from your active list. It
is very useful for selecting contact groups and adding them to your list of
active contacts. In addition, you can
easily export your contact records to MS Excel (for use in direct mail or
broadcast emails), as well as Email All contacts and create Labels. You can also access and create mail merge
templates by clicking on the “Documents/Email” button at the bottom of this
tab.
Sort your contact list using the Quick
Sort dropdown box on the lower right portion of the screen.
1) Lookup box- Located on the top right-hand side of
the Companies & Contacts screen, the Lookup box is a quick way to find
contacts in your database. Our lookup box
is patterned after the lookup box commonly found on popular internet search
engines. Type in all or part of a contact’s name or company name and press the
“Enter” key. The program will pull up
every matching record. You can also
locate a contact by typing in a portion of their phone number, address, or fax
number. The Lookup box is intelligent,
meaning that it will automatically search for variants of the name you type in
the lookup field. For example, if you
type in “Richard” it will pull up all Richards and Ricks. Below the Lookup box is the “What:” drop down
list. Use this feature to “narrow down”
your search to currently selected records, exclusively search “contact” fields
or “company” fields. Go to the List tab
to see your search results in a list format.
When you have completed your search
return the “What:” drop down to the ALL. This will refresh your search criteria to all
records for your next search.
TIP: Type the word Owners into the lookup box to view secondary property owners
2) List screen- Click on the List tab located to the
right of the Company/Contact tab. At the
top of the List screen you will see blank boxes under “Company”, “Contact
Name”, “City”, “State” “Postal Code”, “Phone” and “Contact Type”. Enter the information that you want to search
for in the appropriate box and click the Lookup
button to start your search. The results
of your search will populate in the list.
Double click on any contact in the list to go to that contact’s record. If you want to view all of the Contact
records on the list, simply click on the Companies & Contacts tab and you
can click through the records at your leisure.
3)
Filter by field: Right
click in any field that you want to search in the Contact record. A menu box
pops up and gives you the following search options for the selected field:
a) Filter
For: Entering data in this field will filter
selected records for an exact match to the data entered in the field. If you wanted to filter for all records that
had the text “LLC” in the selected field you would enter in “*LLC*”. The asterisks tell the program to include any
text strings before or after “LLC” will be included in the Filter results (ie-
Simpson Housing LLC, John Doe, Member). Filtering is not the same as a
Search. When a Filter is on, the rest of
the records are hidden from view. If you
would like to create a search from 
your filter click the Apply Filter button. When you have completed the filter, right
click in the field that you were working with and select Remove Filter/Sort to
unhide the rest of the records.
b) Filter
by Selection:
Selecting this option will filter for records that have the exact matching text
in the same field. All of the other
records will be hidden until you remove the Filter/Sort.
c) Filter
Excluding Selection:
Selecting this option will hide all records that have the exact matching text
in the field. These records will be
hidden until you remove the Filter/Sort.
d) Remove
Filter/Sort: Selecting
this option removes the filter on the selected field.
Here is a practical example of the use
of the Filter by field option. There was
a RealHound® user who put an “X” in a certain user text field of every record
that had an incorrect phone number. He
was distraught when he could not figure out how to find those records that he
had marked with an “X”. When he called
our customer support department, he was told to scroll through his contacts
until he found one of the contacts that had an “X” and then to do a Filter by
Selection. Instantly, all of the records
marked with an “X” showed up. Customer
Support then walked him through the process to create a group for his contacts
with wrong numbers making it easier to find that group of records in the
future.
Smart-Links
is bound to become one of your favorite features of the program. It will take information from your current
contact or property record (depending on which section of the program you are in)
and searches the internet for useful information on that property or contact
using some of the more popular websites.
This means that with one mouse click you can quickly get: the weather
forecast in a contact’s city, Internet maps with aerial photography overlays,
phone numbers, demographics, residential home valuations and everything else
that your favorite search engines can tell you; juicy tidbits that I’m sure you
will absolutely love.
Smart-Links
are located on the main menu bar on the top of the screen next to the Help
drop-down menu. Go to a Contact or
Property record and try it out.
RealHound® is a database program designed to store your
Contact, Property and Activity information.
Buttons and controls in RealHound®
do certain things, just like in an automobile. If you learn these quick tips, it will make
operating the program much easier.
1) To exit out of a field without making
changes, press the ESCAPE key. This is
very useful if you get an error while changing data.
2) As soon as you move off a field your
data is saved. There is no need to click
the SAVE icon.
3) To close a screen, press the X on the
top right hand side.
4) 
To copy any list from RealHound® into Excel, use your mouse to click on the
record selector (the arrow to the left of the row) of the first row in the list
you would like to copy, then hold down the SHIFT key and click on the last
row. While still holding down SHIFT,
right click on the last row and select COPY. Switch to Excel and select
Edit-> Paste from the main menu or use the Ctrl+V keys.
5) To move from one record to another use
the buttons that resemble VCR buttons on the bottom left hand side of the
screen.
6) To move forward from one field to
another using the keyboard, press the TAB key.
7) To move backward from one field to
another press both SHIFT and TAB at the same time.
8) To quickly search in a field
right-click on it and enter what you are searching for into the FILTER, then
press ENTER. Use the * as a wildcard for
finding anything that may come before or after what you requested. Such as, ‘*Smith’ in the Contact Name field
would find anyone who’s last name ends with ‘Smith’.
The Today Section is where you will
access your task list, calendar and search contact histories. In addition, you can manage your projects,
marketing campaigns and buyer & tenant needs on a large scale.
Tip:
If you do not like the color scheme of your RealHound®
screen, change them! Go to the File
menu> User Interface… . Screen Colors
and themes will be on the upper right hand side of the screen.
Tasks tab: Allows you to view a list of your tasks by
task type and user.
Calendar tab: View individual or team tasks on a
calendar. You can customize your view of
the calendar by performing a click-and-hold on the mini calendar and dragging
the mouse pointer across the mini-calendar highlighting the number of days that
you wish to view. You can move tasks to
new time slots or to another day by performing a click-and-hold just to the
left of the task on your calendar and moving the task to the desired time slot
or day. The 
Calendar features work the same way as
the Task list.
Search History tab: This very useful tab shows you
contact activities by Sales Status and/or Call Result. You can also narrow your search by entering a
date range or find key words in the database.
Print the results of your search by pressing the Report button. If you want
to know which of your clients you created a proposal for in November or met
with in the first week of December, you will be able to find that information
easily by using this tab.
Project Status tab: This tab shows you a summary of all
property related projects. New projects
are entered in the Property section on the Projects tab of the property
involved. Once you have entered in a new
project on a specific property record, you will be able to access and manage
that project from this tab. Projects are
very useful for managing property related activities that involve multiple
steps, such as closing timeline, development timeline, putting together a
marketing package, listing proposal or some other multi-stage process.
Marketing Campaigns: The Marketing Campaigns tab is where you will create
and edit marketing campaigns for your property based marketing. This feature will greatly reduce the amount
of time and effort required to generate marketing reports on your
listings. If you are not providing your
clients marketing reports on their listings your business is in real
trouble. The program truly takes the
pain out of the reporting process, saving you and your staff hours of
time. Marketing campaigns are discussed
in a later chapter.
DealFinder: This tab gives you the ability to find
and manage buyers in your database who are looking to purchase properties that
match certain criteria that you have already specified under the Buyer &
Tenant Needs tab (in the Contacts section of the program). This feature is extremely useful when you
are trying to locate a buyer for a For Sale property that is not currently
entered into your database or if you want to manage a list of clients in a 1031
tax deferred exchange. Example: You go to a meeting and another broker
pitches a deal that requires $2,000,000 down.
You search DealFinder for buyers that have at least $2,000,000 and then
run the deal past the buyers that qualify.
Yes, this feature can make you a lot of money!
Within this tab is the Matched
Properties window. By selecting a
buyer on the screen above the window and pressing the Show Matched button, properties in your database with the For Sale
status of “Yes” that meet the selected buyer’s criteria will be displayed in
the Matched Properties window. Don’t
forget to search and match off of the Internet listings.
The Matched Properties window shows
you matching properties that have had their For Sale status changed to “Yes” in
the Property section. DealFinder is discussed in greater detail in
a later chapter. 
Tenant Wizard: This tab gives you the ability to find
and manage Tenant needs in your database for contacts who are looking to lease
space that match certain criteria that you have already specified for them
under the Buyer & Tenant Needs tab (in the Contacts section of the
program). The Tenant Wizard feature is extremely
useful when you are trying to locate a tenant for an available space but that
space has not been entered into your database or if you want to manage a list
of tenants looking for space. Example:
You get to a flyer from another
broker marketing 20,000 SF of office space.
You then search the Tenant Wizard feature for tenants that have at need
for 20,000 SF of office and then run the deal past all of your clients that
qualify. Yes, this is another feature
that can make you a lot of money!
Within this tab is the Matched
Available Spaces window. By
selecting a tenant on the screen above this window and pressing the Match Available Spaces button,
available spaces for lease in the database that match that tenant’s specific
requirements will be displayed.
Recent Changes: This tab displays all of the contacts
and properties that have been recently modified. This feature is useful for monitoring changes
made to the database.
The Property section of the program is
where all of your property data is stored including property pictures, sales,
offering information, available spaces, leases and rental history. Most users will never use all of the features
in this section, but for those of you that are true “data hounds” you will not
be disappointed. All RealHound® users
should acquaint themselves with at least the Overview, Unit Types, Leases,
Available/For Lease, Offering/For Sale and Sales tabs.
Displayed screen sections, data fields
and tabs will change based on the type of property that has been entered into
the database. This means that a retail
broker does not see apartment data fields and unit mix information on a
shopping center’s property record.
The Overview tab: The Overview tab was designed to give
you all the essential information about a property on one screen. In addition to
the basic information about the property, it shows: Ownership, Offering (For
Sale) details, Last Sale data and property photos. You will find that you rarely need to go to
any other tab in this section. When entering a new property record you should
always enter the property name (if you do not know the property name, use the
street address as the name. For example: 3135 South Front St), property type
and address.
The Overview tab has several
fundamental components.
Make sure that you ALWAYS select the
correct “Property Type:” because different property types have different screen
views to accommodate information specific to each property type.
