Commercial real estate leads bring business opportunities, whether you are a real estate agent looking for prospective clients, a broker looking for commercial real estate to recommend to interested buyers, an investor seeking a deal on a property, or a service provider hoping to find new clients. Leads are property owners who might be interested in selling their property, which could mean a new client for a seller’s agent or a no-competition deal on the purchase of a property.
You have many ways available to generate and gather commercial real estate leads. You can use a number of methods to gather them for yourself, which can require a fair amount of hustle. Another popular way is to buy real estate leads from a source. When you buy leads, you purchase a list of people who are likely going to be selling.
There are benefits and drawbacks to both strategies, and it can help to understand both in order for you to determine the best way for you to grow and maintain your business. Read on to understand more about the differences between buying real estate leads and finding them on your own, and which route can benefit you more.
Buying Lists of Commercial Real Estate Leads
You can purchase a list of leads from a resource that has compiled or collected lists of qualified or verified leads. When you buy commercial real estate leads, you are purchasing a list of prospective clients that have in some way indicated that they are likely going to need to sell. This list can have a wide range of owners that are in a variety of situations. Some of these can include:
- Owners in pre-foreclosure
- Property owners who have announced relocation
- Business owners who have announced closure
- Probate leads (people who just inherited property that are likely to turn that property around via sale)
- People who have applied for or looked into loans
- People who have clicked on pay-per-click ads regarding selling property
- Internet users who have searched for the value of their property
- Commercial property owners that have responded to surveys about selling their property
You can choose the type of qualified lead that makes the most sense for your market and your business, then purchase from a source that provides that type of leads list.
Benefits of Buying Prospect Lists
There are many benefits to buying real estate leads in order to find potential customers. Some of these include the following.
Save Yourself Time and Energy
Finding new clients and opportunities can be hard work. You can reduce some of your workload and save yourself time by buying qualified leads. Instead of having to work to build your customer base, you can be handed a list of potential clients that you know are in some way interested in selling. That way you can devote your time and energy to working hard for your clients rather than to hustling to find potential clients.
Make First Contact
When you buy a list of leads, it is not likely that you are going to be the first agent to make contact with the leads. This is especially true if you are purchasing a list of leads that have simply expressed some interest in selling their property, but have not necessarily made any decision about doing it. When you are the first agent to reach out to a potential seller, you are more likely to win them as a client, since not only do you have minimal competition at this point, but you have made the process easy and convenient for them.
Get Established and Build Your Client List
When you purchase a list, you have a long steady stream of people to check in with about possibly representing them during a sale. You may be able to make sales quickly, since you’ll likely be working with people ready and motivated to sell. When you make these clients happy, you can help generate a positive reputation and word-of-mouth marketing for yourself, which will help you naturally grow your business.
Cons of Buying Lists of Commercial Real Estate Leads
Before purchasing a commercial real estate leads list, consider the following possible cons:
- Expense: Buying leads lists can be expensive, depending on the source.
- Quality: Some sources provide more accurate and up-to-date contact information than other sources.
- Reliability: Your list might contain leads with no interest in selling.
- Exclusivity: You can buy a list of exclusive leads, at a higher price, or you can buy a list of leads that also are available to other agents or purchasers, which means more potential competition.
How to Build Your Own Commercial Real Estate Leads List
If you choose not to buy a list of real estate leads from any resource, you must compile your own list of potential sellers. This can take some hustling on your part, but there are a wide variety of methods for finding good clients. Here are some popular ways that seller agents find their own commercial real estate leads.
- Referrals: Ask happy and satisfied clients to recommend you to other sellers and to leave reviews in relevant places.
- Partnerships: Partner with relevant organizations, businesses, or professionals in your area to help bring you people that are looking to sell commercial property. Some business that make sense are cleaning services, moving companies, other brokers, construction contractors, and more. When people inquire with that company about selling their property, you can have them recommend you. In exchange you can also recommend these businesses to your clients.
- Advertisements: Place ads with local newspapers, radio stations, television stations, and online. Consider advertising in other relevant publications like local real estate listings or magazines.
- Direct mail marketing: Send real estate postcards to targeted areas to find prospective clients.
- Social media channels: Create your own social media pages and post relevant, interesting content on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
- Place sold signs on properties you sold: When you successfully sell a property for a client, make sure to put a sold sign on that property, in addition to your name and contact.
- Nurture, nurture, nurture: Don’t give up on old leads, even if a person didn’t get in back in touch with you about selling or dropped out of contact. Gently and politely nurture your leads by checking in with them and providing them with helpful, relevant information. This can keep you at the forefront of their mind in case they change their mind again and decide that they do want to sell their property.
- Search for foreclosures and vacant properties yourself: Pay attention around town and in the newspaper for foreclosed and vacant properties. Get in touch with the owners yourself. You can nab the client by offering to help them sell the property and get into a better financial situation.
- Have a great website: Build a website as a seller’s agent and optimize it for search. Make sure you’ve used the right keywords so you come up high in Google search results. That way people can find you and your services when they are looking for an agent like you to help them
Advantages of Finding Your Own Commercial Real Estate Leads
As you can see above, there are many routes to finding your own commercial real estate prospects. Going this route includes the following benefits.
It can be cheaper
Some methods of finding your own real estate leads is free. It can be expensive to buy leads. So, if you are looking for cost effective lead generation, this can be a good option.
It can yield higher-value relationships
Real estate is all about who you know in your market. By doing the work to generate your own leads and get yourself and your name out there, you can get to know more people and establish yourself as a more well-known name in your area.
Be sure your leads are interested
Buying qualified leads is a smart way to connect with interested sellers. But not everyone on your lead list is actually interested in selling. If you do the work yourself, you can have a good gauge of where potential clients are and whether they’re actually worth investing time and energy into nurturing.
How to Use ProspectNow to Create Commercial Real Estate Leads Lists
As an agent, it’s important to regularly take steps to bring leads into your business. Take some time to learn what it means to buy leads, and what it means to find your own leads. Then, consider the nature of your business, the time you have to spend, and which avenue makes the most sense for you as an agent. Once you’ve determined which method will help bring your more potential clients, devote your time to pursuing that avenue. When you bring in more potential clients to your business, you can help more and more people sell their commercial property. Not only will you help more people reach their real estate goals, you’ll also develop a reputation for being a reliable and effective agent. This is another way to help build your business via word-of-mouth, and to become an even more trusted, relied-upon agent in your market.
If you want to rely on a tool that can provide you with qualified leads to help your business grow, check out ProspectNow. ProspectNow has a database of commercial properties, so that commercial real estate agents can build their base of potential sellers. The array of tools and features help you find ownership and contact information for properties that meet your specific criteria.