Offering
(For Sale)
section: This is where you will enter offering
information about the property if it is For Sale. Change the For Sale field to Yes if the property is available, then
you can enter more detailed information under the Offering tab if you wish.
After the offering information has
been entered you should ALWAYS click the Match
Buyers button and the program will search your database for contact records
that have matching Buyer Needs. If a
matching need is found, the corresponding contact records will be automatically
queried for you. This is another feature that will grow the size of your wallet!
Owner/Principal: Shows
the current owner of the property. The
ownership link between a property and its corresponding owner contact record is
established in this section. The owner
that appears in the Owner section of this tab is the owner that the property is
linked to in the Contacts section of the program. To complete the link between a Contact
(owner) and property you must click the Refresh
button on the Companies & Contacts tab.
You can add additional owners under the Owners tab.
Radio buttons: Allows you to select different views
in the Activity box below. These buttons are different for each property type.
Lookup box: Type in a property name, address, zip
code, city, sub-market, property type, property sub-type, property actual use,
tenancy, owner company, owner contact, sub-region and the program will display
all the properties that meet your specified criteria. Alternatively, you can lookup a property from
anywhere in the program by pressing the Ctrl
+ P keys.
Property Photo Display box: Displays the default property photo. You can store as many photos as you like in
the program without slowing it down.
Beneath the photo display box is a series of icons that have various
functions which are explained in the illustration below.
Most Recent Sale: Shows you summary information about
the last sale of the property. In most
cases this is really all the information that you need; however, you can enter in
even more details under the Sales tab.
You should ALWAYS enter a new sale by pressing the New Sale button, because the program will save you some work by
clearing out the Offering information and 
will fill in certain sales fields
automatically.
At the bottom of the property Overview tab, there are a series of
buttons that function as follows:
New Property: Creates a
new property record. You CANNOT create a
new Property record from the Edit menu.
Copy Property: Creates a new property record with the
same basic property information as the currently selected property.
Drop Property: Drops the current property from the
list of displayed properties and advances you to the next property record.
Task: Allows you to schedule a Call, Meeting
or To Do task with
a contact record at some future point in time and links the activities
to the property record. Scheduled
activities will appear on your calendar.
(NOTE- The Task, Note and Call buttons will only display if the History
radio button is selected.)
Note: Creates a new note in the property
history record.
Call: Creates a note about a call you
received or placed to a selected contact in the contact and property history
record.
Attach: Allows you to attach different types
of files to the contact record such as a marketing package, MS Word document or
PDF file to the contact record history.
Files are stored in the property’s document folder.
Documents: An innovative way to store and view any
electronic file associated with the current property record. Files can be cut, copied, dragged or pasted
into the folder that pops up when you click the Documents button. You will never lose an electronic file
again!!
AutoCompare: The
AutoCompare feature automatically compares the currently selected property to
the other similar properties in the database that have recently Sold, are
currently For Sale and are potential rent comparables. This feature will also estimate the current property’s
value based on Sales and current Offering information that has been entered
into the database.
Availability/For
Lease tab: This tab is where all of the
information on the available/vacant space is recorded for a particular
property. From this screen you can
create a Stacking Chart or Lease vs. Buy analysis.
As
you enter in vacant space, click the Match
Tenants button and the program will automatically query the contacts in
your database that have a matching tenant needs. If you
lease space, this feature is going to make you a lot of money!
This feature will allow you to select and rank spaces
from a queried list of properties so reports can be run just on the selected
spaces.
To
use the Available Spaces/Lease
Comparables List feature, query the properties with spaces in your database
that you wish to run the comparables list on.
With your properties selected, click the Available/Leases button on the property List tab. Once the spaces
have been selected and ranked, select your desired report to be run from the Report button at the top of the screen.
Leases tab: All of your property leases are stored on
this tab. Make sure you record the lease
expiration date, purchase option date and renewal option dates on this screen
if that information is available to you.
The program will use these dates to manage your future call lists,
saving you a lot of time and effort in the future.
Link the tenant contact records to their lease by clicking
the Change Contact icon. Lease information will appear on a tenant’s
contact record when you click the Refresh
button on their record.
You can also create a Stacking
Chart from this screen. To use the
Stacking Chart, you must have all of the required data fields filled out or the
chart will not be created.
List tab: This
tab allows you to view your selected properties in a summary view and add or
drop property records from your active list.
It is very useful for selecting property groups and adding them to your
list of active properties. In addition,
you can easily export your property records to Excel, Goto both the linked
Owner of the property and Tenants’ contact records with a push of a button.
1)
Lookup box: Located
on the top right-hand side of the Property Overview screen, the Lookup box is a
quick way to find properties and owners in your database. Type in all or part of an 
owner’s name, owner company name,
property name, address, city, submarket, subregion, type, sub-type, actual use
and tenancy type then press the Enter
key. The program will pull up every
matching record. When you have completed
your search select the ALL button to
return to viewing all of your property records.
Don’t forget that the List
tab will display the search results in a summary format.
TIP: To
jump the cursor to the Property Lookup Box anywhere in the program, press Ctrl + P keys.
2)
Search button: Click
the Search button on the upper middle
part of the menu bar to bring up the Search screen. The search screen is where complicated or
multi-step searches can be performed. **Remember,
EVERY field is searchable!**
Example: You want to find every apartment building
in your database that is 60 units or larger but less than 501 units in the City
of Scottsdale. On the Search screen
select the Advanced tab and follow
the labeled steps 1 through 4 on that screen.
To complete this search:
a)
Select
the “UNITS” field, “Is Greater or Equal” radio button, type “60” in the “Select
a value” field and click the Add
Criteria button.
b)
Select
the “UNITS” field, “Is Less or Equal” radio button, type “500” in the “Select a
value” field and click the Add Criteria
button.
c) Select the “CITY” field, “Equals”
radio button, type or select “Scottsdale”
in the “Select a value” field, click the Add
Criteria button.
d) Click the Show
Properties radio button and New
Search radio button in the middle left side of the Search Screen.
e) Click the Search button. RealHound®
will now display your results. Finally,
click the Goto Properties button to
query your properties on the Property section of the program and close the
Search screen.
3)
Filter By Fields: Right click in any field that you want
to filter (AKA “search”) in the database.
A menu box pops up and gives you the following filter options for the
selected data field:
a)
Filter For:
Entering data in this field will filter the selected records for an
exact match to the data entered in the field.
If you wanted to filter for all records that had the text “LLC”
somewhere in the selected field you would enter in “*LLC*”. The asterisks tell the program to include any
text strings before or after “LLC” and will be included in the Filter results
(ie- Simpson Housing LLC, John Doe, Member).
If you wanted to filter for all records that had JUST the text “LLC” in
the selected field you would enter in “LLC”.
Filtering is not exactly the same
thing as a Search. When a Filter is on,
the rest of the records are hidden from view.
When you have completed the filter, right click in the field that you
were working with and select Remove
Filter/Sort to unhide the rest of the records. If you would like to 
create a
Search from a filter, go to the Overview tab and click the Apply Filter button.
b)
Filter by Selection: Selecting this option will filter
for records that have the exact matching text in the same field that is
currently selected. All of the other
records will be hidden until you select Remove
Filter/Sort.
c)
Filter Excluding Selection: Selecting this option will HIDE all
records that have the exact matching text in the same field that is currently
selected. These records will remain
hidden until you select Remove
Filter/Sort.
d)
Remove Filter/Sort: Selecting this option removes the
filter on the selected field.
Here is another practical example of
the use of the Filter by field option.
Let’s suppose that you need to find every building on “S Pico Street”. Click the All button at the top of the screen and right-click in the address
field on any property record. Select Filter
For: and enter “*S Pico*” in the blank box (again, the asterisks tell the
program to include any text strings before or after “S
Pico”) and press the Enter key. Every property that has “S
Pico” in its address will now be displayed. If you would like to create a Search from this filter, go to the Overview tab and
click the Apply Filter button.
4) List tab: Click on the List tab located to the
far right of the Overview tab. Click the
ALL button on the top left side of
the screen. At the top of the List
screen you will see blank boxes under “Property Name”, “Address”, “City”, “Square Feet Range” “Unit
Range”, “Type” and
“Status”. Enter the information that you
want to search for in the appropriate box and push the Lookup button. The results
of your search will populate in the list.
Double click on any property in the list to go to that property’s
record. If you want to view all of the
property records on the list, simply click on the Overview tab and you can
click through the records at your leisure.
The mapping capabilities of the
program are so powerful that they are considered the most extensive on the
market. Using MapPoint 2006, you can map
all of the properties in a city, draw a shape around the section of town that
interests you and the program will select only those properties within the
designated area, dropping unwanted properties from your search. When you return to the Property section of
RealHound®, only those properties located within the shape will be queried
(selected) in the program.
Then click a button and visually fly
around your property with a Bird’s eye view using a number of different
internet mapping tools and, finally, get a street level view of your property
without even leaving your office!
Next, generate and map a list of
properties that are For Sale or Available for Lease and email the map to a
Client so they can “fly” around the properties using the Bird’s eye view.
Properties must
be geocoded before several mapping functions in the program, such as the radius
search, will work properly. A geocode is
just a fancy way of saying that the property has latitude and longitude
coordinates associated with its record.
You can tell if a property has a geocode by looking at the Tract section
of the Details tab in the Property section of the program.
There are
currently three ways to geocode your properties; using Microsoft Map Point 2006,
Yahoo Maps, or entering the coordinates yourself by hand. If you use Map Point 2006 or Yahoo to
automatically geocode the properties in your database, each property must have
a valid mailing address.
MapPoint 2006 and Yahoo Maps: Select the properties that you wish to
geocode or select the ALL button.
Click the MAP/Aerial button at the top of the screen. Select the radio button next to the geocode
option that you wish to use and click the Start button.
Reminder:
You need to have Microsoft MapPoint 2006 installed on
your computer to utilize some of the program’s mapping capabilities. MapPoint 2006 was included in the higher-end
MS Office Packages. If you did not purchase MapPoint 2006 with
your computer, please consider purchasing the program online from EBAY.com for
about $75. It is well worth the
investment.
Geocode
By Hand: This is the least appealing of the
three options because of the tedious nature of the work. However, if you do not have a property
address, you will have to manually enter the geocode for the property in the Detail tab. In order to get the coordinates you will need
to drive to the property with a GPS unit and record the latitude and longitude.
The radius search feature requires a
geocode on each property. Properties
without geocodes will not be queried and, subsequently, will not be displayed
in your search results.
Select the Subject property that you
wish to do a radius search around by displaying that property on the Property
section Overview tab. Click the Search button and select either the Multi-Unit, Commercial or
Advanced tab. At the top of the
search window the current Subject property is listed.
For our example, we will use the easy Commercial search tab.
1) Enter any other search criteria (such
as building square footage) that might be of interest. 
2) Select the Show Properties radio button from the middle left-hand side on the
window. 
3) Select the New Search radio button on the middle of the window.
4) Enter the mile radius around the
Subject property that you want to include in the search. 
5) Click the Search button. 
The results of your search are
displayed in the box below the Search button.
Click the Goto Properties
button when you have the results that you want.
TIP: Use the Radius search to
find all of the property owners surrounding a new listing and call them to see
if they would like to buy the property.
As you know, a high percentage of all property sales are made to
neighboring property owners.
RealHound® lets you map properties in
MapPoint 2006 by drawing a shape around those properties and having only those
properties within the shape be displayed in RealHound® when you close MapPoint
2006. This feature is extremely useful
if you want to query properties in a geographic location that is not readily
definable using other search tools. For
example, if you wanted to lookup all of the properties that are between four
streets this will be the easiest way to accomplish the task.
Let’s say that you want to query all
buildings in Scottsdale, Arizona south of Indian School Road, north of the 202,
between Hayden Street
and Scottsdale Road.
1) Search and select all of the buildings
in Scottsdale
from the List tab or the Search screen.
2) Press the Map/Aerial button
3) From the Mapping/Options window select
the radio button next to Map and geocode
my selected properties/contacts using Micosoft MapPoint
4) From the Mapping/Options window click
the Start button. RealHound® will send all of your selected
properties to MapPoint 2006 and open a new window.
5) Maneuver and zoom the Property Map
window to the geographic area that you are interested in. Select the drawing tool that you prefer.
6) Draw a complete polygon around the
properties that you want in your search.
Click the Remove Properties Not
in Shape button. 
7) Close the Property Map window by
clicking on the red X on the upper right side of the screen.
8) The Property Map window will close and
only those properties located within the polygon will be selected in
RealHound®.
There is a mapping arms race happening
on the Internet these days and you are the direct beneficiary to the
conflict. Gone are the weak looking
Mapquest maps and welcome to the days of full detailed aerials and street level
views of your properties delivered right through your web browser. The best part of this all is that these
powerful mapping tools don’t cost you a dime and they are integrated right into
RealHound®.
When you click the Map/Aerial button, all queried
(selected) properties will get sent out to the Internet and mapped using the
mapping service of your choice (Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and MapQuest)
Microsoft®’s Virtual Earth™:
This option produces very nice Road maps, Aerials and Bird’s eye
views. Properties are represented on the
map as numbered red dots and a corresponding legend is created at the bottom of
the web page. You can also send your map to a Client as an Html email and they will
be able to view your mapped properties complete with Bird’s eye views!
1) Click the Map/Aerial button. From the
Mapping Options screen, select Map and
show an Aerial of my selected properties with Microsoft Live Map radio button
and click Start button. A map will
be created in your web browser.
2) You can select Road maps, Aerial or Bird’s eye views.
3) To send this Map to a Client click the
Page button inside of Microsoft’s
Internet Explorer and select Send Page
by E-mail… . Select HTML and your email will open. Enter your Client’s email address and send
your email.
4) At the bottom of the page displayed in
the browser window a legend with all of the mapped properties is
displayed. Use the scroll bar to view
the property list.
5) To see a Bird’s Eye view of the
property, select the See this location
in bird’s eye view button.
6) 
Next, select the magnification- the
large building icon represents a closer zoom, the small building icon
represents a view from a greater distance.
You can also select the direction that you can view the building.
7) Microsoft’s Bird’s Eye view.
Google™ Maps: Not
to be out done by their competition
in Seattle, Google™ has Road Maps, Aerial and Street View mapping. A property is represented on the map as a
green arrow with a text box. Only one property can be mapped at a time. You
can send your map to a Client as an Html email and they will be able to view
your mapped property complete with street views!
1) Select the property to be mapped in
RealHound®. Click the Map/Aerial button and select From the Mapping Option
window the radio button next to Map and
Show an Aerial of my current property/contact using Google hybrid Maps.
Next, click the Start button at the bottom of the window. Your Internet browser will now display the
mapped property.
2) On the displayed web page, choose the type
of map you wish to view-- Street View, Traffic, Map, Satellite or Terrain. Try the Street
View if it is available in your area.
3) Click on the golden man to active the
Street Viewer
4) To see the Street view in full screen
mode click on the Full Screen
Option.
Yahoo™ & MapQuest™: These
features work in much the same way as the above.
Reminder: The
type of Internet mapping services and quality of the maps offered by the
mapping companies will vary by location.
Power Moves
1)
The
Contact Section’s Companies & Contacts tab displays a contact’s primary
information, history of property ownership, Leasehold interest, related
contacts, group membership and history of activities relating to the
contact. In addition, you can send
emails, generate letters and schedule activities with your contacts from within
this screen.
2)
Always
enter in Buyer & Tenant Needs for each qualified contact that you speak
with. Buyer & Tenant Needs are used
to match Buyers with Sellers and Tenants with available space in other areas of
the program.
You should always enter in the
following items into Buyers Needs: Price
Range, Down Payment
Range, Expiration date, Deal Probability, and whether they are in a 1031
Exchange. If the contact is in an
exchange, include their nomination date.
Extra details should be stored in the comments box.
You should always enter in the
following items into Tenant Needs: Lease Rate, Available SF, Expiration date
and Deal Probability. Extra details
should be stored in the comments box.
3)
The
Today Section is where you can access your task list, calendar, Search history,
enter Marketing campaigns and manage projects.
4)
The
Property section of the program is where all of your property data is stored
including pictures, property related documents, Sales, Availability/For Lease,
Leases and rental history. Most users
will never use all of the features in this section, but for those of you that
are true “data hounds” you will not be disappointed. All RealHound® users should acquaint
themselves with the Overview, Unit Types, Square Footage, Lease, Offerings and
Sales tabs.
5)
Use
DealFinder to find and manage Buyer needs in your database or automatically
match Buyers with properties that are for sale.
Use Tenant Wizard to find and manage Tenant
needs in your database or automatically match Tenant needs to available
space.
These features are going to make you a
lot of money!
Let’s face it; if you are not talking
to every property owner or tenant in your farm at least once a quarter, you are
not effectively covering your market. If
you are not covering your market, you are leaving the door wide open for your
competition to make a very nice living from commissions that you left on the
table. So it is up to you to cover your
farm so well that your competition does not like going to work in the mornings
and agonizes over their career choice.
Now, I know that some of you consider
your competition to be friends. But I
know of no broker who will just let you have a $150,000 fee if they think they
can earn it first. I advocate a healthy
respect for your competition within the bounds of fair dealings, but you should
not let yourself be naïve enough to step into the brokerage arena with the
belief that you will necessarily be treated the same way. Always carry the strongest shield and the
sharpest sword if you want to prevail in this business. Which brings me back to my point-- the most
effective way to cover your farm is by using the telephone and sending direct
mail.
Most people are afraid of the
telephone; after all, it is the leading cause of neck cramps and lock jaw in
our society today. If you are afraid of calling someone that you do not know,
stop and think for a moment about how harmless this piece of equipment really
is. The telephone does not bite,
transfer any communicable diseases from the person on the other end and will not
inflict any physical pain on your body.
They cannot judge you for your taste in neckties or criticize you for
eating too many onions on your burger at lunch.
So what’s your hang-up? If
you are honest with yourself, fear of rejection is more than likely the
problem. But don’t worry; you are not
alone, because most everyone has this exact same fear.
You need a strategy to overcome fear
and anxiety to become one of the truly great commercial sales agents. Did you notice that I said overcome and not
eliminate your fear. Managing and controlling
telephone anxiety is the best that most of us will be able to achieve. And after all, you have a lot of money to
make and you cannot afford to let something so small get in your way!
Simply put, cold calling is the most
effective way of generating new business in commercial real estate. If you really want to put your career on the
fast track, get on the telephone. If you
want to make more money, get on the telephone.
If you want to win more sales awards, get on the telephone. If you want to get yourself out of a sales
slump, get on the telephone. If you
don’t want to worry about paying your monthly bills, get on the telephone. If you want your competitors to find a new
line of work, get on the telephone. Are
you seeing a pattern developing here??
The simple reasons for calling
property owners and tenants on a regular basis are to:
·
Establish
(or re-establish) and maintain a relationship
·
Gather
information about a property or prospect’s intentions
·
Market
properties or spaces (your listings or other broker’s listings)
·
Distribute
information
·
Market
your services
Your goal for every phone call is to
secure a personal meeting with the property owner or tenant, because people
like doing business with people they know.
Your objective should be to meet every property owner and major tenant
in your farm. If a meeting is not
possible, gather information about their property or future business expansion
plans and ask the prospect if you can help them with any of their real estate
needs. Some questions that you may want
to customize and ask on the phone are:
1) Are you interested in purchasing any
real estate or leasing any space in the next twelve months?
2) What direction do you think the real
estate market is headed this year?
3) Do you anticipate any changes to your
business?
4) How is your property (or business)
doing? (vacancy, rent increases, management, tenants, expenses, concessions,
leasing, staffing, sales)?
5) Are you having any challenges with
your property, space or location?
6) Are your CAM
charges what you expected?
7) Do you have time to show me your
property? I can meet you at the property
the next time that you are in town.
8) Do you mind if I stop by and give you
my business card? What days are you at
the property?
Again, your goal for each phone call
is to obtain a face-to-face meeting with the property owner or tenant.
You must meet him to establish and build rapport. Your goal is NOT to list the building over the telephone or send him half baked offers--
because that destroys your credibility.
Nor is it your goal to supply a prospect enough information that he can
find a new space or market his property without you. You are not the Library of Congress or the
Red Cross, so don’t give away your trade secrets.
If you notice that you are doing all
of the talking during a cold call it is time for you to say goodbye (that is,
of course, after you ask for a meeting).
When you are on a call always remember that you were born with two ears
and one mouth and that you should use them proportionately. If you are doing all of the talking that
means that you are not asking enough quality question. People like to talk about themselves so make
sure your prospect is the one doing the talking and that you are attentively
listening for your opportunity to ask for a face-to-face meeting.
If a property owner or tenant refuses
to meet with you, but wants you to do a lot of work for him (a valuation, lease
analysis, detail rent surveys, sales reports, etc), do yourself a big
favor—move on. Don’t waste your efforts
on someone who does not respect or value your time. Chances are they never will
meet with you and their list of demands will only grow longer.
Here is a secret to ridding yourself
of your telephone anxiety. Give yourself
permission to botch phone calls. Yes,
you heard me… it is OK to stink at cold calling as long as you make your calls
every single day because in time your cold calling skills will improve. If you cannot give yourself permission to
stink on the phone, then I give you permission because I know that you will get
better with each cold call you make.
Think about it. Everything that you
are good at today you were once not good at: riding a bicycle, driving a car,
reading, using a computer, public speaking, underwriting deals, filling out
leases, etc. You only became proficient
at these activities by doing them repeatedly and by learning new techniques
from other people. It is no different
when you are learning how to effectively cold call.
Another way to get rid of your anxiety
is to practice different call scenarios with a partner for at least 20 minutes
each day. Practice overcoming the
objections that are typically raised by your prospects on your real calls. If your State allows you to legally record
your telephone calls, playback your actual recorded phone calls in your cold
call practice sessions. Dissect the call
into things that were done proficiently and areas that could use some
work. Roll play calls with your partner
to figure out how to get the calls to have a positive ending.
The following is what is known as the
stacked calling method. Each of your
phone conversations with a prospect stacks on top of each other to build a
relationship with that prospect over a period of time. The key to this method is entering accurate
call notes and maintaining a historical record of those notes in your database.
First
Contact by Telephone
When you call someone
for the very first time, introduce yourself, your service, the purpose of your
call and ask their permission to talk to them about their property (or their
business plans if you are calling tenants)
EXAMPLE 1:
“Hi, John?” Let them reply. “This
is Tom Smith with Smith & Associates.
I am calling to introduce myself to you.
I am an office broker here in town.” Let them reply. “I am wondering if I can talk to you about
your building on 24th
street for just a few moments.” If they say no, ask them for a better time to
reach them and call them back at that time.
EXAMPLE 2:
“Hi, John?” Let them reply. “This
is Tom Smith with Smith & Associates.
I am calling to introduce myself to you.
I am an office broker here in town.” Let them reply. “I am just finishing up an owner market
survey and I am wondering if I can talk to you about your building on 24th Street
for a few quick moments.” If they say
no, ask them for a better time to reach them.
TIP:
If you are calling on larger
buildings and you call the owner to do a rent survey they will refer you to
their manager just to get rid of you.
So, always do an owner survey and ask them about their opinions of the
market, the direction that they think that it is headed, if they are keeping up
with what is for sale and sold, etc.
EXAMPLE 3:
“Hi, John?” Let them reply. “This
is Tom Smith with Smith & Associates.
I am calling to introduce myself to you.
I specialize in tenant representation here in town.” Let them
reply. “I am helping a number of business
owners and I am wondering if I can talk to you about your business expansion
plans for a few moments.” If they say
no, ask them for a better time to reach them.
Always
record a brief synopsis of your conversation with a property owner in their contact
record. If they mention that they like
golf or something else that you can use to develop rapport in a later
conversation, make a note of it. With
each call always remember to ask for a meeting before you hang-up.
Subsequent
Contact by Telephone
Here is the real beauty of this
system. Every time that you speak with
that owner after your initial phone call with him, you will always refer back
to the last phone conversation that you had to re-establish rapport. If he was planning to take a trip to Italy,
you can ask him about the trip the next time that you call. If he was going to repave the parking lot you
can ask him how it turned out. If he had
a problem with vacancy, inquire about his success leasing the space.
EXAMPLE:
“Hi, John?” Let them reply. “This
is Tom Smith with Smith & Associates.
I am an office broker here in town and we spoke a few months ago about
your property on 24th
Street. You
were very generous with your time and helped me out with my market survey.” Let
them reply. Now lead in gracefully with
something that they told you in the previous conversation. “The last time that we spoke you had
mentioned that you were going to take a trip to Italy. How was it?” OR…“The last
time that we spoke you had mentioned that you were trying to lease some space
to a major tenant. How did it go?”
OR…“The last time that we spoke you had mentioned that you were going to
replace the HVAC. Did you get everything
up and running?”
With the stacked method each new cold
call builds on the previous conversation creating rapport. It is important to stay in regular contact
with your property owners so you don’t lose the benefit of the accumulated
conversations. Remember, the goal is to
meet your prospect face-to-face. A good
rule-of-thumb is to meet with them every 18 months.
TIP: If your prospect lives
out-of-state and does not come to town very often then you must go and see
him. Commercial real estate
Professionals don’t waste their time traveling to see just one prospect; they
schedule two or three meetings to optimize their time and get the most bang for
their dollars. You should take your show
on the road at least once a quarter.
OK,
if you are thinking that you do not want to spring for the airline ticket and
rental car, let me assure you that I have beat many agents to the listing punch
line by making the extra effort to meet with a prospect that lives
out-of-state. Fly Southwest Airlines and
save a buck. Who knows, you might see me
on the plane. (I will be the guy who
looks sleep deprived, standing in the “A” line with a tiny black laptop wearing
a Tommy Bahamma shirt. Yes, I have been
stopped four times now!)
Recover From a Cold
Call Gone Wrong
If you are human like the rest of us, you
will never be perfect on the telephone 100% of the time. You will occasionally put your foot in your
mouth and really botch some calls— everyone does. Here is the good news about cold calling… the
people that you call on the telephone are not usually going to remember in 90
days if the last call that you had with them was good or bad. So don’t worry about being perfect on the
telephone. What you should worry about
is keeping a positive attitude after having an abysmal call or you will spread
that negative energy to every call made thereafter.
TIP: On
the off chance that someone does recognize you as that person who sounded like
a dope on the phone 90 days ago (which they never do but for the sake of
argument, let’s say that it happens to you), take the following steps:
1) Remain
calm and collected,
2) Insist
that they must have been talking to your competition.
3) And
close for a face-to-face meeting!
To clear the negative energy after a
bad call, immediately hang-up the telephone and say out loud “…and the horse
you rode in on!”. While this might seem
childish, it really does works. The
wilder and crazier your hang-up technique is, the better you will feel. No, wild and crazy does not mean that it is
acceptable to throw the telephone across the room.
Brokerage is business that is all
about your recovery. Did you get the job
done the very next time that you could prove yourself? That’s the only thing that people in this
business will remember. Now get out
there botch some calls and get a little crazy!
Preparing to Cold
Call
Forget cold calling for a minute,
because we’re going to make it easy for you to talk to prospects in your market
by telephone. RealHound.com® has
developed a number of tools that will help ease your pain. If you have followed the instructions in
Chapter Three, talking to prospects in your target market will be a snap.
To properly prepare for a cold call
you must first have some market data on hand in order to have a meaningful
conversation. Most owners like to talk
about rents, sales, new laws & city ordinances, construction trends,
industry news, local business news, sports, local weather and market
trends. It is also helpful if you know
something about your prospect before you speak with them.
Read
What Your Prospects Read: Subscribe to periodicals that cater to your
market. A must read for all real estate
practitioners is your local newspaper, the Wall Street Journal and your local
business journal. Scan through these
periodicals and read only the relevant articles. It should only take approximately 30 minutes
each day when you are doing this correctly.
CAUTION:
If you are dedicating prime work
hours each day to reading newspapers and you are not cold calling at least two
hours each day—you have missed the point.
The point is and always will be
this-- consistently prospect for at least two hours by telephone every work
day.
Conduct
a Market Survey: Survey at least ten properties that are
similar in location, age and amenities. Call
each of the ten property owners and ask them for their assistance with your
survey, and in return for their help tell them that you will share the results
of the survey. During your conversation
with the property owner, continually ask open ended questions and gather as
much information about the property as you can.
If the owner wants to talk, let him do so without interrupting.
When you are closing the conversation
thank him for taking your call, tell him that you have a few more owners to
speak with, and that you would like to give him a copy of the market survey
when you have it completed. Odds are
that he will want to have a copy. Always
try to personally deliver the market survey and meet the property owner. Record newly acquired rental data into your
database.
Remember, sometimes you are going to
have to talk to a property manager or leasing agent to get the type of data
that will be of value to other prospects in your farm area.
There are several tools built into the
program that are designed to help you build rapport with your prospects. Knowing what direction to take a telephone
conversation before you even dial can make the difference between having a
great conversation or one that ends in failure.
smallTALK!:
On the right hand side of the contact screen will see an button for
smallTALK!. This exciting feature will
give you some suggestions of things to talk about on the telephone with a
prospect. Click on the smallTALK! button
to retrieve information about local news, weather, professional and college
sports scores all tailored to your
currently selected contact. Make sure
that you key in your contact’s city, Interests (under the Other radio button)
and attended university on their contact record to get the maximum benefit of
this feature.
ZoomInfo
Smart-links: The ZommInfo and Smart-Links are
located on the Smart-links menu of the program.
By selecting Zoominfo from the menu, the program will send contact
information to ZoomInfo’s website which automatically generates a report
regarding your contact. This is very
helpful for looking up phone numbers and discerning the line of business that
your prospect is in. It can also help
you to uncover details on your prospect such as the college that they attended,
professional picture and articles that they have been quoted in or have
published.
Once the contact or company list pulls
up in your web browser, you can narrow down the search results using the refine
search results box on the left side of the webpage.
Create
a market survey using the Radius Search to find properties around a subject
property or the MapPoint 2006 geographic search functions for finding
properties in an area by drawing on a map.
A detailed explanation of each of these search functions is covered
under the Mapping section in the previous chapter.
Step 1:
Query the properties to be surveyed using the Radius Search or MapPoint
2006. To drop a property from the list
of properties, go to the Overview tab, advance to the offending property and
click the Drop Property button
(Poof! It’s gone).
Step 2: Once
a survey group of properties has been selected, call all of the related
property managers, leasing agents and owners to gather and update rental data
in your database.
Step 3: For
leased investments key in the rate information for each property in the Asking
Rates and Available Square Footages section on the Facilities/Rates tab.
Step 4: For Apartments and Storage property types select the
Unit Types tab and enter in the rental data.
Follow the directions on the right side of the screen.
Step 5: You
can run different reports on this particular selection of properties by
clicking the Report button on the
top of the menu bar. Make sure the
correct radio button is selected. For
leased investments select the Commercial
radio button. For Apartments and storage
select the Multi-Unit radio button.
Step 6: Select
the professional report and click the Preview
button.
RealHound® is the ONLY commercial real
estate contact management program that is specifically designed to be used for
cold calling—PERIOD. It is impossible to
skip over or forget to call a prospect when you are using this system to track
your calls. Everyone gets called—no
exceptions.
Here is where the fun really
begins. You have completed your market
survey, entered in property data, have researched prospect phone numbers,
entered property photos and you have
also entered the last sale information and space available for lease on each
property in your market. If you are like
most of our users, you only have these tasks partially completed. So let’s just consider your database to be a
work in progress.
Your Farm area (list of properties)
should already be setup as a property
group if you sell investment real estate or specialize in leasing. Because your focus is on current property
ownership, a property group will
allow you to efficiently contact new owners that own properties in your farm
area after your database has been updated with recent property sales.
If your forte is tenant representation
you should have the major tenants in your farm saved as a contact group.
Caution: You
will never get the database to be 100% perfect all of the time because the real
estate market is dynamic and is constantly changing. Whatever you do, don’t allow yourself to get
so absorbed in the upkeep of your database that it becomes an excuse not to
prospect and grow your business.
If
you are a single user with no help, budget
your time between money making activities and database upkeep. Update your database only during hours that
you cannot make phone calls.
Always run your call lists through the
Cold Calls tab, because the program
will automatically generate and manage your call list based on your defined
parameters. Call frequency, national
DNC, phone number availability are just some of the factors that the program
uses to determine who should be called and in what order.
The key to cold calling is to JUST DO
IT. After the fourth or fifth call you
will get into a rhythm and your anxiety will start to fade away. That’s why it is important for you not to be
disturbed while you are making your daily calls.
Generate
Your Call List
Step 1: From
the Contacts section of the program select the Cold Calls & Call Lists tab.
Select the Call owners of
properties in a property group? radio button. From the drop box, select your farm area that
was saved as a property group.
Reminder: You could
also choose to call your currently queried contacts, a contact group, tenants
with leases expiring between a certain date range and tenants with options to
purchase or renew within certain date ranges.
Step 2: On the same screen, narrow down the contacts on your
list. Answer the questions and fill out
the blank fields. When you are done
click the Create List button.
a)
“Remove
contacts who have been reached in the last [x] days”. Remember, that the goal is to contact
prospects every 90 days, so you should enter 90 in the first field.
b)
“Remove
contacts who have been left a message in the last [x] days”. If you have recently called a prospect, did
not reach them but left them a message-- you probably don’t want to call them
for a few days. Enter in 3 or 5 in this
field.
c)
“Remove
contacts who’s next call date is more than [x] days from today” SKIP THIS AND LEAVE THE BOX BLANK.
d)
“Include
contacts marked as ‘Do Not Call’?” This
is a personal preference but select NO.
Caution: Some
people do not want to be contacted by phone, fax or email and it may be
unlawful for you to do so. Please use
RealHound® in accordance with all Federal, State and local laws. However, if you do choose to use this software
in an unlawful manner and get sent to prison, please take our friendly
advice-- never shower with a man named
Bubba and always sleep on the top bunk!
e)
“Include
contacts without a phone number?” This
is a personal preference, select NO
because you can always query (search) contacts without a phone number.
f)
Click
the Create List button.
Step
3: On the same screen, you can
review the total contacts selected and that number of contacts that were
dropped from the call list.
Step
4: On the same screen, check the box next to Use IntelliCall and click the Goto Contacts button.
IntelliCall will automatically arrange the call
list by placing those contacts that are statistically more likely to do
business with you at the top of the call list and those that are least likely
at the bottom of the list.
Reminder: The total number of
properties or leases in your database will not necessarily equal the total
number of contacts because some contacts will own more than one property or
have more than one lease. If you have
ten properties in your farm and one owner who owned three properties out of that
property group, there will only be eight unique property owners queried.
Step 5: After the Goto Contacts button has
been clicked, the program will take you to the Companies & Contact tab and
display the first contact record on the newly generated call list.
Step 6: Call the first prospect or if you do not want to call the
currently displayed prospect, click the Drop
Contact button on the lower left hand side of the screen and the record
will be removed from the call list.
After the
call has been made, click
the Cold Call button at the bottom
of the screen and the Save to History pop-up screen appears. Select the Call Result drop down box and select the appropriate result: Busy,
Disconnected, Wrong Number, Left Message, No Answer, and Reached.
Caution: It is absolutely critical that you select
the proper “Call Result” because other areas of the program will use this data
to track and calculate your call effectiveness.
Step 4: Enter
in your call comments in the box. If you
want to check spelling, click the ABC
button.
When you are done click the Save & Drop button and the program
will close the “Save to History” pop-up window, remove the contact from the
call list and automatically advance to the next contact record.
Alternatively, you could click the Follow-up Task button to schedule an
event or a to-do with the current contact.
TIP: If
a prospect wants to meet with you, do it as soon as possible. The longer you delay, you increase the
probabilities that your competition will find this prospect and will swoop-in
on your business. Before you meet with a
prospect it is always a good idea to drive any related property to refresh your
memory.
Reminder: Liberate your Task
list! If you reached a prospect and he
is on your normal quarterly calling schedule, you do NOT have to schedule a new
task to remind yourself to call him in the future. RealHound® manages your call lists for you. The only thing you need to do is click the Cold Call button and select the proper
call result after EACH call.
It is not practical to schedule future
cold call dates with your prospects simply because you want to remember to call
them every 90 days. If you did, your
task list would quickly become overwhelming and unmanageable. It is equally impractical to schedule
reminders to call prospects with whom you want to follow-up with on a more
frequent basis (other than your usual 90 day call schedule because you think
they might be getting close to making a real estate decision). A Contact Group is the simplest way to track
prospects that you need to call frequently but that you do not have a formal
appointment to call.
You should only schedule a follow-up
phone call as a future Task if and only if, you MUST call a prospect on a
specific date. This keeps your task list free from clutter
and prevents you from becoming overwhelmed by 800 future tasks. Use contact groups to track large numbers of non-date
specific follow-up telephone calls that need to be made more frequently than
the normal three month (90 day) prospecting schedule.
Use
this system to track prospects using Contact Groups
Create three contact groups with the following
names: Weekly, Bi-Weekly, and Monthly. You
will add contacts to the appropriate group as you are making your cold calls.
What do the group names mean?
Weekly: Contacts that you believe warrant a
phone call every week. Contacts in this
group will be called weekly, typically on a Monday or Friday.
Bi-Weekly: Contacts that you believe warrant a
phone call every two weeks. Contacts in this group will be called every two
weeks, typically in the middle and at the end of the month.
Monthly: Contacts that you believe warrant a
phone call every month. Contacts in this
group will be called monthly, typically at the end of the month.
As the
appropriate time of the month rolls around, just pick your contact group(s) and
make your calls. Using this system, you would call the Weekly group every week. Around the 14th of the month, you
would call the Bi-Weekly and Weekly contact groups. At the end of the month, the Bi-Weekly, Weekly and Monthly contact
groups would be called.
This system works well because real
estate is a cyclical business meaning you tend to do the same activities every
month. So it is very easy to remember to
call the appropriate contact group.
TIP: Create
a contact group named Wrong Numbers. As you are making your cold calls and come
across a wrong number just add that contact to the Wrong Numbers group. This is
a quick and easy way to recall the contact records that require phone number
research.
Nothing is more helpful than having
organized information at your fingertips while you are on the telephone. When you can talk to a prospect about his
properties, discuss other properties that are For Sale, have Sold and what the
surrounding rents are near his buildings during a normal phone conversation
with him you establish credibility and sound like a commercial real estate
expert. Who cares that you clicked a few
buttons and all of the information just popped-up. You get the credit while your database does
all of the work. So, let’s get you
familiar with the Related Properties section on the Companies & Contacts
tab.
On the Companies & Contacts tab in
the lower right-hand portion of the screen is the Related Properties
section. You have several ways to view
the information in the list box. By
selecting the appropriate radio button next to:
Own Summary- The box will display a one line
property summary that shows all of the currently selected contact’s owned
properties. Use the scroll bar to move
up and down the list box.
Own Detail- The list box will display a list of
properties owned with a summary of Property which includes details such as
property address, listing information, square footage, units, year built and
last sale data. This setting gives you
the “need to know” basics on the real estate owned by a contact without having
to click over to the Property section of the program.
Lessee- The list
displays all of the leases that the contact is connected to as a tenant. Other details such as the property address,
square feet, lease expiration date, renewal date, option date, lease rate and
total lease consideration are all displayed.
Sold- The list will display the selected contact’s history of
sold properties.
All Related- The list will display properties
that the selected contact is related to and the relationship (Owner, Manager,
Listing Agent, etc). This is a useful
feature when you are trying to figure out what properties a property manager or
a real estate broker is related to.
Next let’s explore the Compare button on the Related
Properties section. This button activates
the Auto Compare feature, which instantly gives you access to Rental, Sale and For Sale
comparables customized for any property in your database. This amazing feature lets you analyze a
contact’s properties or leasehold interest in an instant, making it a powerful
tool to use while you are on the telephone.
To
use the Auto Compare feature
1) Select Own Detail radio button.
Click once on the gray box next to a property’s name and the box will
highlight in black.
Click the Compare button and the “Auto Compare” screen pops-up. The subject property will be listed in the
bar at the top of the window.
2) Enter your search criteria and click
the Search button. Your objective is to narrow your search
criteria to only query other properties that are similar to the property which
is the subject of your comparison.
First select a range of Units or
Square Feet that is about 20% lower and 20% greater than the Subject
property. If the subject property is an
apartment building you will probably want to search by units. If the Subject is a strip center you will
more than likely want to search by Square Feet.
Rarely would you search by both Units and Square Feet. Example: For a 50 unit apartment building you would
enter Units= 40 to 60. Enter 16,000 to
24,000 square feet for a 20,000 square foot strip center.
Note: Your
properties MUST be geocoded for the radius search to work (see Mapping).
3) Select the appropriate radio button to
see comparable Sales, Offerings and Properties (rental comps are available for
apartments & storage only) that meet the existing search criteria. A list of matching properties will appear in
the list below the radio buttons.
Tip: Adjust your search criteria
to narrow or broaden your search results.
After you change the search parameters click the Search button to view your search results.
4) At the top of the Auto Compare window,
the program will display a summary of the sale Comparables, Offerings (For Sale
properties), Rent Comparables (apartments & Storage only) and will compare
each category to the Subject property.
Reminder: The
Auto Compare search function will function to save you from repetitive input by
remembering the parameters that you entered into it from a previous search and
will adapt those settings to the current Subject property.
5) 
You can map the properties in the list
by pressing the Map button or query
the properties in the “Show Detail” list by pressing the Goto Selected button.
6) Close the window to return to the
Contact screen.
Easily check your cold calling effectiveness
and generate a cold call report from within the program.
After you have completed your daily
cold calls you should always review your call statistics. Your goal is to beat the numbers from the
prior week. If you make it into a game you
will improve your call results over time.
Consider it a personal challenge never to end the week without calling
at least one more prospect this week than you did the prior week.
Track 1st Meetings and 2nd Meetings
To track 1st Meetings and 2nd
Meetings you must set the “Sales Type” drop down box to 1st Meeting when you are scheduling
a new Task with a contact on the Companies & Contacts tab.
So
what exactly is a 1st Meeting and a 2nd Meeting?
When you meet a prospect for the very
first time it is considered a 1st Meeting. At that meeting you should try to uncover the
prospect’s needs and ask for the opportunity to solve the need. If their need is to sell their property, you
would prepare a proposal for the sale of the property. If they want to sublet their space, you would
prepare a proposal to lease the space.
It is considered a 2nd Meeting when you have the follow-up
meeting to present your proposal that solves the prospect’s problem. You can have numerous 2nd meetings
(or arm twisting sessions as I like to call them) with your client until you
get their business. My personal record
was 4 and, fortunately, I did sell the property.
Power Moves
1)
Daily
prospecting is the key to making a lot of money in commercial real estate. Devote two hours of everyday to prospecting
on the telephone. Do nothing else during
this scheduled time and do not allow any interruptions. Record your call results for each prospect
reached in their respective contact record.
Your goal with each phone call is to meet the prospect because people do
business with people they know.
2) Cold Calling is a specialized activity
and there is no other software program on the market that can effectively
manage the process like RealHound®. If
you are migrating to RealHound® from another software program, congratulations
cold calling just got easier for you!
3)
When
you are on a call always remember that your Creator gave you two ears and one
mouth with the intention that you would use them proportionately. The best calls that you will ever have with a
prospect are the ones where you just listen and let them talk.
4)
Here
is the good news about cold calling… the people that you call on the telephone
are not going to remember if the last call that you had with them was good or
bad. So the only thing that really
matters is that you are on the phone daily.
5)
You
will never get the data in RealHound® to be 100% perfect all of the time,
because the real estate market is dynamic and is constantly changing. If you are a single user with no help, budget
your time between money making activities and database upkeep. Whatever you do, do not get so absorbed in
the upkeep of RealHound® that you use it as an excuse not to prospect and grow
your business.
6)
The
key to cold calling is just to do it.
Pick-up the phone and call your prospects. For the most part, you will find that people
are very nice and you just never know what you might learn from the person at
the other end of the line.
Always try to beat the number
of calls that you made the previous week.
Make a game out of it like “Dial-for-dollars”. You just never know when you will hit the
jackpot!
Direct mail is a highly effective way
of prospecting in commercial real estate.
There is a system to direct mail that you must master and practice
regularly in order to maximize your direct mail results. When done correctly you can expect a 350% or
more return on your investment in direct mail.
Direct mail can work independently
from cold calling, but when done in conjunction with each other, they create a
powerful lead generating machine that will make you very successful. Most commercial real estate agents favor direct
mail over cold calling because they are too scared to pick-up the phone, even
though direct mail alone is not as effective in a competitive market. You must combine cold calling and use direct
mail to have maximum impact in your market.
This two-prong approach has been demonstrated to maximize lead
generation and your income.
RealHound® is the only commercial real
estate software that lets you track each phase of your marketing and tie it
directly to your contacts and property.
If you have listings, you can easily generate push button marketing
reports for your Clients and even review a history of who responded to your
marketing saving you hours of work every week.
The difference between cold calling and
the use of direct mail can be compared to the difference between a Queen and
Pawns in the game of chess. Pawns are
numerous but weak and a Queen is strong but scarce.
Direct mail is the Pawn of your
prospecting game. Your Pawns are weak
but numerous and you just never know when they will capture some business for
you. They cover the game board by sheer
numbers and help you establish your brand.
They are not too effective in bringing in a tremendous amount of leads
but they do pay for themselves and create brand awareness in the marketplace.
Cold calling is the Queen of your
prospecting game. Your Queen is quick
and nimble and can go where she is needed in an instant. She is very effective in bringing in new
business but does not cover the entire game board. Your Queen will always capture business away
from your competitors Pawns if you have good timing and call a prospect during
the investigative phase. In other words,
a well timed telephone call to a property owner or tenant will always generate
more business than a random mailer.
Direct mail and cold calling work best
when done in conjunction with one another.
You could not possibly call everybody in your farm every single week,
but you can send mail to them weekly.
Your mailers are a gentle reminder that you are active in the
marketplace and are willing to help prospects with their needs. Mailers fill the gap between your quarterly
phone calls. Your quarterly cold calls
are at random (that is, you never know when you will reach a prospect); your
mailers are not because they go out in predetermined intervals and always show
up in your prospects’ mailbox.
And now I’d
like to share some of the secrets of a successful direct mail campaign. All too often commercial agents will send two
or three mailers to their farm per year and get poor results. They then grumble to themselves that the
mailing was not worth the money and effort.
The truth of the matter is that their campaign lacked consistency; or
rather the only thing consistent about their mailing campaign was their
inconsistency.
A successful
mailing campaign has these five critical elements: regular contact intervals,
accessibility of the message, simplicity of design, a call to action and a
take-away.
The most critical element
The most
important element to direct mail is regular contact intervals. All too often people will send two or three
mailers to their farm and get no or very few results. By maintaining regular contact with your
farm, you will start to generate a significant amount of inbound telephone
calls from prospects requiring your services.
It takes approximately four to six months of consistently mailing to
your farm to get decent results from the mailing campaign. At the beginning of your mailing campaign,
you should send out one mailer a week for the first four weeks. From that point on, send at least one mailer
every two weeks for the rest of your commercial sales career. You will still obtain some results if you send
only a monthly mailer to your farm, but I don’t recommend this approach. Ideally, you should mail to your farm every
week.
Direct mail
works on the principle of probability and response rate. It is highly probable that someone in your
farm is interested in buying, selling or leasing real estate right now. The big question is will they call you
first? The response rate in a
competitive market is approximately ¼ to ½ percent per mailing. Sending out mailers is purely a numbers
game-- the more you send out, the greater the number of responses you’ll
receive.
Caution: If you
fail to send mailers to your farm for more than 6 weeks, you run the risk of
having to start your marketing campaign all over again with the initial weekly
mailers. What that means to you is that
you will have to wait another four to six months for your mailers to become
fully effective again.
The second critical element
The second
critical element in a successful direct mail campaign is the accessibility
of the message. When your message
arrives in your prospects’ mailbox, it is competing against at least 10 other
pieces of mail for their attention.
Typically, people will look for a bulk mail stamp or some other
indication on an envelope to determine if a mailer is junk mail. If it does not pass their initial “sniff
test” it is immediately discarded as junk mail.
For this reason, you should not send you marketing materials in
envelopes or with a bulk mail stamp.
A postcard
is the best choice for direct mail because your message is immediately received
when the postcard viewed plus it is the most inexpensive form of mail that can
be sent. When your prospect receives a
postcard they will look at the front and, if it is designed well, turn it over
and read the back. Your message is
received and the mailer has achieved some level of success.
Tip: If you must send advertising materials to your farm in a standard
envelope try to make the envelope look different from every other piece of junk
mail in the prospects’ mailbox. You might try using these techniques to get
your envelope opened:
- Have your own handwriting made into a font
and have your printer print directly to the envelope instead of a label
- Use a first class stamp instead of metered
mail
- Create a red colored hand stamp at your
local office supply store that says “Market Information Enclosed” and
use it to stamp the front of your envelope
The third critical element
The third
critical element is that the mailer should be simply designed. The front should not be cluttered; the
recipient must clearly understand the subject matter of the postcard
easily. The following are some headlines
that work well:
·
Just Sold
·
Just Listed
·
For Lease
·
Just Leased
·
Are you thinking about selling?
·
Do you need some growing room?
·
Do you need another location?
An
uncluttered design on the front of the postcard and a good property photograph
will get them to turn over the postcard to get more details. The back of the card should have the
following elements:
·
4 to 6 word small headline
·
A short 25 to 30 word write-up (tell the story!)
·
A tagline (Don’t sell your property without talking
to me first.)
·
Your name
·
Contact information with email
·
Company logo
·
Your professional photo
The back of
your postcard should be neat, uncluttered and professional.
The fourth & fifth critical
elements
It is
essential that your mailers ALWAYS have a call-to-action and a take-away
on them. A call-to-action asks the prospect to do something such as
pick-up the telephone and call you. A take-away
is something that a prospect gets if they do contact you. Giving a prospect something for free is the
most compelling reason of all for them to contact you. The following are good
examples of successful call-to-actions with a take-away:
Call for a
free property valuation, Call for a free sales survey, Call for a free market
survey, Call for a free rent survey & Call for a free lease analysis
Reminder: Everybody loves to get something for free,
so give it to them. Oh, there is just one tiny catch-- they have to agree to
meet with you to get it. If a prospect refuses to meet with you, but wants you
to do a lot of work for them, there is a good chance that they are just wasting
your time. Guard your time wisely. It is
the most valuable commodity that you have and once expended, can never be
reclaimed.
Tip: If a property owner calls to take you up on your offer for a free
valuation or sales survey, this is what we call in the business a very large clue.
It would be a good assumption that that owner is thinking about selling their
property sometime soon. Go meet them as soon as possible and stick to them like
glue.
Caution: If a prospect has called you off of a mailer there
is a strong possibility that they also contacted your competition. Do not be
afraid to ask them if they have talked to or plan on talking to anyone else.
Never assume that you are not competing for their business.
Make sure
your mailing campaign incorporates all five ingredients to ensure that you are
sending the right message to your prospects. A successful mailing campaign has
all five of these critical elements:
1)
Regular contact intervals
2)
Accessibility of the message
3)
Simplicity of design
4)
Call to action
5)
A Take-away
Direct mail is a highly effective way of
prospecting in commercial real estate, but you must master the system and
practice it regularly in order to maximize your direct mail results.
Email Blast Marketing
Email is
probably the most abused type of advertizing in the history of the modern world
because it is the next best thing to free.
Warning: If you want
to get both your company’s and your personal email address blacklisted, have a
strong desire to pay stiff fines or face criminal charge; continue to send
regular email blasts from your office account.
Always, always, ALWAYS use a 3rd party email blast service to
send email blasts and stay on the right side of the law!
Most people
are numb to email marketing and will ignore messages that aren’t new listings
or recent sales activity. Not to mention
that spam filters will kill about 40% or more of your emails before they hit
your prospects’ inbox.
If you insist on sending email blasts,
make sure that it is through a third party email blast service so you comply
with all Federal, State and Local laws.
This includes the laws in the State in which the email was
received.
Reminder: Spend
the money to set yourself apart from your competition—send direct mail or spend
the extra buck on a professional email blast.
Besides, unlike spam filters, your neighborhood postman won’t screen
your prospects’ mail for them!
RealHound® tracks
all of your marketing through the Marketing Campaigns tab. This feature is ideal for tracking and
managing all marketing associated with your listings. If you were to send out a Just Listed
postcard to a group of building owners or tenants, you would enter it into
marketing campaigns. RealHound® would
automatically update each contact record to show that you sent them a postcard
and would also update who responded. If
you got a call off of a sign that was posted on a property, it would be tracked
and tallied with the rest of the property marketing.
This feature
is ideal for multiphase marketing campaigns such as those involved in the
marketing of a property or space. To
communicate your marketing efforts to your client, simply click a button to print
out a marketing report and send it to them.
The Listing Marketing Report- A Staple in Your Arsenal
The listing
marketing report is a staple in your arsenal of essential brokerage
services. Ideally, marketing reports
should contain the different marketing stages, results and the names of people
who had an interest in the listing.
Your marketing report should be sent to your client weekly and also be
made available in "real time" for your client to view over the
internet. With the proper software technology,
it should take no more than 5 minutes to generate a weekly professional looking
"paper" report and no time whatsoever for your clients to view
"real time" reports directly on the Internet. Marketing reports should be used to win new
business, manage an owner/landlord's expectations, substantiate who you
marketed a listing to and demonstrate to your clients that you are
"working the deal". Always
remember, that the fastest way to lose a listing at renewal time is by being
inconsistent with your reporting methodologies or, even worse, by not providing
your client with a marketing report at all.
Your listing
proposal should contain a marketing section, and within that section, you
should have the first two pages of your most successful marketing campaigns
displayed as an exhibit. This will show
that you actively market your listings and are not just an order taker. During your listing presentation, emphasize
the fact that your competition does not provide this level of service and that
most brokers invent their marketing reports.
In fact, when pressed to do a marketing report other brokers will guess
at the response rates. This type of
sloppy work should be a harbinger of "ill things to come" with your
competition's work product if your prospective client does decided to hire the
other guy.
What do you
do when your Client (Owner or Landlord) is unrealistic about pricing? You have tried to market the property their
way and now it is time for your client to get a dose of reality. You could just "tell" them that
their price and/or terms are unrealistic (like every other broker) or you could
"show" them ALL of the comments from real people in the marketplace
that have looked at the property and passed on the deal. The listing marketing report is the ideal
tool to manage your client's expectations because it is a written record of
factual conversations with real people about their property. If your client is truly motivated he will
need to adjust the offering to make a deal and the right feedback will help get
them to that point.
Maybe you
are about to lose a listing to your competition or even worse, one of your
clients is waiting until after your listing agreement expires to do a deal on
the side with someone that they "know". A marketing report will be able to quickly
substantiate who you have shown the property to in the event of a commission
dispute.
Reminder: You should always keep a record of who you
have sent marketing materials to and who has responded to your
advertising. RealHound®’s Marketing
Campaigns greatly simplifies this process.
Marketing
reports should be consistently used for every listing to report marketing
effectiveness, help win new business, manage an owner or landlord’s
expectations and substantiate who you marketed the property to during your
listing period.
Create a Marketing Report
Let’s say
that you just listed a property and you want to keep track of your marketing
and all corresponding results. Maybe you
would like to market your listings using the following six different stages:
Signage, direct mail, newspaper advertising, Internet listing services, a
broker mailer and an email blast. But
every broker has a different approach to marketing and the program is
customizable to your style of marketing, all you have to do is follow these
easy steps:
1) Go to the
Today section and select the Marketing Campaigns tab.
2) Next to the
grey box with the asterisk (*), click the Property Lookup icon. Find your subject property on the list,
highlight the property’s name and click the Select button. Enter in a brief but descriptive name (A
property name or space followed by the listing expiration) for your new
marketing campaign in the description field or enter in the listing expiration
date.
3) Go to the
“Stages for this Marketing Campaign” box.
Enter in a Description and an order for each of the six phases of
our marketing. To continue with our
example, we will enter all six stages of marketing: Property signage, Email
Blast, Just Listed Postcard, Internet Listing Service, Newspaper Ad and Broker
Mailer.
Each stage
must be properly filled out with the proper stage number entered and Marketing
Type selected.
4) Enter the
order in the Stage # field.
Select your first activity, Property Signage, and complete the
information in the blank fields. You
should always enter in the Start Date (your start date is the day that
you actually sent out a mailer or the first day you ran an ad), Description,
Comment and select the correct Marketing Type in the drop down
field. The Complete Date is the
day that you stopped a particular stage of marketing and is not critical to
your advertising report. Enter the
appropriate information for each stage of marketing.
Sample Stage Descriptions:
|
Sample Description
|
Marketing Type
|
|
Property
Signage
|
Sign
|
|
Email
Blast
|
Email
|
|
Postcards
(Just Listed, Reduced, etc.)
|
Direct
Mail
|
|
Flyers
(mailed)
|
Direct
Mail
|
|
Mailer to
3rd Party list (3,500 Contacts)
|
Direct
Mail
|
|
Newspaper
Ads
|
Newspaper
|
|
Magazine
Ads
|
Magazine
|
|
Website
Posting
|
Internet
|
|
Meetings
|
Meeting
|
|
Cold Calls
|
Call
|
|
Fax Blast
|
Fax
|
|
Confidentially
Agreements (Signed)
|
Other
|
|
Marketing
Packages
|
Other
|
|
Property Tours
|
Visit
|
|
LOIs
|
Other
|
|
Offers
|
Other
|
|
Best &
Final
|
Other
|
|
Other????
|
??
|
Once you
have entered your initial marketing stages, you have the option to save them as
a template, so you don’t have to enter them again for future listings. Click the Save Template button to save
your newly created Marketing Stages template.
The Apply Template button, will load the previously saved
marketing stages template into your Marketing Stages window.
Here is what
the marketing report now looks like…
5) Marketing
stages are either passive or active.
If you send a mailer to a list of contacts in your database it is
considered active marketing. If you have
an active marketing stage, you will link contacts from your database to that
the marketing stage. In other words, if
you send postcards to contacts in your database you will link those contacts to
the marketing stage. Mailers, email
blasts and fax blasts are all examples of active marketing.
Contacts now
need to be added to the Postcard stage.
a) Query the
contacts that you want to mail postcards in the Contact section of RealHound®
b)
With your contacts selected in the Contact section,
return to the Marketing Campaign tab
c)
Locate your listing campaign and select the Postcard
Marketing stage
d)
Click the Add Selected Contacts button.
Alternatively,
you could attach all of the contacts in a Contact Group to a marketing stage by
selecting the contact group and clicking the Add Contact Group button.
Remember to
add contacts to active Marketing
stages as you are doing or complete the stages.
6) Passive marketing stages are marketing events that bring
contacts to you. Newspaper, Website
postings, Internet listings, Offers, Property Tours and signage are all
considered passive marketing because the contact comes to you. If you have a passive marketing stage, you
will link contacts from your database to that the marketing stage. In other words, if you receive a sign call,
send out a marketing package, conduct a property tour, receive an offer or receive
an inquiry from an internet ad you must attach a contact to the appropriate
marketing stage.
Let’s say
that someone called you regarding one of your listings because they saw a sign
posted on the property. You talked to
them for a while and then sent the caller more information. You need to link the caller to the Property
Signage marketing stage so that the marketing report going to your client is
accurate.
a)
In the Contact Section on the Companies &
Contacts tab, select your contact activity type, in this case it is a Call.
b)
On the Save to History pop-up window, select
the marketing stage from the Campaign/Stage drop down.
c)
On the same window, select an Activity that
best describes the result of your conversation or action taken.
d)
On the same window, enter your call comments in the Comments
box at the bottom of the screen.
e)
Click the Save button to close the window and
return to the contact screen.
Here is what
the marketing report now looks like…
Notice what
happens to the Contact Detail when the same contact who called you prompted by
the property signage, now tours the property and makes an offer….
Reminder: If someone calls
prompted by your advertising and they are not a contact in your database-- you
should always enter them into your database. You just never know when you will
need their name and number in the future.
7) To create a
marketing report from the Marketing Campaigns tab, select a Marketing Campaign
and click the Report button.
8) Once you
have completely finished with this Marketing Campaign and no longer need to
work with it (for example, when you sell the building or lease the space)
change the completed status from No to Yes. The marketing campaign will disappear from
the list. I highly suggest that you
never delete a marketing campaign.
You will
always want to maintain a record of what marketing materials you have sent to
the contacts in your database as well as who responded to your marketing. This includes the marketing pieces that
advertise your services.
Let’s say
that you are sending out your quarterly newsletter. You want to send it to everyone in your
farm. Follow these easy steps:
1) From the
Marketing Campaign tab, create a new campaign but leave the property name
blank. Add a description, such as
“Newsletter 2nd Quarter, 2008”.
2) Create your
Marketing Stage and attach your Contacts to that stage or you can add contacts
as they contact you.
You can search
for contacts that responded to your marketing and print a marketing report on
the Marketing Campaign tab.
3) Once you
have completely finished with this particular marketing campaign and no longer
need to work with it, change the completed status from No to Yes. The marketing campaign will disappear from
the list.
Review a Contact’s
Marketing History
A contact’s
marketing history can be viewed from their individual contact record by
clicking on the Marketing tab.
Power Moves
1)
Direct
mail and cold calling work best when done together. You could not possibly call everybody in your
farm every single week, but you can send mail to them weekly. Your mailers are a gentle reminder that you
are active in the marketplace and are willing to help a property owner with
their needs. Mailers fill the gap
between your quarterly phone calls.
2) Make sure
your mailing campaign incorporates all five ingredients to ensure that you are
sending the right message to your prospects.
A successful mailing campaign has all five of these critical elements:
a) Regular contact intervals
b) Accessibility of the message
c) Simplicity of design
d) Call to action
e) A Take-away.
3)
Direct mail is a highly effective way of prospecting
in commercial real estate. You must
master and practice regularly the system of marketing to maximize your direct
mail results.
4)
The most important element of direct mail is the
frequency of contact. All too often
people will send two or three mailers to their farm and get no or very few
results. But by maintaining regular
contact intervals with your prospects, you will start to generate a significant
amount of inbound phone calls from property owners requiring your service. Ideally, you should mail to your farm weekly.
5)
RealHound®’s Marketing Campaign feature is ideal for
tracking single and multiphase marketing campaigns such as what is involved in
sending out a newsletter or marketing a listing.
The best way
to lose a listing at renewal time is by not giving your client weekly marketing
updates during the listing term.
Traditionally, listing marketing reports required a tremendous amount of
time, labor and effort to create, but with RealHound® you just click a button. Marketing reports should also be used to win
new business, manage an owner or landlord’s expectations and substantiate who
you marketed the property to during your listing period.
Chapter Seven
Everyone knows that money does not
grow on trees. If it did, everybody
would have it and nobody would want to work.
So we have come up with a way to make your work easier…DealFinder,
Tenant Wizard and space/property auto matching.
These features are going to put a lot
of money in your pocket. You like
money? Of course you do! So the next time somebody in your office
makes fun of RealHound®’s® quirky name, just smile, nod and tell
them that you have gone to the dogs.
After all, there is nothing wrong with being the Top Dog in commercial
real estate. So, you better start
practicing your howl right now.
Everyone at some point in time has had
a prospect who only wants a building in a very specific location. You know the type…”I want a 1990’s or newer
constructed office building in east Phoenix,
east of SR-51 and within the Camelback business corridor. It needs to have at least 15,000 sq ft
available …..”. If you are like most
brokers, you will have a general idea of the properties that might fit his
needs as soon as he begins outlining his needs to you but after a few days have
passed, you have mentally moved on. Six
months later, your prospect has closed with another broker.
This can be avoided by always setting
up individual Buyer & Tenant Needs and by using DealFinder and Tenant
Wizard.
Introducing DealFinder & Tenant Wizard
DealFinder and Tenant Wizard were
designed to take the pain out of matching Buyer & Tenant needs with
available properties while managing lists of both buyers and Tenants. You can now effectively manage hundreds of Buyer
& Tenant Needs and maintain even the most complex requirements. The program automatically matches needs
against available inventory in your property database. When a match is found, the program will
display the matching records. As you
show the matching properties or space to individual contacts, a history of
shown properties can be stored in a contact’s record.
Consistently tracking Buyer and Tenant
Needs is a vital component to your success in commercial real estate. Once you have a well maintained database of
active buyers & tenants and a track record of successful deals, you are
well on your way to becoming the market leader.
With each new sale and lease transaction your reputation for getting the
job done grows in the marketplace.
Eventually, new clients will seek you out for your expertise.
TIP: Maintaining your database in this fashion will
allow you to quickly find buyers and Tenants for your own listings. The quicker you find a buyer… the quicker you
will cash a check.
Invariably, there is always someone
out there who has built their business on just listing properties (or space)
and could care less about maintaining a database of Buyers and Tenants. If you don’t think Buyers and Tenants are important,
try closing a deal without one!
The simple truth is that if you are
not showing properties to people in the marketplace then someone else in your
market is and you are leaving money on the table for your competition. If you’re selling institutional grade
properties, I acknowledge that you think your business model is different and
that you know who all the buyers are in the marketplace. I also acknowledge that when a property
closes for a price that you never thought possible with a buyer that you never
heard of it is just a market anomaly!
Caution:
80% of all potential Buyers and
Tenants will just waste your time. Make
sure that every prospect is qualified, have the money and is properly motivated
before you invest more than 5 minutes of your time on them. You must qualify your prospects by asking
them the right questions upfront.
Always, Always, ALWAYS enter the Deal
Probability on the Buyer &
Tenant Needs tab for each Need that you record and a Need expiration date.
At least 30% of your income should
come from representing buyers and/or tenants in the marketplace. Clients that you represent are oftentimes
loyal when they want to sell their deals or renew their leases and will give
you a call before they do decide to sell.
DealFinder gives you the ability to
find and manage buyers in your database who want to purchase properties that
match certain criteria that you have already specified for them under the Buyer
& Tenant Needs tab (in the Contacts section of the program).
This feature is extremely
useful when you are trying to locate a buyer for a property that is For Sale but you have not entered that
property into your database, manage a list of clients in a 1031 tax deferred
exchange and mange a general list of buyers.
Example: You go to a
meeting and another broker pitches a deal that requires $2,000,000 down. After the meeting, you search DealFinder for
buyers that have at least $2,000,000 and a deal probability of 65% or
greater. Next, you run the deal past
those buyers that qualify. Yes, this
feature can make you a lot of money!
Using DealFinder
DealFinder is located in the Today Section of the program on the DealFinder tab. Lets continue with the above example and search for buyers that have at least $2,000,000
and a deal probability of 65% or greater.
1) Enter in the Down Payment and deal Probability
into the blank fields. Click the Search button.
2) All of the contacts with matching
Buyer Needs will be queried in the Buyers window.
3) Select a Buyer to show their property
need in greater detail. You may also
edit the Buyer Need from this window.
4) On
this tab is the Matched Properties window.
By selecting a buyer on the screen above the window and pressing the
Show Matched button (don’t forget to
click the Search Internet button to find online listed properties), properties
in your database with their For Sale status marked as Yes that meet the selected buyer’s criteria will be displayed in
the Matched Properties window.
The Matched Properties window shows
you a list of properties that match the selected Buyer Need. Click the Goto Properties button to query the list
of properties in the Property section. Print the property list (run an
availability report) and send it to your Client!
Tenant Wizard gives you the ability to
find and manage multiple Tenant needs in your database for contacts who are
looking to lease space that match certain criteria that you have already
specified for them under the Buyer & Tenant Needs tab (in the Contacts
section of the program). The Tenant Wizard
feature is extremely useful when you are trying to locate a tenant for
an available space but that space has not been entered into your database or if
you want to manage a list of tenants looking for space. Example: You receive a flyer from another broker marketing 20,000 SF of office
space. You would search the Tenant
Wizard feature for tenants that have at need for 20,000 SF of office and then
run the deal past all of your prospects that qualify. Yes, this is another feature that can make
you a lot of money!
Using Tenant Wizard
Tenant Wizard is located in the Today section of the program on the Tenant
Wizard tab. Lets continue with the
above example and search for Tenants
that have a need for at least 20,000 SF of office space and a Deal Probability
of 65% or greater.
1) Enter in the Square Feet Available and Deal
Probability into the blank
fields. Click the Search button.
2) All of the contacts with matching
Tenant Needs will be queried in the Tenants window.
3) Select a contact to show their Tenant
Need in greater detail. You may also
edit the Tenant Need from this window.
4)
On this tab is the Matched Available
Spaces window. By selecting a
Tenant need on the screen above the window and pressing the Match Available Spaces button (don’t
forget to click the search Internet button!), properties in your database with
spaces available for lease that meet the selected Tenant’s criteria will be
displayed in the Matched Available Spaces window.
Matching spaces will appear in the Available Spaces window.
1) Use the DealFinder feature
2) From the Property
section, on the Overview tab click the Match
Buyers button.
3) From a contact
record’s Buyer & Tenant need tab, select a Need and then click the Show Matched button.
1) Use the Tenant Wizard feature
2) From the Property section, on the
Available/For Lease tab, click the Match
Tenants button.
2)
From
a contact record’s Buyer & Tenant need tab, select a Need and click the Show Matched button.
As you show
properties to your clients, you need to effectively enter into their contact
records a history of those properties that you have shown them.
The following
method works for an individual contact or a large number of contacts.
Record properties shown
(presented) into a contact’s history
1)
In the Property section, select the property or
properties that need to be presented to a contact or contacts. Make sure that you have NOT selected your
entire Property database by mistake.
2)
On the Contact section of the program, select
all of the contacts that you are going to present the property or properties
to. Once again, make sure that you have
NOT selected your entire Contact database by mistake.
3)
In the Contact section of the program, go to the
Companies & Contacts tab of the first contact that you are going to present
the properties to. Click the Note
button to bring up the Save to History pop-up box.
4)
From the Save to History pop-up box:
a.
Select Presented from the Sales Type drop
down box.
b.
Check the box next to All Selected Properties
if you want all of the queried (selected) properties on the Property section OR
select the Property Lookup icon next the Property field to select a SINGLE
property.
c.
Check the box next to All Selected Contacts
if you want this activity attached to all of the currently selected contacts OR
leave the box blank to attach the activity to the CURRENT contact record.
d.
Enter your comments in the Comments box.
e.
Click the Save button when finished.
5)
The Program will make a note for each property in
each contacts history and Marketing tab.
Once you have determined which properties or spaces that you wish to show
your client, generate and print an availability report to send them. Here’s how:
1)
Click the Reports button.
2)
Select the correct property type radio button. Select the Available report group and
then the specific report type that you want.
-OR-
3)
Select the desired report options and click the Preview
button to create your report.
Property Photographs
The Contact Section 
